Acer Aspire S7 13.3" Gorilla Glass Notebook Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
2,847 words · ~14 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the Aspire S7 13.3 in from Acer
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now I've already had a look at their 11in model which has an aluminum uh
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actually gorgeous aluminum finish on the top of it but this is like sort of if if
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the Aspire S7 11 in is sexy then this is
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like ah I don't know it sort of I don't
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I don't know what word to use for it anymore because this is the version that
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has its 13.3 in it has Gorilla Glass on
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the top it's 1080p so it's uh full HD in a 13-inch
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form factor which is pretty good pixel density especially for a notebook
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because of the distance you're going to be sitting from it and let's get started
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here I guess so the first thing you find is uh
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verbing network uh so that's probably German accessing a wireless network
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they've got a quick start guide for that as well as uh showing you a couple cool
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things about the notebook itself how do I access charms how do I get to start
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all that good stuff um actually there's an episode of NC Tech tips that you can
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check out so the the start menu thing reminded me of this but uh if you want
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to know how to add the start menu to Windows 8 it's not a bad idea lots of
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people do it all right included power brick so you
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can already tell that this is a premium machine just because of the way the
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power brick is white so there's they're doing those extra little things that set
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it apart from from other notebooks it's also a very small power brick so I'll do
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the obligatory phone size comparison so this is an HTC 8X Windows
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phone there you go so you can see the thickness of the brick versus the phone
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let's go ahead and get that away same thing packaging is very very sleek and
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elegant as well there's the notebook itself there's also oh look at that
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comes with a carrying sleeve oo very nice
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no way is this leather
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wow that's awesome velcro would have preferred to
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see a magnet but uh inside is kind of a a microfiber feeling material and uh
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there you go just closes like that you got a nice little Acer logo on there
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actually that's I mean it's pretty I shouldn't call it velcro I should call
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it uh you know stick and whatever it's
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called but velcro's velcro is a trademark you're not supposed to call it
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that all right next up we we've got the
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Acer oh so thin oh love it really
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excited about this okay but first but first the boring
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things so in here we've
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got how do I access charms again as well
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as a quick start guide all right then
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we've got some warranty information so it has a one-ear parts and labor
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warranty software support oh they do software support for 90 days that's kind
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of nice actually okay and more accessories all the
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compartments comes with a mouse okay so that's a wireless mouse
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uses two AAA batteries also comes with what's in
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here oh adapter all right I do like to
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see stuff like this included it actually kind of drives me crazy when
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manufacturers are going to go and use a proprietary connector for something at
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least have the decency to include the adapter that you need so that you can
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get the function it that your notebook is supposed to have so if you're going to have like a weird uh VGA adapter then
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go ahead and and give me one so that I so that I actually have it all right so
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the thinness of this machine is extremely impressive especially given
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that it is a touchscreen notebook so that adds some width to it just right
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off the top because that extra interface layer is there and does take up space
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holy crap it's thin and I mean you can see the tooling on it is immaculate
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there's absolutely no Gap whatsoever between actually okay well there's a gap
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but it's because there's a paper thing in there so if I go ahead and uh take
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that out oh wow that's like I think this is paper but it's probably the most
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expensive paper I've ever encountered uh okay so there you go so there's no Gap
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whatsoever in the twoing on the notebook itself everything is even this is one of
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the things that you can check for and how you can tell a premium notebook from
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a less premium notebook it's uh it it it
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takes a lot more time and a lot more effort and much tighter manufacturing
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tolerances to do something like that now I'm going to do a flex test with this
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thing and you guys are going to like this too so watch this you can see the
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amount of flex there is to this notebook in spite of how thin it is part of that
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is due to the here we go double-sided Gorilla
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Glass on the display itself so there's a gorilla glass panel here Gorilla Glass 2
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rather with a white uh with just with like a white uh a white piece behind it
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so you've also got sort of a shiny silver Acer logo there Gorilla Glass
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here and then Gorilla Glass 2 again here
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on the inside so it means that you've got that sort of that buttery smooth
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feel that you get with gorilla glass it also means that the notebook itself is
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going to be more durable than notebooks that are not using Gorilla Glass uh the
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panel it very nice the panel is I don't
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think the brightness is even all the way up either so let's go have a look there
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settings brightness Crank It Up yep there we go so the panel is presumably
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IPS whatever it is it's not TN viewing angles are outstanding so I'm going to
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let Diesel have a quick look at what the colors look like straight on you got
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that got that okay now we're going to go ahead oh oh oh how far does it go all
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the way down 180° so if you want to lay this flat whether it's to work on it
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from one side while you're showing something what you're working on from the other side or whether it's to carry
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around and use it more like uh more like a tablet um so I'll show you that after
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but okay now let's have a look at the viewing angles from the side d d d oh
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how's that color Distortion over there diesel do you see anything yeah I'm I'm
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getting the I'm getting the head shake looks absolutely beautiful so oh it goes
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more than 180 degrees check this out so it goes all the way down to all the way
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back here meaning that you can actually kind of use it like a tablet if you
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wanted to and what's great about this one and the 11in model this is something
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I really liked about the 11 in is that it's light enough that you can com use
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it with one hand because of the aluminum Construction in spite of the glass up
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here so remember guys an Ultra Book label only applies to notebooks that
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meet the requirements in terms of battery life thickness weight as well as
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security features and a number of other things from Intel they also have to have
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a certain level of performance so we're going to go ahead and do a quick sleep
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test here so we'll shut her down and
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ready wake up there we go so they have to have a
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certain level of performance in terms of sleep and in spite of the two pieces of
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glass up here it still is well within that weight requirement and it is
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extremely light the keyboard itself uses an El backlight so it's light sensing
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which means it's only going to turn on uh at a brightness level that is
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actually needed so I'm going to go ahead I'm going to turn it on manually now uh
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if I can find the hotkey to do that which I am having a little bit of
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trouble with here function oh is it on oh it's on oh oh that looks so cool ah
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okay lights off guys check this out there we go so it's got a bit of a
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blue hue to it can you see that Diesel he's given me the uh the somewhat
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gesture how about now now we got it absolutely beautiful so function keys
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can be used to increase the brightness or decrease the brightness so you've got
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a looks like uh not that many brightness
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levels just two brightness levels but it's either super dim which is like this
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for use in a very very dark environment where you don't want it to be overpowering or you can brighten it up
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and that is a very unique looking backlight so you actually can't see much
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around the outside of the chicklet Keys like you normally would but it shows
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through not only on one color but also the blue color Keys as sort of a subdued
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uh uh Bluey kind of light looks very very very beautiful so there's a shot of
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the notebook before I turn the lights back on ready guys and 3 two 1 lights
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back on thank you all right now I
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haven't even talked about specs at all and I actually I wrote them down on
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something but I forget so it's a 357u which is a 1.9 GHz core I 7 and it's got
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4 gigs of RAM a 256 gig SSD in this particular model here Wireless and four
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cell polymer battery polymer battery and
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then in terms of IO we've got power here
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as well as HDMI here as well as a
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headphone microphone Jack here power button here all right there's speakers
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stereo speakers on this guy and so nothing on the front
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whatsoever then on this side are you catching all this you got all this in
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Focus yeah I'm getting the nod excellent so we've got two USB 3.0 ports one of
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them is charging capable so it just means it can deliver more current we've
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also got an SD card reader then on the back very similarly to the other S7
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we've got ventilation ports and finally
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on the bottom we we've got uh more
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ventilation ports here and then we've also got those there those two speakers
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that I pointed out one of them when we were uh going around the other side so
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you see the bottom is actually kind of a plasticky material here so that helps to
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do a couple things number one is it saves on the cost a little bit it's also
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makes it more environmentally friendly to manufacturer I don't know if you guys know this but the amount of wasted
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material and the amount of environmental impact on unibody shells is actually
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higher than manufacturing notebooks layers so there's a little tidbit for
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you um it doesn't lose any of the rigidity though so you can see even
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actually here this is this is even better so without the benefit of the gorilla glass this is my rigidity test
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check that out yeah you're going to see some Flex I'm also putting a lot of pressure on it that's about as much Flex
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as you're going to get out of that chassis and part of that is I'm going to let diesel sort of try to focus in here
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is see how thick of a piece of aluminum they've used for this single slab all
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across the top can you see that so with my finger for comparison that's what
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gives it the build quality that's what makes a notebook like this extremely
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expensive to manufacture so we're going to put this down again I'm just going to
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show you guys those adapters so one of these adapters is a USB LAN adapter so
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that's just for if you want to I don't know plug in not use wireless because
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wireless is not that great and then this guy right here is a VGA adapter that
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actually plugs into that HDMI outport so that'll be either micro HDMI out or VGA
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out depending on what you want making this suitable for professional use
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because I've criticized uh I've criticized notebooks for not including
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VGA especially Ultra Portables where they'd be suitable for business except
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that a lot of boardrooms only have old VGA projectors and you're going to need
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something that's actually able to plug in so having an analog output is an
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important thing I think that pretty much wraps it up other than that this is one
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of the most I mean okay here I don't want to give sort of you know too much
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too much detail about anything but uh
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the president of NCI X actually chose for his own personal notebook and Aspire
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S7 so there you go he can have pretty much whatever notebook he wants has
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touched pretty much any notebook out there and used it and he basically he
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sent out a memo that went this is the best notebook I've ever owned so there
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you go and I'm inclined to agree with them they're absolutely gorgeous I mean
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even things like the hinges check this out let's do another Flex test I don't
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usually do this one but I'm going to take the very top of this notebook and
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remon it can you see that okay
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okay hinge is everything in manufacturing notebooks the hinge is so
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important that's it thank you for checking out my unboxing and first look
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at the S7 13in don't forget to subscribe to lineus Tech tips for more unboxings
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reviews and other computer
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videos so I was uh reboxing it and I the
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thing just kind of fell open and I was like huh what in the heck is this so
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apparently this one comes with an extended back battery pack so this adds
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another 2500 Milah battery pack and then
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all you do to mount it to the bottom of the S7 they've actually put a lot of
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thought into this so it has like a nice rubber uh non-scratching piece here that
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pretty much covers the entire thing so you basically go okay you put that kind
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of yeah there we go so it Clips onto the back with a little clip right there can
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you see that diesel y Just Clips in there then you've got a couple of um
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rubber protected screws here so that
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those also won't scratch the bottom even if you put them in wrong the first time
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so you just go ahead and screw that on and then this is a very F I mean I've
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seen a lot of different extended battery designs some of which kind of stick out
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the back of the notebook and some of which kind of Raise The Notebook but
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this is very functional I like this because it doesn't interfere with any of
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the cooling it doesn't look stupid especially from this side okay
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from this side it looks a little weird but it doesn't look stupid and then it
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also acts as kind of a notebook stand so
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now you've got a slight angle to The Notebook so typing is still
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comfortable and all that good stuff that you would expect except now you have an
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extended battery so you just plug your power adapter in here instead of here
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and then that little uh hole right there that I paused on when I was doing the
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initial video uh because I was a little confused about goes like this so that's
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just a stabilizer for the DC in pass through from the battery pack itself
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there you go and then it just tucks back in there quite
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nicely so it's even better