Acer Chromebook Spin 513 Review: Snapdragon Arrival By Chrome Unboxed

Well we finally made it. We can finally say that we have a snapdragon powered Chromebook, that's available for purchase, and I'm very, very glad for that. There were so many unknowns for the snapdragon 7c when it comes to Chromebooks, and we've been anxiously waiting for over three years. To answer questions like is it going to be fast enough? Is the battery going to be amazing or android apps, going to run better on this chip than the competition? Can it compete with the latest mobile processors from intel? Is it wildly faster than the current arm chips in Chromebooks like the Lenovo Chromebook duet? Those are all great questions, and we're ready to answer those and more as we weigh in on whether the snapdragon 7c that powers, the Acer spin 513 is really ready for prime time in Chromebooks. Today's video is brought to you by our thriving and awesome Patreon community, where we offer things like behind the scenes: footage, early access, content, access to our private discord channel and an ad free experience over at chromeunbox. com, both on the desktop and mobile versions of our website.

If you'd like to learn more just head over to patreon. com forward, slash chrome unboxed, as we always say, a Chromebook is definitely the sum of its parts. While the highlight of this particular device is clearly the processor under the hood, we have to at least mention the outer parts, because in this one they are all quite good. The first thing, you'll likely notice, is the thin and light build of the spin 513 coming in at only 2.65 pounds and only 15 millimeters thick. There is no denying the feeling of portability that comes with this Chromebook, it's hard to capture in photos and video, but this thing just begs to be picked up and taken places its kind of tablet-like in that way.

Speaking of tablets, this Chromebook is obviously a convertible and can be used in all the ways you expect at this point. While I don't find much use in a 13.3 inch, 16x9 tablet, I do like the presentation in tent modes for all sorts of activities and the spin 513 was as good as any at pulling off these use cases, especially since the screen here is a very good one. It's IPS, so the viewing angles are great. The colors pop the brightness hits a respectable 300 nits and I just don't really have any complaints here, oh and just like about every other Chromebook. At this point, USI pin input is supported in the same vein.

The backlit keyboard and glass trackpad perform great as well, making the typing and navigation on this Chromebook a good overall experience. My only knock here is the fact that the entire bottom portion of this device is plastic, and while it's reasonably firm and passes the corner hold test quite well, the center of the keyboard has far more give than I'd like, and it cheapens the experience a bit. It's not a dealbreaker, but the keyboard and trackpad do suffer a bit because of it on the sides of that plastic chassis, we get dual USB type-c ports, a single USB type, a port headphone microphone, jack power button and a volume rocker, while not the most robust Io. It's enough to get you connected to what you need to get connected to when you need it now, let's talk about what's inside this Chromebook, our test model came equipped with the snapdragon 7c four gigs of ram and 64 gigs of Emma storage. There's an optional upgrade to eight gigs that I'd recommend since Acer.

Only charges, 30 bucks more for that upgrade and more ram, is always worth it. The story here really is the snapdragon 7c and while I'd love to report, that performance was super smooth and fast. That's not really. What I found to be true, don't get me wrong. This Chromebook doesn't feel slow per se.

It just isn't fast from time to time, I'd see, stutters and lag and animations and under my standard workload it just couldn't always keep up. Extending to my 1440p ultrawide monitor, wasn't really a great experience either as this chip seems to be limited to a 1080p extended display output when pushing two monitors. Things really slowed down a lot, and there was never a time that I was able to forget that I was running on a lesser spec. Processor. Probably more disappointing is the android app performance.

I fully expected android apps to fly on this thing since Qualcomm snapdragon chips are the standard in nearly all phones. It was actually the opposite, however, and games that play surprisingly well on the duet were pretty awful on the spin 513. Call of Duty mobile. Wouldn't let me move the graphics up past the lowest options and PUBG mobile was just as choppy and messy on this Chromebook as it is on intel devices. Somehow the under powered mt-8183 in the duet is better at android.

It helps than this snapdragon 7c, and I honestly don't know why this could change down the road, but for now there's no direct benefit to running android. Apps on this Chromebook versus the current competition battery was about as good as advertised giving me roughly 10 hours of heavy use with the screen on at about 75 brightness crank that down to 50 brightness, and you'll, get closer to the advertised 13.5 hours of screen time, Acer, touts for this machine with no fans to worry with and the thin light chassis. I did really appreciate the tablet-like battery in the spin 513. So, in the end, I'd have to say I'm a bit let down with this Chromebook to be hey, editing, room Robbie here and at the last second, we've had a bit of a change in the way I'd like to wrap this video up. Initially, I had said that I liked the hardware, but I was a bit let down by the snapdragon 7c processor, and I also said that I thought you should spend your money elsewhere, but I was formulating that initial suggestion, based on the MSRP of 529 for this Chromebook that Acer has listed on their website right now, while the disappointment in the processor still holds true, the suggestion not to buy this device does not our Acer rep reached out after we filmed with a link to the Walmart listing for the model we tested and when it went live this morning I was a bit shocked to see a price tag of 349 dollars.

That's a massive difference in one that makes this Chromebook sit so much better with me. In every way, now the price drop doesn't fix or change. The fact that I hope for more from the snapdragon 7c, but it does make buying a great overall laptop with mediocre performance, make a lot more sense in the 350 price range. This is some of the nicest outer hardware you can get and with a performance that sits in line with small core intel chips currently on the market. This device becomes a very, very solid deal.

I do think performance will get better over time as google irons out the kinks with the snapdragon, 7c and chrome OS, and I think android apps will perform better as well, but even if they don't. This is a great Chromebook for the price and one that I think many users will be happy to pay 349 dollars for, but that's it for this one guys if you like this video, give us a thumbs up head down there and hit that subscribe button and be sure to click the notification icon right next to it. If you'd like to be alerted when we make future videos just like this one until next time we'll see you.

Source : Chrome Unboxed