Acer Aspire TimelineU M3: Life on the Kepler Verge
by Dustin Sklavos on March 13, 2012 5:56 PM ESTIn and Around the Acer Aspire TimelineU M3
Stylistically, the Acer Aspire TimelineU M3 is actually among the more attractive notebooks that Acer has offered. Their Timeline series has generally been well-received and among their most compelling offerings, and the M3 is no different. That said, there are a few design choices that are still baffling and definitely curtail some of the notebook's usability.
Black goes with everything, so it's only fitting that the M3 employs a stark two-toned matte black and silver plastic design. While it's premature to begin celebrating the death of gloss in the marketplace, Acer has eschewed glossy plastic almost entirely on the M3, using it only for the Acer logo on the lid. Except for the keyboard tray, the entire notebook is matte black, while the keyboard tray itself uses a shimmering silver that's attractive without being ostentatious. The whole design is actually remarkably minimalistic.
As Jarred noted in his review of the TimelineX, Acer is largely moving away from their old floating island keyboard style and I'm thankful for it. While chiclet keyboards are still a matter of some contention between many users, I still personally find them preferable to the floating island keys. The layout is a logical one, too, and I suspect the enter and backslash keys are snuggled up against each other as a means to make the keyboard easier to swap out for different regions. This isn't one of my favorite keyboards, but with the slightly increased Z-height of the M3 over other ultrabooks it at least has decent key depth and travel.
Where things do get dicier is with the touchpad. Acer uses a massive unified touchpad and like the one we tested on the Dell XPS 13, it's oftentimes more trouble than it's worth. The touchpad has a hard time distinguishing gestures from clicks, and if you need to right-click anything you may find yourself accidentally moving the mouse where you don't want it to go. I've gotten used to using touchpads with dedicated mouse buttons, and breaking the habit of leaving my thumb on the left mouse button is incredibly difficult to do. The result is that I often wind up making gestures I didn't intend, and I've had to actually concentrate on using the touchpad properly.
The port and button layout is also unfortunately pretty poor. All of the connectivity is on the back of the notebook; the optical drive and card reader are on the left side, and the right side is barren except for the kensington lock. Putting the ethernet, HDMI, and AC adaptor connectors on the back isn't really a big deal, but there's no convenient access to the notebook's USB connectivity. Probably worst of all, the power button is on the front of the M3, about an inch left of center, and extremely easy to accidentally press when you're trying to move the machine. If you're using the M3 on your lap, I can't imagine never accidentally hitting it. Most users will probably want to just disable the button entirely while in Windows.
Where I feel like the M3 redeems itself somewhat is in user expandability. As I mentioned before, there's a single panel on the bottom of the notebook held on by three screws. Remove it, and you have access to the mSATA slot, the wireless mini-PCIe card slot, the single user-replaceable DIMM slot, and an empty 2.5" drive bay complete with power and data connections. The 256GB mSATA SSD from LiteOn isn't great, but it's adequate and has a healthy amount of capacity for an SSD; more than that, it's also bigger than any mSATA drive you can buy on NewEgg. The battery isn't user replaceable, but Acer claims it's good for three times the number of charge and recharge cycles of conventional notebook batteries, so if you get even half that you'll still be in good shape.
Honestly I found myself mostly enamored with the TimelineU M3's design. It's all plastic and the build quality doesn't feel the best, but provided you're not too harsh with it, it should last a reasonable amount of time. On the flipside, the dearth of glossy plastic is appreciated, and it's a lightweight notebook that allows us to use mSATA and a conventional 2.5" drive together. The chiclet keyboard is also a massive upgrade on its predecessor, even if the touchpad needs some work.
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trajan2448 - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
For me thats a hassle.trajan2448 - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Im traveling internationally and its much easier to buy a disc.Death666Angel - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
I would have thought that it was a hassle carrying around a few DVDs on your travels. Also, you can just rip it as an .iso or .img and VLC usually plays it just fine, no need to encode it. Little 64GB USB stick (they go cheap these days) and you have 8 or 10 movies with you at all times. But, your call of course. :DMichaelD - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
It's b/c PC manufacturer's (Apple not included here) continue to put out so-so products like this, that I've been sticking with Netbooks for the past three years. Six years ago I had an Acer laptop. It was top of the line for back then. It still works. It has a real touchpad and two separate mouse buttons. The screen is washed-out now, but back then it was vibrant and responsive. As someone above stated "The touchpad and screen on a laptop are EVERYTHING. If those two suck, then the laptop sucks." I couldn't agree more. I'll stick with my Netbook for now.chrnochime - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
When is the embargo going to be lifted? Just waiting to find out if it's worth waiting for the GK104 or go with 7870.bji - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Full stop, straight to the comments to enjoy some commiseration about the state of laptop screens. I never read an Anandtech notebook review article past the word "768p". Ever. If you want my readership and page clicks Anandtech you'll have to start shipping those substandard notebooks back and asking for something more worthwhile to review. Maybe the manufacturers will finally get the hint.fic2 - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
Totally agree. I think any laptop "reviews" with a 768p screen should begin and end with the the sentence:Laptop XXX would have been reviewed but since it only has a 768p screen we did not feel it was worth our time to review and our readers time to read such a review.
Recommendation: wait for higher resolution laptop screens.
Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
At that point we might as well just not review notebooks. The fact remains that 768p is the standard that has been forced upon consumers. All we can do is review what's available and continue haranguing manufacturers to fix the problem.Visual - Tuesday, March 20, 2012 - link
No, you silly clueless writer.At that point, laptop manufacturers get a clue, and release a good product for a change.
Review sites do have that kind of power, didn't you know?
Dustin Sklavos - Wednesday, March 14, 2012 - link
And as a sidenote, how does boycotting us help change the industry? We've been actively campaigning for better screens in notebooks since we started reviewing notebooks, I'm not sure how not supporting us is going to help the situation.