Oddly enough, the larger one (15.6 inches vs. 14 inches) is cheaper

Oct 11, 2012 15:15 GMT  ·  By

Alongside most other notebook makers, Acer will start shipping ultrabooks and notebooks running Windows 8 on October 26.

We honestly didn't think the company would pleasantly surprise us, but seeing the 15.6-inch Aspire M5-581T priced at $699.99 / 699.99 Euro did it. It's still a solid sum, but way below the $750 / 750 Euro expected for this quarter.

What makes this particularly interesting is that the Aspire M5-481PT, though at 14 inches, is more expensive: $799.99 / 799.99 Euro. Then again, this device does have a touchscreen to balance things out (10-point multitouch).

That said, both ultrabooks have backlit keyboards, 8-hour batteries, 3rd generation Intel CPUs, 500 GB HDD + 20 GB SSD storage and USB 3.0 support (two ports each).

All in all, they definitely sit better with us than Lenovo's IdeaPad Yoga 13 (a 360-degree hinge ultrabook advertised as a tablet) and most of the other pre-Haswell devices we've seen. Even analysts are grumbling.