Acer a brand known for it’s well equipped laptops. It always brings something new at affordable prices and the Acer Spin 1 is no exception either. The Acer Spin 1 is a cheap convertible laptop with a small 11.6-inch screen. It doesn’t have a lot of power and storage too, however, it is one of the very best options available out there for those who do some browsing, check their emails and stream videos, along with some decent games.
We spend approx. two months with the Spin 1 and here’s our review of the same.
DESIGN & BUILD
Despite it’s low cost the Spin 1 feels hardly like a budget laptop. Instead its build quality feels like a premium laptop. The device’s plastic lid makes it an amazing looking device with an interlaced pattern that looks like weaved fabric.
Apparently, its plastic chassis feels solid and is relatively light in weight and stands at 2.76 pounds (1.25kg), light enough to carry around in a bag without issue. Acer has injected a little fun into the design with turquoise blue colour, using blue plastic for the hinge, lid and underside, avoiding the boredom of black & grey. The lid and bottom are cross-hatched.
Its hinge is a primary feature which is able to rest at any angle, you can sit the Acer Spin 1 in a “tent” position, or flip the display all the way around to treat the laptop like a thick tablet.
The Spin 1 has plenty room for ports and as a result has plus point. You get three full-size USB ports, however, only one is USB 3.0; the others are regular USB 2.0. Alongside there’s full-size HDMI, too – useful for a quick and easy movie-watching along with a 3.5mm headphone jack.
All the above mentioned connections can be found on the left edge of the laptop, while the right includes the power button, volume button, charging port, lock slot and a microSD slot.
What annoys me the most is the placement of the power button. Firstly, you have to find it and what’s more annoying is that accidentally you’ll hit the power button when picking up the laptop and as a result it starts.
DISPLAY
The display style is probably the one weak point. Some laptops at this price offers narrow screen surrounds, but the Spin 1 offers very wide surrounds. There’s lot of blank space above and below the display panel, and quite a lot to the sides. It’s 22mm wide along the top, 20mm down the sides and 47mm along the bottom, making this an outdated device. It has an 11.6-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) resolution, multi-touch screen, with dimensions of 297mm x 209mm. However, Acer opted for IPS panel on this one and as a result the display looks good from any angle. The touch is responsive and good too. The resolution of 1,920 x 1,080 results in a super-sharp image. Its maximum brightness stands at 260 nits and has a decent contrast ratio of 874:1. The colour temperature of 7,875K is not the ideal one (6,500K) but it doesn’t look too bad.
Overall, the display of Spin 1 can produce realistic and punchy-looking colours however, it struggles to distinguish the fine details between different colours. And as a result, it is fine for casual use, with no really distracting problems.
KEYBOARD AND TOUCHPAD
The Spin 1 offers normal keyboard and misses Rs. And euro symbol. The key action is not that great either, and you’ll have to apply some force to ensure a tap properly registers. Also, there are no indicators for the various lock keys – Caps lock, Scroll lock and so on. But instead of the indicators An animation pops up on-screen when the lock key is pressed.
The placement of the trackpad is adequate but the click action again requires quite a bit of force.
Audio
The Acer Spin 1 packs a couple of speakers that are positioned under the front edge. Collectively they can create a sufficiently loud and clear sound for watching the YouTube and listening to music. However, produced sound is flat because bass is non-existent.
Performance
The Spin 1 is available in different configurations namely, the Intel N3350 dual-core processor or Intel N4200 (reviewed) and N3450 quad-core processors. Along with processors you’ll also get the option of a 500GB hard drive (reviewed), a 128GB SSD or 32 and 64GB eMMC drives.
The one which we reviewed is available at a price of Rs. 27,990 on Flipkart.
The Intel Pentium N4200 processor and 4GB of RAM are enough to manage your regular work, but after you start using it a lot like playing high-end games. Then it’s not a sort of thing for you.
All in all, this is fine for watching video, light web browsing, email and writing, but this will not allow you to load up your browser with a dozen tabs, editing pictures in Photoshop, or any other such demanding tasks.
Battery Life
The small screen, tiny processor manages to give you almost ten hours of battery backup – 9hrs 24mins in our Powermark video/web browsing test.
SHOULD I BUY ONE?
If you want a lightweight convertible laptop but are ready to compromise on the processing power then Acer Spin 1 is the right choice for you. It sports an 11.6-inch Full-HD LED IPS display. The Spin 1 is powered by 1.1 GHz Intel Pentium quad-core processor, plus 4GB RAM and 500GB HDD, as we told you earlier. Overall, if you are looking for a laptop with a 1080p touch-capable display, with Windows 10 and MS Office Pre Installed, this might be your only option. However, keep in mind that the processor can only take on day-to-day applications.
Acer Spin 1 may not carry a powerful processor but you’ll get almost everything you had see in other laptops of this price bracket. It has Windows 10 Home and packs all the essential ports and connectivity options excluding the Ethernet. You can use this device in four convertible modes, namely, folded, tent, tablet or titled.
