Acer Spin 3

Price: £749 (inc VAT) from fave.co/2P4UOLd

Budget laptops continue to improve and the Acer Spin 3 is a good example. For an affordable price it offers adequate components and battery life, with enough flexibility to accommodate a range of peripherals. Though the 14in, 360-degree convertible laptop delivers middling performance, a modern Thunderbolt port and a nifty integrated stylus stand out. In all, it’s a solid laptop, but in a market whose competition is growing stronger, quickly.

DESIGN

A budget 14in laptop like the Acer Spin 3 doesn’t ask you to pay for its looks. At about 17mm thick, the Spin 3 is a tad chunky, but in a good way: sturdily built, with a pair of thick 360-degree hinges. When you flip around the display,

Windows automatically configures the Spin 3 into tablet mode. Another benefit: the broader chassis offers a hearty mixture of ports that you won’t find on thinner laptops.

Acer did cut a few corners in the display. Though the IPS panel was pleasingly vibrant, our light meter registered just 274 nits – barely enough for day-to-day use. Although the side screen bezels measure just 7.82mm, the bezel at the bottom of the screen is a about an inch deep and definitely noticeable.

The Spin 3 seems to have adequate cooling, with venting beneath the laptop and a larger grille near the hinge. My home office environment is quiet, allowing me to hear a faint hiss from the fans as they spun up, as well as a faint bit of coil whine. When my home’s air conditioning kicked on, however, the noise disappeared. Even when running CPU-intensive tasks, the Swift 3’s fan remained quiet – that seems to be typical of the Intel 10th-gen Ice Lake laptops I’ve tested.

Personally, I consider the port selection to be close to ideal. There’s a pair of SuperSpeed USB (5Gb/s) Type A connections – perfect for a keyboard or mouse, and they can also be used to connect to an external drive, if you don’t mind a slower transfer rate. A traditional HDMI port will connect a single 4K display at 60Hz.

The Thunderbolt port on the Spin 3 is a rare and treasured find on budget laptops. Thunderbolt’s particularly

versatile I/O capabilities can connect to a dedicated Thunderbolt dock, a USB-C hub, or an external display.

Thunderbolt is most noteworthy for its ability to connect a pair of 4K displays at an eye-pleasing 60Hz, while a nonThunderbolt USB-C port can connect to just one 4K display at 30Hz via a hub. Thunderbolt docks, however, range in price from around £100 to £200.

There’s another, hidden advantage to the Thunderbolt port. The Spin 3 ships with Acer’s narrow-tipped proprietary charger. The Thunderbolt port accepts a thirdparty 65-watt USB-C charger, giving you a secondary power option in a pinch.

Because this is an Intel 10th-gen device, wireless connectivity is supplied by Intel’s Wi-Fi 6 radio and Bluetooth 5.0. (If you don’t understand what Wi-Fi 6 can do for you, Michael Simon’s love letter to the technology – see fave.co/2X8B9P1 – should convince you. You’ll need a compatible laptop like the Spin 3 and a Wi-Fi 6E router, to take advantage, though.)

Our review unit shipped with Windows 10 version 1909, which we

used for testing. Midway through, it was offered the May 2020 Update, also known as version 2004.

KEYBOARD AND AUDIO

I’d characterize Acer’s keyboards as middling. That’s not a criticism. Acer’s keyboards tend to be shallow and a bit mushy, bottoming out 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 Acer left itself with close to an inch of additional space on either side. Still, as I typically do, I wrote this review on the Swift 3’s keyboard itself, and it was reasonably comfortable.

Acer’s Precision trackpad fills most of the available depth below the keyboard, with an integrated fingerprint strip in the upper left-hand corner. As a consequence, a good chunk of the trackpad isn’t clickable. I’d prefer the trackpad to be wholly devoted to navigation, as there’s plenty of room elsewhere for Acer to mount the reader. Also, ‘strip’ fingerprint readers typically aren’t as accurate as a larger sensor or a user-facing depth camera, which Acer presumably skipped over for cost reasons. The Spin 3’s reader worked fine, though (and Windows asks you to set up a PIN and password as backups, anyway).

Acer’s audio straddles the broad divide between disappointing and excellent, and that’s due to the default configuration. The Spin 3’s dual speakers are ‘forward’ (upward) facing, and sounded a bit flat and tinny when I started playing

music. But Acer also bundles the Spin 3 with the DTS audio enhancement algorithm, which dramatically improves the sound quality with a bit of fiddling. Acer also claims the ‘TrueHarmony’ paper-cone design of its speakers improves the overall audio.

Never, ever turn DTS off, as the sound then dissolves into an aural pile of garbage. Even with DTS turned on, the speakers sounded a bit faint. Using the custom audio settings, however, I was quickly able to tune the speakers directionally (‘front’ versus ‘traditional’ versus ‘wide’) to come up something that was both appreciably loud and pleasing to my ears.

Acer’s Spin 3 also includes ‘Purified Voice’, the name Acer gave its far-field mic technology when it added it to the Spin 5 in 2018. While that device included four mics, this one has two. I was still able to calmly ask Cortana for the local forecast with the laptop across the room, while my home’s central A/C ran in the background. That technology also suppresses keyboard noise, handy

in video meetings where you might be typing as you talk

OH, NO: BLOATWARE

Some budget laptops come overburdened with bloatware, and the Spin 3 is no exception. Some are welcome: the Spin 3’s taskbar includes the Firefox browser as well as Dropbox, which offers 25GB of cloud storage as part of an Acer promotion. Acer pre-installed Norton Security Ultra from Norton LifeLock, and customers will receive a 30-day subscription. (While we believe that the built-in Windows Defender offers satisfactory anti-malware protection, the service comes bundled with a password vault, backup, and other services.) Acer (and Microsoft) preloaded the various Office apps, though you’ll have to provide your own subscription.

Acer also provides a collection of its own apps, which really deserve to be integrated into a single overarching utility. The only ones worth your time are the Acer Care Centre, which allows you to request hardware updates manually, tune the system via defragmentation and other services, and so on. Quick Access provides a couple more features: the ability to manage charging via the USB ports, and a superior bluelight management control, with four gradations that go far beyond Windows’ own settings.

Otherwise, the bloatware approaches horrifying levels: separate applications for registering the unit; another, Acer Collection S, that collects curated apps (like Facebook and Netflix, which is already installed elsewhere); plus a second Apps Explorer with even 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 mobile phone to help authenticate, portals to buy audio and video editors from Magix Software, and games including Hearts Deluxe and Candy Crush Friends. There are also apps to manage Intel’s Optane drive (the Spin 3 doesn’t have one) and a Thunderbolt manager, which seemed to do nothing even with a hub connected.

The one question 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 selling points, after all.

A FUN PEN, A SUBPAR WEBCAM

Tucked inside the Spin 3 is an integrated Wacom AES Active Pen, which rather cleverly fits inside an unobtrusive slot on one side of the chassis. I’ve wrestled with integrated pens before, but this pen

is designed such that it can be inserted in only one way. The pen’s apostropheshaped 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 charge.

Acer tells us that the pen uses EDLC (electric double-layer capacitors), which negates the need for a battery. It also means that Windows won’t report the pen’s battery level via the Bluetooth settings menu within Windows, because the AES pen communicates directly with the

Wacom digitizer built into the Spin 3. We noticed a little ink lag. Tilt appears to be supported.

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

There’s no reason to expect a budget laptop like the Spin 3 to have anything better than a 720p webcam – the same sort you’ll find in the vast majority of laptops currently available. The webcam’s colour accuracy seems to

be on point, but the image quality is flat and mushy. The integrated HDR controls within the Windows Camera app seem to have no effect, whether off or on.

PERFORMANCE

The Acer Spin 3’s moderate performance reflects its budget roots, and there’s no shame there. For web surfing, movie watching, Excel and other office work, as well as some light gaming, it will do the job. I was also surprised to discover that the Spin 3 played back my 4K/60 YouTube test video without dropping a single frame – other, more powerful laptops I’ve tested recently couldn’t do that.

Below, you’ll see a series of benchmarks where we compare the

Spin 3 to other, mostly budget-level 14in laptops. Keep an eye on insanely good Acer Swift 3 SF314-42-R9YN and the Lenovo Yoga C740-14IML, a 14in convertible. We’ve compared it to last holiday’s Acer Aspire 5 (now out of

stock), and a couple of Microsoft devices. By and large, though, Acer owns a lot of the budget laptop category.

PCMark 8 is an older suite. We use the Work benchmark to evaluate the laptop on its ability to open and manipulate spreadsheets, hold video calls and edit test documents, plus indulge in some light gaming.

Creative’s suite stresses the CPU and GPU a bit more with photo editing, video editing, and more intensive gaming tests. The Spin 3 did well here, posting one of the higher scores on both tests.

We use Cinebench to test the CPU capability, pushing all of its cores to the limit. We’d expect the Spin 3’s 10th-gen ‘Ice Lake’ Core chip to post mid-range performance, and it does.

The HandBrake open-source transcoding tool takes a conventional Hollywood movie and transcodes it into a lower-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 Spin 3 finished the task faster than most of its rivals.

Next up is the 3DMark Sky Diver benchmark, an older test that’s still applicable for laptops with integrated GPUs. The 10th-gen Core i5-1035G1 used in the Spin 3 includes a ‘G1’ suffix, indicating the weakest graphics performance within Intel’s 10th-gen

line-up. As a result, some of the other Ice Lake CPUs outperform the Spin 3 in graphics performance.

It’s worth noting that the Spin 5 technically failed a 3DMark stress test, which loops a single benchmark over and over. ‘Failing’ 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 consistent performance while playing games.

Finally, we take a look at battery life, where we set the display brightness to 250 nits, connect earbuds at medium volume, and loop a 4K video over and over until the battery expires. Though a slightly hefty laptop like the Spin 3 has room for a larger battery, the 47.9Wh capacity is average (and it stopped a bit short of full design capacity, charging to just 45.9 watts). Its battery life of just under nine hours will get you through a full day’s work. However, other modern laptops are doing far better.

VERDICT

For a budget laptop that’s largely middle-of-the-road, the Acer Spin 3 still manages to stand out because of several forward-looking features. The Thunderbolt port, the integrated stylus, and the Wi-Fi 6 antenna are things you won’t find on many other models in its price range. Mark Hachman

SPECIFICATIONS

• 14in (1,920x1,080) CineCrystal IPS Display

• Windows 10 Home (64-bit)

• Intel Core i5-1035G1 CPU

• UHD Graphics

• 8GB LPDDR4

• 256GB NVMe SSD

• 1x USB-C 3.1

• 2x USB-A

• HDMI 2.0

• 3.5mm headphone jack

• Stereo speaker design

• 720p webcam

• Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax)

• Bluetooth 5

• Integrated stylus

• Fingerprint reader

• 325x230x16.9mm

• 1.5kg

The Spin 3 reclines all the way into tablet mode, with a small series of onscreen icons tracking its progress as you move from tent to tablet mode.

On the left side of the chassis, the small battery icon next to the Type A port indicates that it can charge external devices like phones when the laptop is shut.

On the right side, the Spin 3’s stylus nestles in its cradle to the left of the power and battery indicators. Some 360-degree convertibles, like the Spin 3, slightly incline the keyboard the further back the display is pushed.

The Spin 3’s keyboard lean in to functions used by business travellers, such as shortcuts to project to another display.

Here’s the Spin 3’s in-box 65-watt barrel charger. You can charge the laptop via the Thunderbolt port if you own a USB-C charger. While fast charging doesn’t appear to be supported, a 25-per cent charge in about 20 minutes isn’t bad.

The Spin 3’s fingerprint reader, though not perfect, worked very well. Its trackpad is quite spacious, too.

The Spin 3’s integrated 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.

A close-up of the pen’s charging connectors.

The image that the Acer Spin 3 captured appears to be a bit more washed-out than this rather grim screenshot indicates.

A number of user-accessible screws on the bottom of the laptop should make upgrades possible. (We haven’t tested this ourselves.)

The Acer Spin 3 performs quite well in both the Work and Creative tests, as we’d expect.

Acer’s Spin 3 is a middle-of-the-road laptop where pure compute power is concerned.

HandBrake’s a useful real-life benchmark, and the Spin 3 holds its own among the upper echelon. This score is measured in the elapsed seconds to compete the task.

A 10th-gen ‘G1’ processor like the Spin 3’s simply isn’t as powerful as its competition.

The Acer Spin 3 averages just under nine hours of battery life.