Acer Aspire S 13 Touch, 13.3" Full HD, Intel Core i5, 8GB LPDDR3, 256GB SSD, Windows 10 Home, S5-371T-537V

This review is for the following version/specs since there are multiple options:Acer Aspire S 13 TouchModel: S5-371T-78TA13.3" Full HDIntel Core i78GB LPDDR3256GB SSDFingerprint ReaderWindows 10Bias disclosure: I work in technology, I am already a big fan of Acer brand laptops (my prior model was an Aspire V7), and I've only had this new Aspire for a week.Feather light and convenient: I'm a small person and the Aspire S 13 comfortably fits in the crook of my arm. Some of you larger people might find this a weird concern but for the wee folk, we have a short forearm to work with so it's important that the laptop size and weight are carefully balanced. Acer hit the mark with this one in that regard.Caveat: I do not recommend this laptop for the accident-prone or those who are not gentle on electronics (see bulk of unhappy reviews). The reason the Aspire S 13 is so light is that it doesn't come stocked with a bulky, heavy case. This thing is thin which makes it wonderfully light but if you routinely drop devices, go find something sturdier...with a rollcage.As for convenience, for the first time in forever, I have a laptop that I can use on my lap. The vents are along the bottom up next to the hinge which means I no longer have to worry about a laptop overheating from a lack of airflow, regardless of how I sit.Performance: the Aspire S 13 is snappy fast (again, strictly speaking of the model S5-371T-78TA). Why is it so quick? First off, no "bloatware." I cannot thank Acer enough for having the good sense to keep their setup simple. I've had to deal with Dell, HP, Toshiba, and a few other name brands where straight out of the box, the laptop is bogged down by an excessive number of branded software that's set to startup with Windows. On this particular model, Acer has one piece of software that has no impact on the performance at all, and it sits quietly out of sight, waiting for you rather than popping up in your face every five minutes with prompts to "click here! Buy this!"The second reason is the hardware specs that are already listed above. The recent Windows 10 update has also improved performance significantly with a couple of low-end machines I work with so I imagine it's an added bonus with this laptop. The key thing about all this is that even with these specs, the laptop stays super quiet and doesn't get hot. I've run video editing software (Premiere), streamed videos, and played games such as Portal Knights without so much as a peep out of the laptop. At one point the fans were audible but that was during a stress test and even then, it was nothing like the obnoxious whirring that comes with most laptops.The touchpad is nice and responsive--I normally would use a mouse on laptops but this one is well-made--and the fingerprint reader is handy and reliable.Overall, I am very happy with this product and recommend it to people looking for a light-weight and great performing laptop.

Pros:The laptop feels sturdier and heavier than i expected - especially for a 13". The case is made with hard plastic and some metal in the lower half.At first I was a little concerned about some of the bad reviews that claimed the Wi-Fi card was a lemon. For the first hour or so after setting everything up my downloads were very very slow. Later in the evening this seemed to sort itself out, so maybe it was just some Windows 10 foolery - downloading further updates and stupid ads to pin to my start menu. So for what it's worth, in my experience the wifi is fine.The machine itself is about as fast as you'd expect of a laptop with an i7 and an SSD. That's why i chose this laptop so I'm happy with it.The touch screen is a nice feature that i probably would not have cared about or bothered with had it not been on a reasonably priced computer with good specs, but now that I've used it a bit I've come to appreciate the convenience of it. It's especially nice for things like picking an item from search suggestions - where your hands are on the keyboard and its easier to just tap the screen instead of going back to the touch pad.The keyboard is (mostly) nice and comfy, fast and satisfying to use, with the exception of the arrow keys (more on that below). I like the backlight on it as well.Cons:One nitpicky complaint i have is the arrow keys. Maybe it's just me, but i do a lot of typing for my office and i loathe "split" arrow keys, where the arrow is half the height of the other keys and the "top half" is a different key. On this laptop the upper "half" of the left and right arrows are Page Up/Down. I'll surely get used to it eventually but it really slows me down when I'm typing a lengthy document and i need to jump back a few words to make an edit. Really minor but worth mentioning. I get that it's a very small laptop and they have to find somewhere to put all the keys. I would have preferred almost anywhere else though, tbh.The one thing that actually annoyed me enough to remove a star is that my 256GB SSD arrived with 40 GB already filled up, even after i removed the bloatware. How in hell is the operating system (and whatever backup partition exists) occupying 40 GB? I picked a laptop with an SSD so i could comfortably use my audio production/editing software on the go - knowing i could have a much, much larger HDD for the same price - but i wasnt expecting my machine to show up with nearly 1/5 of my storage already occupied. WTH Acer?Overall though, I'm quite happy with it. Good laptop for the price.