Acer Spin 3 (With Amazon Alexa) - Review 2022

"Alexa, turn off the lights!" Imagine shouting that to the notebook computer sitting on your dresser, and the room goes dark. Impressed? If and then, cheque out the new iteration of the Acer Spin 3. In that voice-command aspect, it's more than merely another convertible 2-in-ane laptop. (It starts at $499; it's $699 in the specific SP314-51-59NM model tested here.) Ane of the kickoff Windows ten machines to integrate Amazon'southward Alexa digital assistant out of the box, this laptop doubles equally a smart dwelling device. Every bit long as y'all don't mind some meaty screen bezels, a irksome keyboard and webcam, and no USB Blazon-C, the Spin 3 tin serve equally a good workaday 2-in-1, thanks to a vibrant, 360-degree-rotating brandish and an eighth-generation Intel Cadre i3 or i5 processor. But Alexa is the main describe hither; you'll have someone other than Cortana to order around.

Putting a Spin on the Ordinary

Like the previous Acer Spin iii , the new model bears horizontal and vertical lines etched on its aluminum hat, while the keyboard deck and palm residue sport horizontal ones.

The lid is held in place by two full-range hinges. Y'all can rotate the screen around up to 360 degrees for employ in one of 4 modes. Tablet mode sees the screen flip all the fashion dorsum, so that the display lies apartment against the base of operations of the machine; Stand up mode plants the keyboard face up downward, with the display facing your direction; Tent mode stands up the machine like an upside-downwards "V"; and Laptop style is the usual orientation for using a notebook.

Measuring 0.82 by xiii.xix by 9.06 inches (HWD), the Acer Spin three is thicker and larger than the Editors' Choice Lenovo Yoga 920 (0.55 by 12.72 by 8.8 inches), also as the Dell Inspiron 13 7000 (0.76 past 12.7 by 8.eight inches). At the same fourth dimension, the Acer Spin 3 boasts a xiv-inch display rather than the 13-inch-class screens in the Yoga 920 and Inspiron 13 7000. Naturally, that screen-size difference is going to brand information technology a fiddling bulkier, and the Spin 3 weighs iii.75 pounds, versus those models' lighter three.02 pounds (Yoga 920) and iii.5 pounds (Inspiron thirteen 7000). Still, the Acer Spin 3 doesn't feel overly heavy in a handbag or case, even with its compact, square AC adapter riding along.

Forth the edges of its screen, you'll discover side bezels around half an inch thick, while the top bezel measures effectually 0.75 inch and the bottom effectually an inch and a half. A webcam is positioned in the center of the peak bezel. Information technology captures both photos and videos at a resolution of 1,280 by 720 pixels with a grainy and irksome look, the latter of which is surprising since Acer'due south marketing materials suggest that the webcam features high-dynamic range (HDR) video capture. (That said, HDR seems a alpine order for a laptop webcam.)

Too a trivial disappointing is the Acer Spin 3's keyboard, which is not backlit and doesn't have discrete Habitation and End keys. To access these functions, yous will accept to hold downwardly the Fn key while pressing Pg Upwards (for Dwelling house) or Pg Down (for End). The keys themselves are shallow and low-travel, with little space between your fingertips and the keyboard deck. Be that as it may, the Acer Spin 3's keyboard has a fast, tactile typing feel with adequate spacing across the layout betwixt each primal. Merely don't look much key movement.

Meanwhile, the touchpad on the Acer Spin 3 is par for the mainstream-laptop course. You can tap it or press it down to carry out a "click" function, or do the same with two fingers to right-click. It isn't quite as satisfying as using physical mouse buttons or Apple'southward haptic-feedback Force Impact trackpad, only it suffices.

Above the keyboard deck is the Acer Spin 3's main speaker grille, with a 2d pair of speakers on the rear border of the auto for outputting crisp sound no thing what fashion the laptop is in. At maximum book, the audio is impressive and just loud enough to fill a medium-size room. Because the Acer Spin iii has ii congenital-in stereo speakers, sound comes through crystal clear in all 4 convertible modes, even if information technology'due south not all that bassy.

Above the webcam is a pair of built-in microphones that filters out background racket and supports far-field vocalism recognition from up to ix feet abroad. That way, when you shout demands at Alexa from across the room, it tin can listen and respond without fuss.

"Hey Cortana, Open up Alexa"

Amazon's digital assistant makes its Windows 10 debut on the Acer Spin 3. It'south activated using the elementary phonation command as always—"Alexa!"—only this version of the cloud-based vocalization service differs in some cardinal ways from the Alexa I've gotten to know on Amazon's lineup of Echo devices.

For ane, while yous can ask an Echo Dot to play music from Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora, SiriusXM, Spotify, or TuneIn, the Spin 3's rendition of Alexa is express to Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, SiriusXM, and TuneIn for streaming. (Spotify is shut out.) As well, despite the fact that the Amazon Repeat devices support calling and messaging, both of those features are omitted from Alexa on the Acer Spin 3.

Another distinction between Alexa for Windows ten and the version in the Echo devices is that, if you allow it, Alexa is ever listening on Amazon's hardware. Equally long as your Echo is plugged in, you can ask about the weather weather condition outside and expect an answer in seconds. With Alexa on the Acer Spin three, yous must first be logged in to the system with Alexa enabled at startup. So, to reach the same "always-on" issue as the Echo devices, you'll accept to make a tweak in the Power Options panel on the laptop and then that it "Never" goes to slumber while plugged in or on battery. Granted, you only have to do this once. For the boilerplate consumer, though, that's a lot of steps to reach the same behavior you get from a $40 Echo Dot out of the box.

Notwithstanding, once I had the laptop configured thus, my experience with Alexa on the Acer Spin 3 was generally positive. I was able to ask it many of the same questions that I do my own Echo Dot, such as, "Alexa, what'south on my agenda?" and "Alexa, how long volition it accept me to go to work today?"

Additionally, I found that I was able to inquire Cortana to launch Alexa for me—an interesting and ironic twist, if unnecessary unless y'all have Amazon's digital assistant disabled at startup. And although Acer's premium Swift vii and Switch 7 notebooks support Wake on Vocalism (WoV), the Acer Spin 3 does not, explaining why a semi-complicated workaround is required to keep the assistant e'er-on.

"Alexa, Can You Abound a USB-C Port?"

Like the non-Alexa variant of the Acer Spin iii we reviewed earlier in the year, the model with Alexa bears an AC adapter connector, an HDMI port, and two USB 3.0 Type-A ports on its left side. On its right, you'll find a unmarried USB ii.0 port, an SD-card slot, and a headphone jack, in addition to the power push button and a Kensington lock slot. Alas, USB Type-C is, over again, the missing fellow member among the Acer Spin iii'south connectivity options.

Whether Thunderbolt iii or patently USB, I would have appreciated the inclusion of one of the reversible, versatile ports on either side of this convertible motorcar. Then once more, few systems in the sub-$500 range do have USB Blazon-C, and because the Spin iii starts at $399, it makes sense that the number of ports was kept to a minimum across all configurations for the sake of maintaining a depression base of operations price.

The 14-inch, 1,920-past-one,080-pixel IPS impact display is sharp and vibrant. However, that does come with the caveat of some noticeable screen glare, specially nether intense lighting conditions. When using the Acer Spin 3 outside or in a room with light shining through large windows, the screen isn't every bit attractive as it is in a dimly lit room. Be that every bit information technology may, the touch aspect of the Acer Spin 3's screen is fluid and responsive. And while I have my quibbles about using Windows x on a impact panel, the bottom line is that the Acer Spin 3'south bear upon-capable display works as advertised—in whichever of the four modes you have the motorcar bent into.

The Acer Spin 3 starts at $499, but only the SP314-51-59NM model I reviewed is compatible with Alexa. While the $499 model comes with a dual-cadre Intel Core i3-8130U processor, 4GB of RAM, and 1TB of difficult drive space, my $699 review unit comes outfitted with an Intel Core i5-8250U, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage.

Given our impressions of the $499 model simply two months ago, I advise buying this model instead. Non only does it boast flash storage that's snappier than the five,400rpm drive of the base unit, but for $200 more, you go a processor with double the cores, to boot. (The Cadre i5-8250U is a 1.6GHz quad-cadre chip, in contrast to the 2.2GHz, dual-core Core i3-8130U.)

Along with Windows 10 Dwelling, the Acer Spin 3 ships with a handful of applications pre-installed. Included in the mix are Open Labs' music-creation tool Stagelight, equally well as Amazon, Dashlane, eBay, Evernote, and Netflix promos, among more commercial offerings such as the Booking.com app and the WildTangent Games store. The Acer Spin iii has Bluetooth iv.1 as well as 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and is backed past a standard one-twelvemonth warranty.

Functioning: In Fine Form, for a U-Series

In our performance testing, nosotros pitted the Acer Spin 3 against several competing 2-in-1 laptops: the Lenovo Yoga 920, the Dell Inspiron thirteen 7000, and the Asus ZenBook Flip xiv. Likewise, we paid close attention to how information technology stacks upwardly to its larger 15.6-inch sibling, the Acer Spin 5.

Considering the Spin three wields a adequately common 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-8250U processor, the functioning didn't differ all that drastically from that of its family and these rivals. In fact, all but two of the laptops in our performance comparison charts too use the Core i5-8250U—the Asus ZenBook Flip 14 and Lenovo Yoga 920 have advantage of the slightly higher-clocked Intel Core i7-8550U, another U-serial depression-power processor in the aforementioned family unit.

The major differences don't come into play until we get to the graphics testing. Whereas the Acer Spin 3 relies purely on integrated graphics (Intel UHD Graphics 620, to exist exact), the Asus ZenBook Flip 14 has an advantage, in a detached Nvidia GeForce MX150 graphics chip with 2GB of VRAM.

Thus, in PCMark viii, our productivity benchmark, the Acer Spin three scored 3,271 points, almost indistinguishable from the Dell Inspiron thirteen 7000's leading score. And while the Spin 3 technically came out alee of the Cadre i7-equipped Asus ZenBook Flip 14, it'southward well within the margin of fault.

See How Nosotros Test Laptops

The Acer Spin 3 sang a similar melody in Handbrake, where the Asus ZenBook Flip 14 led the pack past a hair at 1 minute and nine seconds (ane:09). The Acer Spin iii, on the other hand, converted our test file in 1:22, faster than the Acer Spin 5, which trailed at 1:29. The Core i7 showed a decided, but not enormous, edge.

Our graphics benchmarks were another story. Beyond the board, the Asus ZenBook Flip 14 and its GeForce chip came out on top in every exam. In 3DMark's Cloud Gate subtest, the Acer Spin three scored 8,099 points, compared with the 12,556 of the Asus ZenBook Flip 14. In Fire Strike Extreme, the Acer Spin iii managed 483 points, versus the 1,280 pulled off past the Asus ZenBook Flip xiv. The remaining laptops in our graphics-performance benchmarking fared well-nigh the same as the Acer Spin three, no surprise equally they all rely on the same Intel UHD Graphics 620 silicon.

Furthermore, the Acer Spin 3 ran Unigine's Heaven criterion at 21 frames per second (fps) at Medium graphics settings, and 5fps at Ultra. Its results on Unigine's Valley exam were like. Compare that with the Asus ZenBook Flip 14'due south results, and you'll run into why the Acer Spin 3 is non much of a gamer. Still, neither of these systems is fit for playing AAA games anywhere from High to Ultra settings; casual or Spider web-based games will be fine. Even the ZenBook Flip 14 suffered in Ultra quality Heaven and Valley benchmarks, outputting merely 15fps and 18fps, respectively.

The Coin, Quite Literally, Talks

All in all, this remix of the Acer Spin 3 is a perfectly adequate ii-in-1 hybrid laptop with the standout feature being that it's Alexa-equipped. A handsome, admitting sleeky, 1080p display and a pair of flexible hinges that permit y'all flip the arrangement inside out are as well standouts.

Although the bezels are a bit thick and the motorcar is hefty, the Acer Spin 3 does have some price entreatment. Information technology costs just $699, $150 less than the Dell Inspiron thirteen 7000 with the aforementioned specs, just a bigger screen. (Dell's convertible is a 13.three-incher.) Still, considering that its large distinguisher, Alexa, will exist available on other, non-Acer laptops afterward in the twelvemonth, the Spin iii's greatest weakness is that it fails to distinguish itself very strongly from other ii-in-i laptops in its class across beingness first to the Amazon political party. But it's certainly a solid-enough try for its class.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/laptops/29185/acer-spin-3-with-amazon-alexa

Posted by: garnermithe1988.blogspot.com

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