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Acer Timeline Ultra M5 Review: Big Screen, Few Pixels

25.07.2012
As an Ultrabook, the Acer Timeline Ultra M5 disappoints. It's simply too big (with a 15.6-inch screen) and too heavy (at 4.5 pounds, not including accessories), to fit comfortably in the Ultrabook category. If anything, decision to market this model as an Ultrabook puts the Timeline Ultra M5 a disadvantage, since it can't compete with the sexy sleekness of smaller, lighter Ultrabooks.

We should instead call the Timeline Ultra M5 what it is: a very good-looking 15.6-inch with a discrete graphics card.

Our review model, priced at $829 as of July 23, 2012, has excellent specs considering its svelte form. It packs a third-generation, Intel Core i5-3317U processor, 6GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GT 640M graphics card. The M5 also has a 500GB hard-disk drive alongside a 20GB solid-state drive, which uses Intel's Rapid Response SSD caching technology to boot up and resume from hibernate quickly. The M5 runs a 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium.

On PCWorld Labs' WorldBench 7 benchmark tests, the Timeline Ultra M5 earned a mark of 104 --not a bad score, but far below the category leader, which happens to be the M5's predecessor, the . Though the M3 carries a second-generation SandyBridge-based Intel processor, the CPU is a more powerful i7, not an i5; and the M3 rode it to a much better WorldBench 7 score of 155.

The M5 lacks the M3's i7 processor, but it has the same graphics card, and it performed well on our graphics and gaming measures. In our graphics tests, the M5 managed excellent frame rates ranging from 39.9 frames per second in Crysis 2 (at high quality settings and 1366-by-768-pixel resolution) to 114.7 fps in Dirt 3 (at low quality settings and 800-by-600-pixel resolution). In short, the M5 is among the few ultraportables that should have no problem handling the vast majority of your gaming and graphical needs.