Acer Chromebook Spin 513, in-depth analysis

Product range Chromebook continues to grow, and one of its main supporters is Acer, the manufacturer continues to bet on light processing laptops, launching laptops with more and more reasons that can attract users to this operating system so unknown still to the vast majority of users.

We reviewed the Acer Chromebook Spin 513, a laptop with an ARM heart, and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 7c for everyday use. Discover with us all its features and if Chromebooks are really a real alternative to the Windows PC of a lifetime.

Materials and design

It is not so light that we can imagine being a laptop of these characteristics, its weight reaches 1,29 kg. Of course, the small dimensions are left behind, and this Acer Chromebook Spin 513 goes up to 13,3 inches, which seems to me the most suitable for a computer with these characteristics. This leaves us with dimensions of 310 x 209,4 x 15,55 millimeters, Some measures to take into account, where the large frames of the device predominate in terms of its screen, we imagine that it has a lot to do with the fact that the panel is tactile. This helps us to interact with it easily since we can hold it with one hand.

The hinges on the Acer Spin 513 allow the screen to be completely flipped over and basically turned into a tablet. For its part, the keyboard has a well-designed but somewhat compact touchpad with a touch only on the bottom.

The keyboard is complete and compact, with sufficient travel thanks to the chiclet-type membrane mechanism and that It has a backlight.

We find in this Acer Chromebook Spin 513 a good implementation among the plastic and the aluminum from which it is made. We take into account that the power adapter has an external transformer, which will bulk up the transport.

Technical characteristics

Acer has decided to bet on an ARM heart and for this the model CP513-1H-S6GH which is the analyzed has a processor Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c (730) with Kyro 468 architecture and 8 cores in total that would reach a speed of clocked up to 2,11 GHz. For graphic processing they bet on the integrated Adreno 618 and all of this will work hand in hand with nothing less than 8 GB of LPDDR4X RAM, a good point in which they have decided not to racan, and this is appreciated. For its part, we may be more scarce storage, where we have only 64GB eMMC memory.

At a technical level this hardware will move Chrome OS based on Android 9, somewhat outdated, and that will end up offering results in the benchmarks around mid-range phones. We have 539/1601 on Geekbench or 7.299 on PC Mark to give some examples. However, the system moves smoothly enough to install any external APK or even through the Google Play Store. The eMMC memory can offer a more ballasted performance, about 133MB / s write and about 50MB / s read in our reviews. Also, we cannot expand the memory via microSD.

Connectivity and multimedia content

In the wireless connectivity section, this device has dual-band ac WiFi (2,4 GHz and 5 GHz) as well as Bluetooth 5.0 for more conventional tasks. On a physical level we will be able to enjoy a 3,5 mm jack, a USB 3.1 and two first generation USB-C 3.2 ports, enough and to spare, although perhaps an HDMI port is missing, something that obviously can be solve using adapters. Between little and nothing more to ask in this section from the Acer Chromebook Spin 513.

13,3 inch IPS
1020 x 1080 pixels Full HD
Stereo sound with mid-height speakers so as not to cover them in tablet mode

We have in the multimedia section a 13,3-inch panel with a brightness that is too tight and whose finish produces excess reflections, making it difficult to use in adverse lighting conditions. We have a 16: 9 ratio ideal for consuming multimedia content, perhaps not so much in the productive section. The viewing angles are correct and the sensitivity of the touch panel as well, which make it a fairly versatile Chromebook.

As for the sound, it is the typical one that we can find in a laptop of this range of price, sufficient but that suffers with the low. However, enough to consume the most common multimedia content, especially if we take into account that its hinges and design give us the opportunity to place it in the way we want.

Autonomy and user experience

Inside we have 4.670 mAh that can be surprising if we compare it with certain latest generation mobile phones. Acer promises 14 hours of autonomy that remain close with a brightness in the middle panel and through the WiFi connection, however, as soon as we demand something from it and we go to what we could call a "mixed use" that has alternated consuming content with browsing and office automation and light editing, we find a battery consumption that offers us around 9 hours of use.

Chrome OS offers some advantages, especially if we have an Android device, focusing especially on increasing our productivity. However, the sale of Chrome OS is in turn its great limitation. It is designed by and for office automation and essentially consume multimedia content, moreover, now there are many applications that are correctly adapted to a system with these characteristics. This, however, is still quite far from the experience that a traditional PC can offer us.

Editor's opinion

For the moment, the user experience offered by Chrome OS is relegated to the educational sector or mobility environments. However, it is clear to me that a Chromebook does not offer a performance or a user experience superior to what we can find with a tablet of similar price and characteristics. It has the advantage of a good design, a good screen and a good keyboard, and with the disadvantage that the shortcomings of Chrome OS together with the 64GB eMMC storage is still far from offering sufficient performance, in addition, moving to the version with SSD and 8 GB of RAM raises the price to make it an undesirable product compared to the competition.