Acer Spin 5 (SP513-54N) Review : Great battery life for travellers

Acer’s Spin series is their convertible line-up. It is a firmly built convertible that puts together the 10th generation Core i7 processor and 16GB of RAM. This is aimed at almost any profession providing long battery life and great performance.

Acer Spin 5 Design

The Spin 5’s exterior isn’t that flashy but it is definitely slender. It has a brushed metal lid with silver bezels around the lid. With its total measurement of 11.8 x 9.2 x 0.6 inches, it weighs 2.6 pounds and can fit into any backpack or messenger bag without being too much of a burden.

One of the advantages of any convertible laptop is the design of its hinges. The Spin 5’s rotation was smooth and the hinges felt sturdy on rotation.

 

Ports

The Acer SP513-54N-74V2 provides an adequate number of ports. There are two USB-C ports that support Thunderbolt 3, a USB 3.0, an HDMI port, and a micro SD card reader to the left.

On the right, we find the headphone jack, a USB 3.0 port, the power button and LED indicators.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The keyboard and trackpad is possibly the best thing about the Acer Spin 5.  Acer made it possible to scroll around comfortably with a big enough trackpad with distinct edges. Though the touchpad isn’t covered in glass, it still has a touch of premium with its seamless and precise feel.

The keyboard, it has a 1.7 mm key travel. Each individual key has a quiet but satisfying press. Acer even integrated the Page Up and Page Down keys near the arrow keys. Though it would have been better if it were not so cramped.

Performance

The Acer Spin 5 is equipped with Intel’s 10th generation Intel Core i7-1065G7 processor running at 1.3GHz with a Turbo Boost of 3.9GHz, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD and Intel’s Iris Plus Graphics helping it achieve great performance.

The Acer Spin 5 SP513-54N-74V2 has been made to work with documents, emails, and basic editing. It shows greats results in the overall performance on PCMark 10 though feels a bit lacking on the Digital Creation side.

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The Acer Spin 5 comes with a 1TB Samsung MZVLB1T0 M.2 SSD as its main drive. This promises write speeds of 3500 MB/s and write speeds of up to 2700 MB/s. Below, we see these barely hitting the promised speeds. It may not be the fastest SSD in the market but it is significantly higher than any SATA models out there.

Audio

We get a decent range of sounds with the Acer Spin 5. Thanks to its forward-facing speakers, we get a 90.1db maximum. As with other laptops, we don’t really expect the best audio, and it definitely lacks bass.

Display

The Acer Spin 5 is built with a 13.5-inch IPS display and a resolution of 2256 x 1504. There are no disturbing problems with the aspect ratio of 3:2 for its display aside from minor gaming but then again, this wasn’t built for gaming. The display is protected by Gorilla Glass ensuring durability and resistance. It does not have matte protection but it is a necessary measure for its touchscreen and stylus support.

Battery Life

The Acer Spin 5 is powered by a 56 Wh 4-cell battery supporting fast charging and promises of up to 15 hours of work. Working under ideal conditions, it would mean disabling wireless connections and minimum brightness. In real conditions, we normally have the brightness cranked somewhere between 50-100% and have our laptops with either Bluetooth or WiFi on. We tested it with PCMark 8 and we got an acceptable 3h 43min before it got drained. Manually testing it and leaving a bunch of tabs, music and Microsoft Edge running, it was able to last around 7hrs, which is decent enough for when we work on the go.

Conclusion

All-in-all, the Acer Spin 5 is a wonderful little laptop for someone who always travels. It keeps up with basic and tedious computing tasks. It offers a 2K touchscreen and strong performance along with its decent battery life. Along with its 100% sRGB coverage, it really is a must-buy in our books.