Acer Aspire Spin 7

This 2-in-1 might not spin any heads, but it’ll certainly turn them.

The Aspire Spin 7 is one of the most attractive 2-in-1s to have passed through the APC labs. Weighing 1.6kg and measuring just 22mm thick when closed, this 14-inch convertible is made up of two thin, flat rectangular metal slabs that make the whole package pleasingly symmetrical.

Those two halves are conjoined on one edge by a pair of sturdy silver hinges that lets the screen keep folding around a full 360º, until the back of the display and underside of the keyboard segment are touching. That lack of width does mean you only get USB Type-C ports, although there is a adapterdongle included so you can still get a regular USB-A port in a pinch.

Acer is only offering one version of the Spin 7 in Australia so far — an uppermid model in a matte-black finish that has a 1080p IPS display (protected by Gorilla Glass), Core i7 CPU (there’s a caveat to that, which we’ll get to later), 256GB SATA SSD and 8GB of memory for $1,999. That’s a fair deal for that mix of specs and price and the fact that the keyboard and ultrawide trackpad are both superresponsive and comfortable in use helps the appeal too.

Did we mention this really is a very thin device? And yet, despite that, it’s also passively cooled — there are no fans inside to help dissipate heat. There’s not even any vents. It’s dead silent at all times: you won’t hear a peep out of it, even when it’s doing serious number crunching. There’s still a price to pay, though, in that if you do anything moderately CPU-intensive, the chassis area behind the keyboard heats up to scorching levels that are literally too hot to touch — and on the underside, too.

Causing most of that heat is Intel’s deceptively named Core i7-7Y75 processor. Don’t let the ‘i7’ moniker fool