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The Acer Chromebook Spin measures 30x23x1.5cm, the last figure at the back if you measure at the front it's barely 1cm, it weighs 1368 grams.
Going around the outside has USB ‘C’, USB3, 3.5mm socket for headphones and Micro SD card socket on the left side. The front is clear. The right side has volume rocker, HDMI out, USB ‘C’ and finally on/off button. The back is clear as the screen rotates 180 degrees to become a Tablet. The base has four landscape rubber feet 3x.5cm to keep the unit just off whatever you sit it on, just inside the front pair of feet are two quite acceptable speakers.
Open the lid and the screen should automatically spring to life it is a slightly strange shape in 3:2 format at 28.5x18.5cm which gives the notional diagonal imperial resolution of quite close to 14 inches. Unlike most Windows screens you can easily change the display to show as much or as little as you like or indeed your eyesight will tolerate between 2256x1504 in nine steps up to 1085x723. You can also change the orientation which is useful when used as a Portrait Tablet.
The 76 key keyboard has full sized alpha and numeric keys and as Chromebooks have always done the letters are shown lower case. There is close to 1.5cm clear each side of the keyboard and 3cm clear at the rear. 10cm is clear at the front with the 10.5x7.7cm trackpad mounted centrally.
Shutdown is very quick at less than a couple of seconds and bootup is less than ten seconds. Open the lid and it automatically starts to either your Pin or password.
Chromebooks now do much more as the Android store is now supported and while things can look a little different to your phone most of that is the swapping from Portrait to Landscape display.
I understand that more powerful Chromebooks can even run Windows but until I get one to test it will remain something theoretical.
The early Chromebooks were sold with little or no internal memory nowadays they have some and so can work offline which if this winter brings power cuts will enable you to continue working when there is no Wi-Fi available as long as your Chromebook has battery power. Most recent Chromebooks have good battery life this one claims ten hours and while my usage exceeded that it will depend on how you use it.
An equivalent Windows notebook with touch will cost far more than its Chromebook comparison.
So unless you need programs that only run on Windows and you are thinking of changing just work out what you must have and see if it has an equal on Chrome or Android. This offering is also useable as a Tablet as the Corning Gorilla glass screen rotates back on itself.
The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 is available in a range of processor and memory configurations. The model sent to me had an i3 processor and 8GB of memory and at the time of publication is available from Amazon for £499.99.
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