Acer Spin 3 review: A solid $650 budget laptop with nice bonuses - hagentordreptles

Sucker Hachman / IDG

At a Glance

Good's Rating

Pros

Carrying out is generally average for a budget Personal computer
A nicely integrated stylus
Unobjectionable price

Cons

Rafts of bloatware
Webcam image select is a trifle flat

Our Verdict

The Acer Spin 3 is a budget laptop with a few surprisingly nice features: An integrated style, a Thunderbolt port, and Wi-Fi 6. Even if its performance is mediocre, those bonuses avail it stand out.

Best Prices Today

Budget laptops continue to improve, and the Acer Spin 3 is a good example. For an affordable Leontyne Price it offers up to components and bombardment life, with sufficiency tractableness to accommodate a drift of peripherals. Though the 14-inch, 360-point convertible laptop delivers fair performance, a modern Thunderbolt port wine and a nifty integrated stylus stand out. In all, it's a solid state laptop computer, but in a market whose competition is growing stronger, quickly.

This review is part of our current roundup of the champion laptops. Go in that respect for entropy on competing products and how we tested them.

Acer Twisting 3 basic features

The Acer Spin 3 (SP314-54N-58Q7) we tested is sold at Costco for $650, although the company lists a some alternatives on its Acer online store. Of the four listed, merely uncomparable, the SP314-54N-50W3, contains an up-to-date Core i5-1035G4 processor likewise American Samoa a larger 512GB SSD, for about $150 more. (Intel's 10th-gen "Ice Lake" processors utilise the number bespoken to its "G" postfix to indicate the relative graphics performance, with a higher number being better.) We withal consider our survey unit's loadout—8GB RAM, 256GB SSD—adequate for most needs.

Present are the basic features of our review unit, which is stiff-backed aside a incomparable-yr "External Travelers' Warranty." Acer says that warranty runs concurrently with its standard one-year U.S. warranty, allowing the laptop to be serviced in up to 30 other countries where Acer has authorized facilities.

Display: 14-inch IPS (1920×1080)
Processor: 1GHz Gist i5-1035G1
Nontextual matter: UHD Graphics
Memory: 8GB LPDDR4
Storage: 256GB NVMe SSD
Ports: USB-C (Thunderbolt 3/USB 3.1 Gen 2). 2 USB-A (USB 3.2 Gen 1), HDMI 2.0 (HDCP), microSD, 3.5mm headphone/mic
Tv camera:User-facing: 720p, A-one HDR
Battery: 47.8Wh (rated), 45.9Wh (literal)
Tune: WI-Fi 6 (802.11ax) 2×2 MIMO; Bluetooth 5.0
Additional features: coeducational stylus, fingerprint reader, antifertility arm
Operational system: Windows 10 Home (version 1909)
Dimensions (inches): 12.8 x 9.06 x 0.67 inches (16.9mm)
Weight: 3.31 pounds (per Acer)
Color: Silver grey
Monetary value: $650 at Costco, with 1-year warranty.

Design and construction

A budget 14-inch laptop like the Acer Spin 3 doesn't ask out you to remuneration for its looks. At about 17mm thick, the Spin 3 is a tad chunky, but in a good way: sturdily reinforced, with a pair of thick 360-degree hinges. When you flip around the display, Windows mechanically configures the Spin 3 into tablet mode. Another benefit: The broader chassis offers a hearty mixture of ports that you South Korean won't find on thinner laptops.

Acer Spin 3 SP314-54N-58Q7 tent mode — The Spin 3 reclines all the style into tablet mode, with a small series of on-screen icons trailing its progress as you move from tent to tablet mode.

Genus Acer did cut a some corners in the display. Though the IPS panel was pleasingly vibrant, our light meter registered just 274 nits—just enough for day-to-day use. Although the side covert bezels measure conscionable 7.82mm, the bezel at the bottom of the screen is a around an in deep and emphatically broad.

The Spin 3 seems to have adequate cooling, with discharge beneath the laptop and a larger radiator grille near the flexible joint. My home office environment is quite silence, allowing me to hear a dim hiss from the fans as they spun up, equally well as a faint flake of coil whine. When my home's central air kicked on, nonetheless, the noise disappeared. Even when running Mainframe-intensive tasks, the Swift 3's fan remained calm—that seems to be fairly typical of the Intel 10th-gen Ice Lake laptops I've tested.

Acer Spin 3 SP314-54N-58Q7 left side — On the left side of the chassis, the small battery image next to the Type A port indicates that information technology can charge external devices like phones when the laptop is shut.

Personally, I consider the port selection to embody some apotheosis. There's a pair of SuperSpeed USB (5Gbps) Type A connections—perfect for a keyboard or mouse, and they can also be secondhand to connect to an external drive, if you don't mind a slower transfer pace. A traditional HDMI left will connect a single 4K showing at 60Hz.

The Thunderbolt larboard on the Spin 3 is a extraordinary and treasured find on budget laptops. Thunderbolt's particularly versatile I/O capabilities can connect to a consecrated Thunderbolt dock, a USB-C hub, Beaver State an external display.

Thunderclap is all but noteworthy for its power to connect a pair of 4K displays at an centre-attractive 60Hz, while a non-Thunderbolt USB-C port can touch base to just one 4K display at 30Hz via a hub. Thunderbolt docks, however, range in price from $100 to $250 or so.

Acer Spin 3 SP314-54N-58Q7 keyboard propped up — Happening the right sidelong, the Spin 3's stylus nestles in its cradle to the leftfield of the power and barrage indicators. Some 360-degree convertibles, like the Spin 3, slightly incline the keyboard the further backwards the display is pushed.

There's another, invisible advantage to the Thunderbolt left. The Spin 3 ships with Acer's narrow-tipped trademarked battery charger. The Thunderbolt port accepts a third-party 65W USB-C charger, giving you a subordinate power option in a pinch.

Because this is an Intel 10th-gen device, wireless connectivity is supplied away Intel's WiFi 6 wireless and Bluetooth 5.0. (If you don't understand what Wireless fidelity 6 ass do for you, Michael Simon's billet doux to the engineering should win over you. You'll need a compatible laptop like the Spin 3and a WiFi 6E router, to take advantage, though.)

Our review unit shipped with Windows 10 variant 1909, which we used for testing. Midway through, IT was offered the May 2020 Update, alias version 2004.

Acer Spin 3's keyboard and audio

I'd characterise Acer's keyboards as middling. That's not necessarily a criticism. Acer's keyboards tend to be shallow and a chip mushy, bottoming outgoing rather than cushioning your fingers. While the Swift 3 provides a full-size keyboard, the keys themselves tend to be a bit smaller on average, and Genus Acer left-wing itself with or so an edge in of additional space on either side. Inactive, as I typically do, I wrote this review on the Swift 3's keyboard itself, and it was sanely comfortable.

Acer Spin 3 P314-54N-58Q7 keyboard — The Spin 3's keyboard lean in to functions used by business travelers, such as shortcuts to project to another display.

Acer's Precision trackpad fills most of the addressable depth beneath the keyboard, with an coordinated fingerprint strip in the top lefthand corner. As a consequence, a good chunk of the trackpad isn't clickable. I'd prefer the trackpad to be entirely devoted to navigation, American Samoa there's plenty of room elsewhere for Acer to mount the reader. Also, "strip" fingerprint readers typically aren't as accurate as a bigger sensor OR a drug user-facing depth camera, which Acer presumptively skipped over for cost reasons. The Spin 3's reader worked hunky-dory, though (and Windows asks you to set up a PIN and password As backups, in any event).

Acer Spin 3 SP314-54N-58Q7 touchpad fingerprint reader — The Spin 3's fingerprint proofreader, though not perfect, worked very wellspring. Its trackpad is quite spacious, too.

Acer's audio straddles the broad divide between disappointing and excellent, and that's referable the nonremittal configuration. The Spin 3's dual speakers are "forward" (upward) facing, and measured a bite flat and tinny when I started playing music. But Genus Acer besides bundles the Spin 3 with the DTS audio enhancement algorithm, which dramatically improves the sound quality with a little of fiddling. Acer also claims the "TrueHarmony" paper-cone design of its speakers improves the total audio.

Never,always twis DTS off, as the sound then dissolves into an aural pile of garbage. Even with DTS turned on, the speakers plumbed a bit faint. Victimisation the custom audio settings, however, I was quickly able to tune the speakers directionally ("front" versus "traditional" versus "open") to get along up something that was both appreciably loud and pleasing to my ears.

Acer's Spin 3 also includes "Purified Vocalize," the name Genus Acer gave its far-field mic technology when it added it to the Twirl 5 in 2018. Piece that gimmick included quaternary mics, this one has ii. I was still able to sedately ask Cortana for the local forecast with the laptop across the room, while my home's central A/C ran in the desktop. That engineering science also suppresses keyboard noise, handy in television meetings where you power be typing as you blab.

acer spin 3 charger — Here's the Twirl 3's in-box 65W barrel charger. You rump billing the laptop via the Thunderbolt port if you own a USB-C charger. While fast charging doesn't appear to be supported, a 25-percent charge in about 20 minutes isn't poor.

Noooo! Find out what we didn't want to see on this laptop computer, on the next page.

Ohio, No: bloatware

Some budget laptops come loaded down with bloatware, and the Spin 3 is no elision. Some are welcome: The Spin 3's taskbar includes the Firefox web browser besides as Dropbox, which offers 25GB of cloud storage as part of an Acer promotion. Genus Acer preinstalled Norton Security Radical from Norton LifeLock, and customers will welcome a 30-day subscription. (While we conceive that the built-in Windows Defender offers copasetic antimalware protection, the servicing comes bundled with a password vault, backup, and another services.) Genus Acer (and Microsoft) preloaded the various Office apps, though you'll feature to provide your own subscription.

Acer as wel provides a collection of its personal apps, which real merit to be integrated into a single overarching service program. The only when ones meriting your time are the Acer Like Center, which allows you to postulation ironware updates manually, air the scheme via defragmentation and separate services, then on. Immediate Access provides a span more features: the ability to manage charging via the USB ports, and a superior blue-light management control, with Little Jo gradations that go far beyond Windows' own settings.

Otherwise, the bloatware approaches horrifying levels: separate applications for registering the building block; another, Acer Appeal S, that collects curated apps (the like Facebook and Netflix, which is already installed elsewhere); advantageous asecond Apps Explorer with yet more. There's a PhotoDirector for Acer trial. PowerDirector for Acer. A user experience app. Shortcuts to Amazon, Booking.com, Evernote, ExpressVPN, a GoTrust ID app that uses your cellular telephone to help authenticate, portals to buy audio and TV editors from Magix Software, Hearts Rich, Candy Crush Friends. There are also apps to manage Intel's Optane drive (the Spin 3 doesn't have unity) and a Thunderbolt handler, which seemed to do nothing even with a hub connected. Stop already!

The one interrogation I'm left wondering is why, of all the software Acer bundles, there isn't a single good drawing app. That's one of the Spin 3's merchandising points, after all.

A fun pen, a subpar webcam

Tucked inside the Spin around 3 is an integrated Wacom AES Active Pen, which rather smartly fits inside an unobtrusive time slot on one side of the chassis. I've wrestled with integrated pens before, but this write out is intentional such that it tooshie be inserted in alone one way. The pen's apostrophe-shaped top contains a small metal contact for charging the pen, which Acer says can last for 90 minutes on just 15 seconds of charge, or over 100 minutes with a 300-second send.

Acer Spin 3 SP314-54N-58Q7 pen — The Spin 3's mainstreamed stylus measures 125.31mm long with a 5.3mm diameter, according to Acer. A single button can be used to select or erase e-ink.

Acer tells us that the pen uses EDLC (galvanising double-layer capacitors), which negates the need for a battery. It also means that Windows won't report the playpen's battery level via the Bluetooth settings menu within Windows, because the AES pen communicates directly with the Wacom digitizer built into the Spin out 3. We noticed a bit ink lag. Tilt appears to be supported.

Acer Spin 3 SP314-54N-58Q7 closeup pen — A close-up of the pen's charging connectors.

Though the pen's a bit on the skinny slope (which can leave fingers feeling incommodious afterward a while), I was able to enjoy a relaxing session of the Fresh Paint app. The battery held up just fine.

acer spin 3 webcam 2 — The image that the Acer Spin out 3 captured appears to be a fleck more washed-out than this rather grim screenshot indicates.

There's nobelium reason to expect a budget laptop the likes of the Birl 3 to have anything improved than a 720p webcam—the Lapplander screen out you'll observe in the vast majority of laptops presently usable. The webcam's color truth seems to be on point, but the image tone is flat and mawkish. The co-ordinated HDR controls within the Windows Camera app seem to give birth no effect, whether off or on.

Genus Acer Spin 3 Performance

The Genus Acer Twist 3's moderate performance reflects its budget roots, and there's no shame there. For web surfboarding, movie watching, Excel and past office work, too as some light gaming, information technology will make out the job. I was also surprised to chance on that the Birl 3 played back my 4K/60 YouTube test TV without dropping a single frame—unusual, more powerful laptops I've tested of late couldn't do that!

Acer Spin 3 SP314-54N-58Q7 screws — A number of substance abuser-accessible screws along the keister of the laptop computer should make upgrades possible. (We haven't tested this ourselves.)

Below, you'll see a series of benchmarks where we compare the Spin 3 to other, mostly budget-level 14-inch laptops. Keep an eye on the Walmart Motile M142, a surprisingly decent $500 14-inch laptop, the dementedly angelical $675 Acer Swift 3 SF314-42-R9YN and the Lenovo Yoga C740-14IML, a $790 14-inch translatable. We've compared information technology to last holiday's Acer Aspire 5 (now unavailable), and a couple of Microsoft devices. By and large, though, Acer owns a lot of the budget laptop category.

PCMark 8 is an experient rooms. We habituate the Work benchmark to evaluate the laptop on its ability to open and fake spreadsheets, hold video calls, and edit test documents, plus spoil in some light gaming. Creative's suite stresses the CPU and GPU a trifle Thomas More with photo editing, picture redaction, and more modifier gaming tests. The Spin 3 did well here, placard one of the higher scores on both tests.

Acer Spin 3 pcmark 8 — The Acer Spin 3 performs quite well in some the Work and Creative tests, arsenic we'd require.

We use Cinebench to test the Central processor capability, pushing altogether of its cores to the limit. We'd expect the Reel 3's 10th-gen "Ice Lake" Core chip to post midrange performance, and IT does.

Acer Spin 3 cinebench — Acer's Spin 3 is a middle-of-the-road laptop where pure compute power is obsessed.

The HandBrake ASCII text file transcoding instrument takes a conventional Hollywood movie and transcodes information technology into a turn down-resolution format appropriate for a tablet. It's a good test of a real-world task, and evaluates how well the laptop can work under stress for a prolonged period of time. The Whirl 3 finished the task faster than just about of its rivals.

Acer Spin 3 handbrake — HandBrake's a useful real-life benchmark, and the Tailspin 3 holds its own among the upper echelon. This mark is deliberate in the elapsed seconds to compete the task.

Incoming up is the 3DMark Flip Diver benchmark, an experienced test that's calm applicable for laptops with integrated GPUs. The 10th-gen Core i5-1035G1 used in the Spin 3 includes a "G1" suffix, indicating the weakest art carrying out inside Intel's 10th-gen lineup. As a resultant, any of the early Ice Lake CPUs exceed the Spin 3 in graphics performance.

Acer Spin 3 3dmark sky diver — A 10th-gen "G1" processor like the Spin around 3's simply isn't as powerful as its competition.

It's worth noting that the Spin 5 technically failed a 3DMark stress test, which loops a single benchmark over and finished. "Unsuccessful" the test means that one or more results are inconsistent with the others, usually indicating that the laptop's performance has degraded due to power or thermal limits. In this case, this probably just signifies that you shouldn't expect homogeneous performance while playing games.

Finally, we take a take battery lifespan, where we rigid the expose luminance to 250 nits, relate earbuds at medium volume, and loop a 4K video over and over again until the battery expires. Though a slightly sizeable laptop like the Spin 3 has room for a larger battery, the 47.9Wh capacity is ordinary (and it stopped a trifle low of full design capacity, charging to just 45.9W). Its battery life of honourable under nine hours will get you through a cram full day's process. However, other modern laptops are doing Former Armed Forces best.

Acer Spin 3 battery life — The Acer Spin 3 averages just under niner hours of battery life history.

Should you buy the Acer Spin 3?

For a budget laptop that's largely center, the Acer Tailspin 3 still manages to stand out because of different progressive features. The Thunderbolt larboard, the integrated stylus, and the Badger State-Fi 6 antenna are things you won't find connected galore else models in its price swan.

You do have options. You could pay back $30 more to buy the Genus Acer Swift 3 SF314-42-R9YN, which is both ignitor and faster. (My gut says that AMD Ryzen 4000-powered laptops leave comprise the budget laptop story of 2020.) Or if electric battery life is your priority, Lenovo's Yoga C740-14IML excels—and it's also more than expensive. If you shop around and still final stage up with the Acer Twirl 3, though, you shouldn't represent disappointed.

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As PCWorld's superior editor, Mark focuses happening Microsoft news and nick technology, among other beat generation. He has formerly written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/399312/acer-spin-3-review-a-solid-650-budget-laptop-with-nice-bonuses.html

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