Acer, the prestigious manufacturer of laptops and Android tablets, has extended its lineup of Timeline notebook PCs with Timeline M3 Ultrabook. The new product has an elegant design and is a powerhouse of performance loaded up with dedicated graphics module. But like many of Acer's non-famous yet remarkable products, the poor quality display turns out to be a downfall for the powerful ultrabook.

Acer Timeline M3 is the first ultrabook to feature dedicated graphics card. It equips Nvidia's GeForce GT640M 1GB graphic card. The ultrabook is powered by Intel Core i7 2623M 1.7 GHz processor and 4GB DDR3 RAM. It packs 256GB SSD (Solid State Drive). Alternatively, consumers can choose a hybrid 500GB hard disk drive in place of 256GB SDD, which offers about double the storage but is low in performance aspect.

The Timeline M3 features 15.6-inch LCD display, which is a sole point of criticism against the highly powerful M3 ultrabook. It has a resolution of 1366 X 768 pixels. Acer's new invention is 20mm thick and weighs 4.4 pounds, which is very light for a full-sized ultrabook. Giving up-to-date connectivity features, M3 has three USB ports (one is USB v3.0 port and two are USB v2.0 ports), HDMI port, Wi-Fi 802.11 n, SD/MMC/SDHC card slots. It has built-in webcam, build-in microphone and stereo speakers. Keyboard is easy to use and very responsive. Touchpad supports multi-touch gestures.

At sub-$1000 price tag, there are many rival laptop PCs to Acer's new ultrabook in the market, but they are not as thin as Timeline M3. It also has an advantage with SSD storage (others feature HDD instead).

Acer Timeline M3 runs Windows 7 Home Premium. Some notable software that come pre-installed in Timeline M3 are Skype, Dolby Home Theater 4, NTI Media Maker 9 and CyberLink MediaExpresso.

After being packed with Intel's latest processor technology, dedicated graphic and SSD storage, Acer Timeline M3 could have been a true leading ultrabook, had it not been cursed by insipid display. Also it lacks Bluetooth support.

(reported by Johnny Wills, edited by Surojit Chatterjee)