Acer Chromebook Spin 11 Review - Review 2022

Read our reviews of Lenovo ThinkPads and HP EliteBooks, and you'll see boasts of MIL-SPEC 810G compliance—meeting military machine standards for resisting shock, vibration, farthermost temperatures, and other portable PC perils, to reassure buyers concerned near the bumps and bruises of business travel. Only forget them. Practice you know who really needs MIL-SPEC 810G hardware? Lilliputian kids, who'd as soon drop a chromebook as look at one. The Acer Chromebook Spin eleven ($399.99) carries the certification into the hostile environment of the class-school classroom. It'due south a 2-in-ane convertible built to shrug off 132 pounds (a kid standing on the lid) or eleven ounces (of water spilled on the keyboard) or 48 inches (falls from being knocked off a desk-bound), and is our new Editors' Choice for student chromebooks.

Good-Looking in a Toyish Way

The Spin 11 ($199.00 at Walmart) is fabricated of white polycarbonate plastic with a rubberized beige bumper around its bottom one-half, giving it a rugged wait clearly meant for kids' clumsy hands. Blackness keys match the big blackness bezel around the glossy screen. The touch panel that covers the display is antimicrobial Corning Gorilla Glass, designed to resist not only knocks and scratches just passing germs from small fingers to classmates and teachers. At 0.82 by 11.7 by eight.1 inches, it'south the same size as the Lenovo Flex 11 Chromebook and a fraction smaller than the Dell Chromebook 3189 Education two-in-1 (0.82 by 12 by 8.two inches), and falls between them in weight, with a couple of ounces on each side, at 3.09 pounds.

It flips and folds through the four modes familiar to users of Lenovo Yogas and workalikes like the Asus Chromebook Flip C302CA ($434.99 at Amazon) : regular Laptop mode; an easel-way Stand up style, with the keyboard confront down and screen tilted back; Tent mode, with the system propped up like an A-frame for poking at touch apps; and Tablet mode, with the brandish and keyboard back to back.

Acer Chromebook Spin 11 Screen

The Acer is more than expensive than the Dell Chromebook 3189 ($239.00 at Dell Technologies) and the Lenovo Flex xi, partly due to its ruggedized structure and partly due to its coming with a Wacom stylus for scribbling or sketching on the screen in Tablet mode. The bad news is that in that location is no hole or niche in the chromebook for storing the stylus, then kids are guaranteed to lose it. The good news is that the batteryless pen works with good precision and palm rejection—in that location's a little lag if you lot whip the stylus beyond the screen at top speed, but in normal apply we establish it a capable input tool for apps like Google Keep and Autodesk SketchBook, fifty-fifty responding with thin and thick lines to gentle and harder pressure in the latter.

Like the Dell and Lenovo chromebooks, it has an eleven.vi-inch IPS impact screen with 1,366-by-768 resolution (versus the Asus Flip'southward 12.5-inch and 1,920-by-1,080). Like many touch screens, the console is plagued by reflections, so the bezel and dark areas are like looking at a mirror, but the 360-degree hinges let you tilt the brandish back as far as it takes to minimize the effect. Otherwise, the screen is attractive, with ample brightness and bright colors. Neither information technology nor any other brandish with this resolution offers razor-sharp details, but contrast is excellent and the screen, like the keyboard deck, is free of flimsy flex.

The 1,280-by-720-pixel webcam above the screen captures averagely sharp, not terribly brilliant images. A second camera centered above the keyboard takes pretty good ii,592-by-i,944-pixel snapshots in Tablet mode, using the screen every bit a viewfinder, though it's awkward to concur the Spin in one hand while tapping the shutter button with the other. Lesser-mounted speakers produce decent sound—distorted if book is cranked to the max, but rich and realistic, admitting brusk on booming bass, at sane book levels.

Acer Chromebook Spin 11 Stand Mode

The flush-plumbing equipment power button is on the laptop's left side, along with a USB 3.0 port, a USB-C port, an audio jack, and a micro SD card slot. On the right side, y'all'll detect another USB 3.0 port, another USB-C port, a cable lock slot, and a volume rocker for utilize in Tablet mode. The supplied Air-conditioning adapter plugs into either USB-C port. Like other chromebooks, the Acer offers 100GB of free Google Drive cloud storage for two years (information technology'south $one.99 per month thereafter). A one-twelvemonth warranty is too included.

The full-sized, isle-style keyboard has shallow travel but a business firm, responsive typing feel; we were cruising at close to our maximum speed within minutes, although we tin never remember the Chrome Os keystrokes for Page Up/Page Down (Alt+Up/Down) or Abode/Cease (Ctrl+Alt+Up/Down). The keyboard is non backlit. The touchpad has a silky-smooth feel for swipes, taps, and scrolling.

It Takes a Licking

The Chromebook Spin 11 is powered by an Intel Celeron N3350, a 1.1GHz dual-core processor backed here past 4GB of retentivity and 32GB of eMMC flash storage. Information technology gives the convertible proficient if non record-setting performance—we opened ten browser tabs including a 720p YouTube video and three Android apps without noticeable lag.

Acer Chromebook Spin 11 Tablet Mode

Speaking of which, the Acer, like other current chromebooks, includes beta-test access to the Google Play Store's legions of affect-screen-friendly Android apps (now including Microsoft Office) in addition to the Chrome Web Store's lineup of generally browser-based, non-affect apps. Some work flawlessly. Some that didn't piece of work just a couple of weeks earlier this writing (Google Play Music balked at our MP3s) seem cured thanks to the platform'southward steady menstruum of upgrades. And some are still hit-or-miss (Netflix stops when asked to restart a flick), so we however rate Android support as a sometime bonus rather than a key factor when reviewing chromebooks.

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A more significant bonus is the Spin eleven's bombardment life: While information technology doesn't run our Windows-based performance benchmarks, the organisation lasted for 12 hours and 48 minutes in our video rundown test (playing a locally stored re-create of The Lord of the Rings trilogy with screen brightness at 50 percent and volume at 100 percent). A total workday plus an evening of Android games or YouTube viewing will be no problem.

Finally, though we weigh besides much to stand on it, we dropped the Acer (both open up and airtight) from desk-bound superlative half a dozen times. Information technology ignored the abuse and kept going, so nosotros splashed a glass of h2o on the keyboard, and so (except for wet fingers) continued typing this paragraph as if cipher had happened. We can quibble that kids are more likely to spill juice or soda than plainly h2o, but nosotros tin't deny the 2-in-one's toughness.

A Prime number Rugged Culling

For $100 more, the Asus Flip C302CA offers a larger, total HD display and faster performance. But the Acer Spin 11 is a fantabulous alternative for students or anyone seeking a rugged Chrome OS convertible. And as a bonus, it comes packed with all-twenty-four hour period battery life. Information technology'southward our new Editors' Choice for student chromebooks.

Acer Chromebook Spin xi Specs

Laptop Class	Convertible 2-in-1, Budget, Chromebook
Processor	Intel Celeron N3350
Processor Speed	1.one GHz
RAM (every bit Tested)	4 GB
Boot Drive Type	eMMC Flash Memory
Kick Drive Capacity (as Tested)	32 GB
Screen Size	xi.6 inches
Native Display Resolution	1366 by 768
Bear on Screen	Yeah
Panel Engineering science	IPS
Variable Refresh Support	None
Screen Refresh Charge per unit	60 Hz
Graphics Processor	Intel Hard disk drive Graphics 500
Wireless Networking	802.11ac, Bluetooth
Dimensions (HWD)	0.82 by xi.7 by eight.1 inches
Weight	3.one lbs
Operating System	Google Chrome OS
Tested Bombardment Life (Hours:Minutes)	12:48