Looking good is one thing, but does the C14-A2 deliver on performance? This particular C14 is the A2 model, which ships with a Core i7-3517U processor. The dual-core 3517U includes 4MB of L3 cache, supports hyperthreading (so it can handle four simultaneous threads), and ships with a base clock of 1.9GHz and a maximum turbo speed of 3GHz. As with many similar Ultrabooks, it has 4GB of DDR3 memory, some of which must be used as the frame buffer for the integrated Intel HD 4000 GPU.

Performance is close to a dead heat with the highly rated, but pricier, . The Vizio has an overall performance score of 81 on PCWorlds demanding suite of tests, versus an 82 for the S5.

A thin-and-light system like this is often used for office applications and on-the-go Web duty. To that end, the Vizio posted very good scores in the PCMark 7 office productivity tests compared with other systems in its class, eking out a slight win over the Acer Aspire S5.

On the other hand, it looks like the Vizios solid-state drive is a bit slower than the Acer's, but its still an SSD, so it's speedier than Ultrabooks that use traditional hard drives.