This is something that you won't often see: Acer's 13.3 inch Spin 5 convertible, which we reviewed back in March 2018, is still available on Acer.com. Its price appears to have increased $50. Although the Spin 5's price is higher at $1,379.99, it offers a more advanced design with a 12th Generation Intel Core i7 chip instead of an 8th Gen Core i5 processor and a 14 inch display that has a 16:10 aspect ratio. It's a capable 2-in-1 but awkwardly positioned—about $400 above nice affordable models like the Lenovo Yoga 7i 14 Gen 7 and $400 below elegant premium convertibles like the HP Spectre x360 13.5. It might work for you if your budget is tight but doesn't allow you to afford first-class.
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A Slim Silver-Gray Slab
The Spin 5 unit we reviewed, model SP514-51N70LZ (four Performance cores and eight efficient cores) cost $1,379.99. The unit has 16GB RAM, a 1TB NVMe solid state drive and an IPS touch screen measuring 2,560-by-1.600 pixels. There is no OLED version. Windows 11 Home offers Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 6E.
The aluminum chassis measures 0.67 by 12.3 by 8.6 inches and limbos under the ultraportable weight line at 2.87 pounds, making it slightly trimmer than the Lenovo Yoga 7i (0.68 by 12.5 by 8.7 inches, 3.2 pounds). There's almost no flex if you grasp the screen corners and just a little if you press the keyboard deck, though it's hard to open the lid one-handed.
Acer claims a screen-to-body ratio of 88%. The bezels on the display are very thin, with a speaker grille over the keyboard and rows vents running along the back edge. Although the webcam does not have a privacy shutter or face recognition for Windows Hello logins (although there is a small fingerprint reader in the top right corner of the keyboard), The screen of the Spin 5 is certified by Intel Evo and emits low levels of blue light.
Two USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports join HDMI and USB 3.2 Type-A ports and an audio jack on the laptop's left side. (The power adapter makes use of a USB-C connector.) The right flank holds a second USB-A port, a microSD card slot, and a niche to store the provided Acer Active Stylus. Also on this edge is a notch for security locking cables.
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Not 4K or OLED, But a Spiffy Screen Nonetheless
The trend towards laptop screens with slightly higher 16:10 aspect ratios than the 16:9 widescreen aspect, is our preference. They allow you to see more of documents and webpages without having to scroll. The Spectre x360 13.5's screen has a squarer ratio of 3:2. These screens show more and Acers have used them well in the past. However, the Spin 5 isn't quite premium enough. With wide viewing angles, the IPS panel is remarkably bright and vibrant. The touch glass has reflections from extreme angles, which is a problem.
Colors are rich and well saturated, and white backgrounds are pure without being dingy or grayish. Contrast is high, and fine details are sharp, with no pixelation visible around the edges of letters. Acer includes a 5-inch, one-button Wacom AES 2.0 stylus. It has tilt detection and 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity; it kept up with my rapid scribbles and swoops and exhibited good palm rejection when my hand brushed the screen.
It captures sharper selfies at 1080p rather than 720p. The webcam captures brightly lit images and minimal static. Although the sound quality isn’t great even at maximum volume, it’s clear and crisp and not too loud. However, it doesn’t have any bass and can be difficult to tell if there are overlapping tracks. DTS Audio Software offers music, video, and game presets as well as an equalizer.
The backlit keyboard offers two levels of brightness. The keys themselves have a snappy, responsive typing feel, but the layout commits a couple of common sins: The top-row keys (including Escape and Delete) are puny, and the cursor arrow keys aren't in the correct inverted T but a clumsy, HP-style row with half-size up and down arrows stacked between full-size left and right. The petite up and down keys are hard to hit, which is especially unfortunate on laptops like the Spin 5 where the cursor arrows double with the Fn key for Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down. The buttonless touchpad isn't the biggest, but it is comfortable to use.
Acer Care Center is a useful tool for centralizing updates and tuneups, as well as recovery. Aura Privacy and ExpressVPN are all good options. Power Director trial is also available. There's even an annoying ad for Forge of Empires.
Spin 5: Five-Way Conversion Clash
In terms of price, the closest 14-inch convertible to the Spin 5 we've seen lately is the small-business-focused Lenovo ThinkBook 14s Yoga Gen 2. While the Acer's Lenovo Yoga 7i 14 Generation 7 and Dell Inspiron14 7415 2-in-1 are cheaper than the Acers, the more expensive HP Spectre x360 13.5 is much more. The table below shows their main specs.
Productivity tests
PCMark 10, the main benchmark, simulates a range of content-creation and productivity workflows in real life to assess overall performance on office-centric tasks like word processing, spreadsheeting and web browsing. PCMark 10's Full System Drive is also used to evaluate the storage's load and throughput.
To rate the suitability of a computer for processing-intensive tasks, three benchmarks examine its CPU. They use all cores and threads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 renders complex scenes using Cinema 4D, and Primate Labs Geekbench Pro simulates popular applications such as PDF rendering, speech recognition, machine learning, and more. We use HandBrake, an open-source video converter to transform a 12 minute video clip from 4K resolution to 1080p (lower speeds are better).
Puget Systems' PugetBench Photoshop is our final productivity test. It uses Adobe Creative Cloud 22 to evaluate a computer's ability to create content and multi-media applications. This extension automates various tasks in Photoshop, including opening, rotating and resizing images, saving them, applying filters, gradient fills and masks.
Acer's P-series, 28-watt processor beat the HP and Lenovo 15-watt U series chips. It won our CPU tests. The Acer also scored the impressive 4,000 PCMark 10, which indicates excellent productivity in everyday applications like Word and Excel. The Acer P-series processor's speed and display makes it an excellent platform for editing in Photoshop.
Graphics Testing
Two DirectX 12 simulations are used to test the graphics of Windows PCs. Night Raid is a more simple one, and it's suitable for computers with integrated graphics, while Time Spy, which requires more effort, is suitable for those with gaming rigs that have discrete GPUs.
Two tests were also performed using the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5. This test focuses on both low-level tasks like texturing as well as high-level image rendering. To accommodate various display resolutions, the Aztec Ruins 1440p and Car Chase 1080p tests were rendered offscreen. They exercise graphics, compute shaders with OpenGL programming and hardware tessellation, respectively. More frames per second (fps) is better.
The Spin 5's Intel Iris Xe integrated GPUs are far behind those of gaming laptops. However, this 2-in-1 is perfectly suited for casual gaming and streaming media.
Testing of the Battery and Display
The battery life of laptops is tested by playing locally saved 720p video files (the Blender movie Tears of SteelOpens in new window)). Display brightness was set at 50%, and the audio volume at 100%. Before testing, we make sure that the battery has been fully charged.
We also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen's color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
Although the Acer battery life is not the best, it gives enough power to last you through a day at work, school or even watching Netflix. It doesn't matter if the adapter for AC isn't in your bag. The display test results show that while it can't match the OLED Spectre's display contrast and color, its screen is as bright and vibrant as any IPS LCD display.
A Midpriced Convertible That's Really a Bargain
We mentioned the in-between pricing of the Acer Spin 5, which prevents it from being replaced by the Lenovo Yoga 7i Gen 7 and HP Spectre x360 13.5, as Editors' Choice choices among affordable mainstream convertibles or premium consumer convertibles. However, there are times when in-between is the best place. Acer trims your needle, making it 2-in-1.