Acer Chromebook Spin 513 Review, Price, Design, battery life, Performance
Acer brings Snapdragon into the arena
The Chromebook Spin 513 is a good Chromebook and it's priced attractively with its stylish design, good battery life, and plenty of flexibility. But the Snapdragon isn't as good as what you can find in competing Chromebooks powered by Intel at this price point.
GOOD
- Sleek, stylish design
- USB-C power
- Strong battery life
- 2-in-1 design
- Great trackpad
BAD
- Average speaker quality
- Extremely glossy display
- No memory card slot
- Performance falls short of competing Chromebooks at this price
Acer Chromebook Spin Review
All of today's best Chromebooks share many features in common. Touch displays are pervasive, as are great battery life and killer features for many years, at an attractive price.
Acer's new Chromebook Spin 513 ticks all the right boxes for a desirable Chromebook. Without noticing the traditional Chromebook logo on the lid, you could easily mistake it for one of the company's new Windows 10 Ultrabooks. But what lies ahead isn't really the story of this particular Chromebook.
It uses a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c processor inside, making it an ARM-based Chromebook, and promises much stronger performance than the much-loved, but certainly less-powered Lenovo Chromebook Duet. It means running in silence, without noisy fans ruining your day.
The Acer Chromebook Spin 513 is a compact 2-in-1 Chromebook with a full 360-degree hinge, which means maximum versatility in getting it working. Once you're done with your daily tasks and want to kick back with a movie or maybe play Google Stadia for a bit, rotate that display, move the keyboard out of the way, and sink into relaxation mode...
It also functions as a solid, if oversized, tablet when fully rotated. A 13-inch tablet is a bit cumbersome, but it makes for a great reading experience for books and magazines, and of course, all the Android apps you can install from the Play Store work better with touchscreens. It's a shame that it's an exceptionally bright display, though, so you'll be seeing pretty much your face and your fingerprints on anything other than full brightness.
ChromeOS has been optimized for ARM processors over the years and is certainly extremely sophisticated. Unlike Windows 10 on ARM devices, there are no compatibility issues to worry about, and the Chromebook Spin 513 can still fire up a Linux virtual machine like any other Chromebook. You'll encounter compatibility issues with some Linux apps here, as not everything you want to install is built for ARM, but overall, it's the same experience you'll get on an Intel Chromebook.
However, what's not quite the same on Intel Chromebooks is the overall performance. The Chromebook Spin 513 has excellent battery life, and performance is great, but it's also impossible to ignore that a similarly priced Intel-powered Chromebook, like the Lenovo Flex 5, is significantly more impressive. For most, this may not be noticeable, but Chromebooks are increasingly attractive for development and other professional tasks, and that's where the Chromebook Spin 513 will fall short.
It's also disappointing that with only 4GB of RAM, you'll end up with ChromeOS only stuttering and stumbling on many occasions. That part isn't Acer's fault, but when you're using up almost all of the available RAM with nothing open, manufacturers need to start supplying more memory. If Google isn't going to do anything, it falls on the companies that make Chromebooks. After all, it is Acer's badge on the lid and for most casual buyers, it is Acer who is responsible for giving them a good laptop.
However, the Chromebook Spin 513 is a good Chromebook. It's not necessarily the first thing you should run away and buy, but if you're shopping under $500 and under category definitely put it on the shortlist. Most of the time it will be perfect for most people.
Acer Chromebook Spin 513 Design and hardware
The Acer Chromebook Spin 513 doesn't do anything fundamental with its design, but it's great for a sub-$500 laptop. The Chromebook Spin 513 costs just £399/$399/AU$560 and you get a lot for it. It's mostly plastic with a metal lid, but it doesn't look like plastic. It looks like one of Acer's mid-tier ultrabooks, with a slim chassis, convertible, 13-inch Full HD touch display with skinny side bezels.
Thanks to a cleverly curved bottom panel, the sides of the laptop are exposed at their thinnest point. This allows the sides to be thick enough at the back to accommodate the ports. You don't get much, but there are two USB-C, one USB-A, and a 3.5mm headphone jack. Power is distributed over USB-C, so you lose one if you're charging, but equally, you can charge from both sides.
The keyboard is a standard Chromebook case. Despite the fairly shallow key travel, the lack of any real flex in the base of the laptop means it's really nice to type on. It feels firm and attractive and is paired with an excellent trackpad. It is covered with Gorilla Glass, so the surface is perfectly smooth and it is very responsive with a strong clicking action. It's one of the best trackpads you'll find on any laptop in this price range and is especially useful if you like to use gesture controls.
One advantage of the Acer Chromebook Spin 513 is that it has a fully convertible display. With a 13.3-inch and 1080p resolution, it's a perfect size for both working on and consuming media and games. Everything looks sharp, the colors look great and it turns out quite bright. But you won't be working out with one of these.
This is a seriously bright display. Even indoors, if you turn down the brightness you'll be staring at yourself for most of the day, and if you use the touchscreen, keep the microfiber handy. Glossy displays are nothing new, and generally, they go along with touch, but sometimes they are hard to keep up with.
The storage situation on the Chromebook Spin 513 is also a bit disappointing. You only get 64GB of eMMC, which is fine for most ChromeOS operations. But if you start installing Android apps and games, Linux software, or even store a lot of files offline, it won't go that far. That's a problem here because, without a memory card slot, you can't expand your storage even with a microSD card.
The other disappointing thing about the hardware is the lackluster speakers. Being bottom-firing, the sound doesn't get interrupted, at least when you're using the laptop to watch media or play games. But like a lot of Chromebooks, they're a little tiny and don't have any real definition.
Acer Chromebook Spin 513 Performance
The strength of the latest ARM chips in Chromebooks, such as the Snapdragon 7c, found here is that the experience is now so good that most users wouldn't be able to tell it apart from an Intel-powered competitor. He's not looking after it either.
The Chromebook Spin 513 performs admirably in most of the tasks most Chromebook users would like to use it for. Normal web browsing is fine as long as you don't pile up Google Chrome with too many tabs, Android apps zip along and you get the added benefit of no fan noise and good battery life.
But, as good as performance is, the Snapdragon 7c is still a good way behind the Intel Core i3 in sheer horsepower. And if you're the type of Chromebook buyer who wants to do more than just use a few Android apps and browsers, this might not be the one for you.
In every performance benchmark, the Chromebook Spin 513 lags behind the similarly priced Lenovo Flex 5, which packs 4GB of RAM and a 10th-generation Intel Core i3 processor. The Core i3 is also better suited for Linux use, without any concerns of ARM-based incompatibilities, and stands out for budding developers or content creators using Chromebooks. And for some reason, the Jetstream 2 benchmark crashed every time before it was completed.
4GB of RAM is also not enough. Using the cog to check system performance, without any browser or any kind of app open, you can see that almost all the available RAM is being used to boot Chrome OS. Either Google needs to do something to make Chrome OS less resource-heavy or laptop makers like Acer need to put a minimum of 8GB on machines in this price bracket and above.
Acer Chromebook Spin 513 battery life
On battery life, the Chromebook Spin 513 pulls that back. The less power-hungry ARM processor helps extend usage times a lot, even with that great 1080p display. Acer's claims of over 13 hours aren't met, but they're also not a million miles away.
During our video test at 50%, the brightness extended battery life to 12 hours 26 minutes. It's the best-case scenario, though, since day-to-day use heralds short, but still strong battery life.
In mixed-use scenarios, with media consumption, several hours spent in the Chrome browser, and using Linux apps, battery life was high, between 9-10 hours, which is still enough to leave the charger at home all day.
Acer Chromebook Spin 513 Software
Chrome OS is Chrome OS is Chrome OS. One of the strengths of Google's operating system is that it is extremely consistent across devices. Chrome OS also gets regular updates, and the recent Android version inside Android 11 has been improved, which means better compatibility and performance from apps downloaded from the Google Play Store.
If you also use an Android phone, pairing it with your Chromebook opens up another opportunity for convenience. Features like instant tethering and password-free unlock are features that are easily missed when switching back to a different operating system.
Compared to a similarly priced Windows 10 laptop, you're getting a lot here as well. With the Play Store, Linux support, and web apps galore, using a Chromebook no longer offers the sacrifice it once made. There's actually a strong case to be made for buying the Chromebook Spin 513 over a comparably priced Windows 10 laptop, even on budget devices with the power and performance of Chrome OS.
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