There's nothing flashy or exciting about the Acer Spin 7 convertible laptop; it's also a lot slower than competitors and doesn't support a stylus for Windows Ink. Yet I found myself liking it quite a bit as a general-purpose system.
Its $1,250 price tag puts it much higher than its line mates, which top off at $650; in the UK and Australia, the Spin 7 is the only model available in the Spin family, going for £1,000 and AU$2,000. The price isn't bad, but it's about the same as slightly better competitors like the Dell XPS 13 2-in-1 and the Lenovo Yoga 910.
When Acer announced the Spin 7 in August 2016, the company declared it the "world's thinnest convertible" at 0.4 inches/11 millimeters thick (of course, they didn't round up the way I did). I don't really care; if you like the look, you like the look. And beyond a certain point -- which we've already passed -- the return to shaving off millimeters diminishes rapidly. I think width and weight are far more important, especially for these 360-degree hinge models that you can use as a tablet. So while the Spin 7 is thin, it's 12.8 in/325mm wide like the Yoga 910, which makes it just a hair too big to fit into a letter- or A4-size pocket (like in my camera bag) without a struggle. That means a bigger, heavier bag. In contrast, the XPS 13, while just a little narrower at 12 inches, slips in comfortably. To me, that's where the millimeters count.
Acer Spin 7
| Price as reviewed | $1,250 (roughly £995 and AU$1,650) |
|---|---|
| Display size/resolution | 14-inch 1,920x1,080-pixel touch display |
| PC CPU | 1.3GHz Intel Core i7-7Y75 |
| PC Memory | 8GB DDR3 SDRAM 1,866MHz |
| Graphics | 128MB dedicated Intel HD Graphics 615 |
| Storage | 256GB SSD |
| Networking | 802.11ac Bluetooth 4.1 |
| Operating system | Windows 10 Home (64-bit) |
There's only a single configuration of the Spin 7, and it's the flagship of Acer's Spin line of general-purpose thin-and-light convertibles. The Spin 5 and Spin 3 models are bigger and heavier than this model's 2.9 pounds/1,302 grams. This one incorporates a thin-bezel 14-inch, 1,920 by 1,080-pixel touchscreen in a 13.3-inch class aluminum body, a 7th-generation Core i7 processor, 8GB memory, integrated graphics and a 256GB solid-state drive. You'll see multiple model numbers for it, but they're identical and differ only by retailer.
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