Acer Aspire TimelineU M5-581T

Acer M5-581T-6446

Acer is bringing its non-Ultrabook Ultrabooks to Canada. The Acer Aspire TimelineUltra M5-581T-6446 is the Canadian version of Acer's M5 series. Except for the default installed memory, it's similar to the American M5-481T-6642. That American version costs $730 (USD), but it ships with only 4GB of DDR3; the Canadian counterpart includes 6GB. Like the other notebooks in the series, the M5-581T-6446 (henceforth called the M5) is only technically considered an Ultrabook—it may fit the specs, but it's just too big and too heavy for a reasonable person to consider it a true Ultrabook. Our review model, which costs $799 (Canadian), sports a third-generation Intel Core i5-3317U processor, 6GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive with a 20GB SSD cache. Unlike the American counterpart we reviewed, the model 6666, which sports a discrete Nvidia graphics card, the Canadian M5 relies solely on Intel's integrated HD graphics. Other specs include a DVD-RW drive, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and a 64-bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium. Performance In PCWorld's WorldBench 7 benchmark tests, the M5 scores a very good 121 versus the baseline of 100—that is, it's 21 percent faster than our testing model.