Acer Spin 3 Convertible 14″ FHD Touch Laptop
Acer Spin 3 (SP314-53N-77AJ) is a 14-inch FHD IPS touchscreen convertible laptop with high end specs and features including a rechargeable active Stylus pen, a backlit keyboard, a fingerprint reader for security, an 8th generation i7 processor, a large SSD and memory and 12 hours of battery life. It has an average rating of 4.7 out of 5 stars by 12 customers and the reviews are mostly positive.
The late 2018 release Intel Whiskey Lake i7-8565U is an ultra low voltage eighth generation processor for powerful laptops and convertibles with an impressive Passmark benchmark score of 9002. At speeds between 1.8 and 4.6GHz with turbo boost (8MB smart cache) it offers up to 11% more power than the previous i7-8550U processor and can handle pretty much any tasks you want without using much power at an average TDP of 15 watts- between 7.5 and 25 watts depending on your usage.
16GB DDR4 SDRAM is a large amount of memory for all the multitasking you need on your computing tasks when you have several programs and browsers open. This means there will hardly ever be any lagging or freezing. 512GB PCIe NVMe Solid State Drive offers both good size storage and speed when you open the files, turn on and off the laptop. The operating system is the latest Windows 10 Home that is loved by many around the world, with its user friendly features and smooth operation overall. In terms of appearance, functionality and performance you can compare it to Apple or powerful Windows machines.
14” FHD widescreen LED-backlit multi-touch convertible display has the thin 0.38” bezel, 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution and IPS panel with large viewing angles horizontally and vertically. There is a HD webcam with 1280 x 720 resolution supporting HDR- high dynamic range. The sound quality is good enough for a convertible laptop through the double front facing speakers with the high definition Audio support. Despite having a 14” FHD screen It weighs only 3.75 pounds and measures 12.95 x 9.41 x 0.78 inches- is 0.78” thick.
There is no dedicated graphics card but the built-in Intel UHD Graphics 620 that is positioned between NVIDIA 910M and 920M with a video card benchmark score of 1054 as a mid-range GPU. You’ll be fine with anything other than the latest games at high settings or advanced multimedia editing. But you can easily use the Lightroom 
and Photoshop without any troubles. The Acer Bio-Protection Fingerprint Solution includes the Windows Hello certification and laptop protection. You don’t need to set up the Stylus pen to use with the full adobe Suite as it works straight away and feels very natural.
Connectivity options include the 802.11ac wireless with 2×2 MU-MIMO (2.4GHz & 5GHz dual band), Bluetooth 5.0, SD card reader, an HDMI output with HDD support, a USB 2.0 port, a USB 3.1 first generation port, and a headphone jack. The lithium ion battery is reported to last up to 12 hours in light use and you can expect up to 10 hours of internet browsing and video streaming in real life. It has a decent responsive trackpad and touchscreen and you can also connect a mouse if that’s what you’re used to or prefer.
The chiclet backlit keyboard feels good and the fingerprint sensor works well. There aren’t many ports on the Spin 3 laptop and no USB-C port that could be used for connection to tens of other ports, jacks and devices. Cortana Personal Assistant talks you through the installation process through the two stereo speakers and all will be set up in only a few minutes. You’ll find some junkware you don’t need and you should remove those you don’t need. There will be some basic software you may need and the Microsoft Edge browser might take your fancy. It is very good value for the dollar, considering all that you’re getting at a reasonable price. Please see Amazon.com’s return policy within the first 30 days of your purchase.
