We all know that the market of thin and light is a place where soldiers must compete, and manufacturers have also put a lot of resources into it, but the products that can really be remembered by the market are really not too many. To emerge in the environment of big waves and sand, there must be two brushes, such as Acer's "traffic bearer" extraordinary S3, which has always been balanced by design, configuration and price, and has well grasped the needs of young users and become a star model in the thin and light market.
Since it is a star model, it is naturally expected to get a timely upgrade. Can the new Acer Extraordinary S3 (hereinafter referred to as S3) meet the current increasingly inward-looking part-time work?
Outside of the existing, pay attention to the real needs
Before we start appreciating and testing S3, we may as well summarize together what kind of demands young people will have for thin and light.
Needless to say, after all, this is the tool that everyone relies on for a living. The stronger the better the performance is also just needed, so that you can deal with the heavy tasks with ease. What other features are needed?
A fact that may be overlooked: the pursuit of resolution is getting higher and higher. This is not only the influence of the era of mobile intelligence, the pursuit of picture quality, but also the high-resolution workplace we can enjoy more windows to process information, effectively improve work efficiency.
In order to meet the needs of users, the screen resolution of S3 reached 2.5K. The support for high resolution in system versions after Windows 10 is already quite good, so we can see a delicate text display in S3. In line with the system's multi-task switching feature, you can easily switch between multiple programs without the need for an external screen, and obtain and process the corresponding information.
In addition to the high-resolution characteristics, the screen equipped with the S3 also has the characteristics of about 90% screen ratio, 1200:1 ultra-high contrast ratio, 300nits brightness and 100% sRGB wide color gamut. In actual use, we can feel that no matter what kind of lighting environment we are in, the S3 screen can deliver an accurate and comfortable display effect.
In addition to screen performance, endurance is also the focus of everyone's attention. Although the power supply of the notebook has been made very light now, if the charger can be thrown at a fixed point such as the office, charging it once a day like a mobile phone, the use experience will naturally be better. In order to meet the needs of professional users who do not say but do exist, Acer put a 56Whr four-cell battery in the S3 and charged the machine through the Type-C interface on the machine.
In addition to screen performance and endurance, what kind of demands will everyone have? The number of heat dissipation and interfaces should be the last "big devil". Let's first look at heat dissipation, after all, in the environment of inner volume, "996" should be commonplace in notebooks. The best way to verify the S3's double copper tube and double fan cooling system equipped with a three-dimensional duct design is, of course, the copy machine.
We opened the AIDA64 for load testing, and at the beginning of the test, we could see that the processor rushed to 28W in an instant, and then floated between 25-28W, which proved that the processor was already operating at full speed, and thanks to the help of the thermal system, the power output was quite stable.
The S3 not only gives us a safe enough heat dissipation effect, but also has a fairly large number of interfaces. We can see that there are two Raiden 4 interfaces on the left side of the fuselage, an HDMI interface, and a USB 3.2 Gen1 interface that supports shutdown charging. On the right side of the fuselage, there is a USB 3.2 Gen1 interface and a headset-in-one interface. The existence of these interfaces should be rich enough to cope with the current application, and everyone can also use S3 as the center of the desktop to build a richer set of office equipment.
Ingenious design, user experience plus
Summarizing the daily needs of young users, let's take a look at what ingenious designs Acer has achieved on the S3. If you get started with S3, you will find that when you open the S3, the fuselage will be slightly lifted, this design known as "hip" not only helps the heat dissipation system to function, but also forms a small slope that is more ergonomic and can have a better feel when entering.
In addition to the improved feel, the S3 keyboard also has many highlights. First of all, it supports three backlight adjustments, which can provide backlights according to everyone's needs for easy input. Secondly, its OceanGlass environmental protection trackpad is made of glass-like material, excellent hand feel coupled with the optimization of the trackpad of the system after Windows 10, the operation feel is quite good. Finally, its power supply and fingerprint recognition are two-in-one button design, which allows everyone to better use Windows Hello to ensure data security.
When it comes to data security, how much more can S3 help us at work? Based on the current environment, I believe that everyone will have a higher demand for the video quality of the notebook. S3, which has been upgraded during this period, will naturally not fall into this piece. Its MIPI FHD front camera uses TNR (Time Domain Noise Reduction) technology to significantly reduce noise and render Full HD images. At the same time, the S3 is equipped with Acer PurifiedVoice technology of AI noise reduction technology, which has also significantly improved the sound quality of video.
Finally, the S3 is equipped with the Intel Killer Wi-Fi 6E AX1675i wireless card to ensure network quality. Friends who know something about hardware should be familiar with Killer's high performance. This Killer card also supports the latest WiFi 6E specification to guarantee network strength. Although today's offices do not necessarily implement WiFi6 wireless networks, "be prepared" can be described as a golden rule for professional users.
Powerful performance to ensure the use of efficiency
Carefully tasting the design of the S3, we can find that it does have a lot of consideration for the user. So on the most basic performance hardware, can it also deliver good performance? Friends who are familiar with the operation of the notebook market should know that a product is upgraded, generally speaking, starting from the performance hardware part, and the S3 is no exception.
Through Master Lu's "verification of the right body", we can see that the S3 sent to the PConline evaluation room is equipped with a 12th-generation Core i7-1260P processor, with 16G DDR4 4266MHz memory, and a 512G capacity magnesium optical solid-state drive. From the model we can understand that this processor is Intel's newly launched low-voltage processor, I believe that everyone is quite interested in its process and parameters, then we will first understand it.
Friends who understand the development of the processor industry in recent years should know that Intel has achieved the design of "large and small cores" on the 12th generation Core, and the i7-1260P processor is naturally the product of this idea. It has 4 P cores and 8 E cores, of which the P core is dual-threaded and the E-core is single-threaded, that is to say, the i7-1260P processor has a 12-core and 16-thread architecture. Combined with the increasingly mature 10nm SuperFin process, Intel hopes that the launch of the new 12th generation Core Mobile processor can inject new impetus into the thin and light market.
So is Intel's "P-core punch performance E-core efficiency" approach, is it effective? We first invited CineBench to test the R20 and R23 versions to get a preliminary feel for the S3 equipped with the Core i7-1260P processor.
From the picture above, we can see that the S3 achieved a single-core 594cb and a multi-core 3058cb in R20.
Switching to R23, S3 scored a single-core 1524 points and a multi-core score of 9470 points.
Combined with these two data, the Core i7-1260P processor equipped with the S3 has achieved a "balanced improvement". On the one hand, it inherits the single-core advantage of Intel processors and provides capital for smooth operation in high-load scenarios; on the other hand, its multi-core performance has improved significantly, which means that it does improve operational efficiency in situations that require multi-core performance such as rendering. You can joke that Intel's approach is "retro" or even "revival", but the performance improvement is really there.
Since you ran through CineBench and didn't run geekBench, which updated the specification, how can it be justified? In this test, S3 finally handed over a single core of 1626 points, multi-core 9576 points, which is also gratifying.
In order to give you a clearer understanding of the strength of the 12th generation Core i7-1260P processor processor, we will introduce a series of test software that imitates the actual application, and do a more comprehensive survey for everyone.
The first is Corona 1.3, which took 2 minutes and 28 seconds to complete the Benchmark, which is not even much different from some high-performance notebooks with power walls.
Next up is Blender, which took 5 minutes and 26 seconds to complete the Benchmark, and the results were also remarkable.
Finally, we simulated the daily work state and selected a PR project for rendering. The S3 takes 1 minute and 20 seconds to output 1080P 50 frames of H.264 high-bitrate footage that lasts about 1 minute.
After understanding the performance of the processor through various tests, how can you miss the sharp torch Xe display that comes with it? This time, we do not play virtual, directly start the popular online game "CSGO" among the workers, and understand its performance through actual combat.
With 1080P resolution, full medium quality, and disabled texture streaming and enhanced character contrast, the S3 can basically run more than 90 frames. Considering the screen parameters on the S3, this performance is enough for everyone to cool down in their spare time and smoothly change their mood and put into work.
At the same time, we also tested SSDs. In the CDM test, we can see that the sequential read speed of this SSD is 3735.3MB/s, and the sequential write speed is 3360.2MB/s. From the data point of view, this piece of SSD running in the PCIe4.0 specification will not restrict the processor to play, and can effectively ensure the operational efficiency.
Simple design, versatile choice in the workplace
Finally, let's take a look at the design of the S3. This bare metal weighs only 1.25kg, and the fuselage frame is made of aluminum alloy material. Combined with the three colors of cyber yellow, pearlescent silver and night blue, S3 not only has a wide range of applicable aspects, but also can meet everyone's needs for appearance and durability.
In order to further exert the material advantages of aluminum alloy materials, Acer adopted the method of drilling cutting edges to deal with the fuselage lines. Looking at the details of the fuselage carefully, we can feel that although the S3 is still visually sharp, the feel is still relatively silky. Such appearance and workmanship appear generous in the workplace, and it is not cheap at all.
summary
After years of market education, now when everyone chooses digital products, they will not pay attention to performance singlely, but pay more attention to the word "use experience", which sounds tall and in fact hides many factors. In order to meet the needs of the established population, Acer has really put a lot of effort into the new Extraordinary S3. Combined with the application of actual office scenarios, these intentions of Acer can indeed play an effect.
In the environment of the normalization of the epidemic, the demand for notebooks by young professional users is increasing. If you have such a need, then the experience upgrade brought by Acer's new extraordinary S3 is indeed worth having.