Acer Spin 3 (With Amazon Alexa) Review

"Alexa, turn off the lights!" Imagine shouting that to the notebook computer sitting on your dresser, and the room goes dark.

Impressed? If so, check out the new iteration of the Acer Spin 3.

In that voice-command aspect, it's more than just another convertible 2-in-1 laptop.

(It starts at $499; it's $699 in the specific SP314-51-59NM model tested here.) One of the first Windows 10 machines to integrate Amazon's Alexa digital assistant out of the box, this laptop doubles as a smart home device.

As long as you don't mind some meaty screen bezels, a ho-hum keyboard and webcam, and no USB Type-C, the Spin 3 can serve as a good workaday 2-in-1, thanks to a vibrant, 360-degree-rotating display and an eighth-generation Intel Core i3 or i5 processor.

But Alexa is the main draw here; you'll have someone other than Cortana to order around.

Putting a Spin on the Ordinary

Like the previous Acer Spin 3 ( at Amazon) , the new model bears horizontal and vertical lines etched on its aluminum lid, while the keyboard deck and palm rest sport horizontal ones.

The lid is held in place by two full-range hinges.

You can rotate the screen around up to 360 degrees for use in one of four modes.

Tablet mode sees the screen flip all the way back, so that the display lies flat against the base of the machine; Stand mode plants the keyboard face down, with the display facing your direction; Tent mode stands up the machine like an upside-down "V"; and Laptop mode is the usual orientation for using a notebook.

Measuring 0.82 by 13.19 by 9.06 inches (HWD), the Acer Spin 3 is thicker and larger than the Editors' Choice Lenovo Yoga 920 (0.55 by 12.72 by 8.8 inches), as well as the Dell Inspiron 13 7000 (0.76 by 12.7 by 8.8 inches).

At the same time, the Acer Spin 3 boasts a 14-inch display rather than the 13-inch-class screens in the Yoga 920 ($999.99 at Amazon) and Inspiron 13 7000.

Naturally, that screen-size difference is going to make it a little bulkier, and the Spin 3 weighs 3.75 pounds, versus those models' lighter 3.02 pounds (Yoga 920) and 3.5 pounds (Inspiron 13 7000).

Still, the Acer Spin 3 doesn't feel overly heavy in a bag or case, even with its compact, square AC adapter riding along.

Along the edges of its screen, you'll notice side bezels around half an inch thick, while the top bezel measures around 0.75 inch and the bottom around an inch and a half.

A webcam is positioned in the center of the top bezel.

It captures both photos and videos at a resolution of 1,280 by 720 pixels with a grainy and dull look, the latter of which is surprising since Acer's marketing materials suggest that the webcam features high-dynamic range (HDR) video capture.

(That said, HDR seems a tall order for a laptop webcam.)

Also a little disappointing is the Acer Spin 3's keyboard, which is not backlit and doesn't have discrete Home and End keys.

To access these functions, you will have to hold down the Fn key while pressing Pg Up (for Home) or Pg Down (for End).

The keys themselves are shallow and low-travel, with little space between your fingertips and the keyboard deck.

Be that as it may, the Acer Spin 3's keyboard has a fast, tactile typing feel with adequate spacing across the layout between each key.

Just don't expect much key movement.

Meanwhile, the touchpad on the Acer Spin 3 is par for the mainstream-laptop course.

You can tap it or press it down to carry out a "click" function, or do the same with two fingers to right-click.

It isn't quite as satisfying as using physical mouse buttons or Apple's haptic-feedback Force Touch trackpad, but it suffices.

Above the keyboard deck is the Acer Spin 3's main speaker grille, with a second pair of speakers on the rear edge of the machine for outputting crisp sound no matter what mode the laptop is in.

At maximum volume, the audio is impressive and just loud enough to fill a medium-size room.

Because the Acer Spin 3 has two built-in stereo speakers, sound comes through crystal clear in all four convertible modes, even if it's not all that bassy.

Above the webcam is a pair of built-in microphones that filters out background noise and supports far-field voice recognition from up to 9 feet away.

That way, when you shout demands at Alexa from across the room, it can listen and respond without fuss.

"Hey Cortana, Open Alexa"

Amazon's digital assistant makes its Windows 10 debut on the Acer Spin 3.

It's activated using the simple voice command as ever—"Alexa!"—but this version of the cloud-based voice service differs in some fundamental ways from the Alexa I've gotten to know on Amazon's lineup of Echo devices.

For one, while you can ask an Echo Dot to play music from Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, Pandora, SiriusXM, Spotify, or TuneIn, the Spin 3's rendition of Alexa is limited to Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, SiriusXM, and TuneIn for streaming.

(Spotify is shut out.) Likewise, despite the fact that the Amazon Echo devices support calling and messaging, both of those features are omitted from Alexa on the Acer Spin 3.

Another distinction between Alexa for Windows 10 and the version in the Echo devices is that, if you let it, Alexa is always listening on Amazon's hardware.

As long as your Echo is plugged in, you can ask about the weather conditions outside and expect an answer in seconds.

With Alexa on the Acer Spin 3, you must first be logged in to the system with Alexa enabled at startup.

Then, to achieve the same "always-on" effect as the Echo devices, you'll have to make a tweak in the Power Options panel on the laptop so that it "Never" goes to sleep while plugged in or on battery.

Granted, you only have to do this once.

For the average consumer, though, that's a lot of steps to achieve the same behavior you get from a $40 Echo Dot out of the box.

Even so, once I had the laptop configured thus, my experience with Alexa on the Acer Spin 3 was mostly positive.

I was able to ask it many of the same questions that I do my own Echo Dot, such as, "Alexa, what's on my calendar?" and "Alexa, how long will it take me to get to work today?"

Additionally, I found that I was able to ask Cortana to launch Alexa for me—an interesting and ironic twist, if unnecessary unless you have Amazon's digital assistant disabled at startup.

And although Acer's premium Swift 7 and Switch 7 notebooks support Wake on Voice (WoV), the Acer Spin 3 does not, explaining why a semi-complicated workaround is required to keep the assistant always-on.

"Alexa, Can You Grow a USB-C Port?"

Like the non-Alexa variant of the Acer Spin 3 we reviewed earlier in the year, the model with Alexa bears an AC adapter connector, an HDMI port, and two USB 3.0 Type-A ports on its left side.

On its right, you'll find a single USB 2.0 port, an SD-card slot, and a headphone jack, in addition to the power button and a Kensington lock slot.

Alas, USB Type-C is, once again, the missing member among the Acer Spin 3's connectivity options.

Whether Thunderbolt 3 or plain USB, I would have appreciated the inclusion of one of the reversible, versatile ports on either side of this convertible machine.

Then again, few systems in the sub-$500 range do have USB Type-C, and because the Spin 3 starts at $399, it makes sense that the number of ports was kept to a minimum across all configurations for the sake of maintaining a low base price.

The 14-inch, 1,920-by-1,080-pixel IPS touch display is sharp and vibrant.

However, that does come with the caveat of some noticeable screen glare, especially under intense lighting conditions.

When using the Acer Spin 3 outside or in a room with light shining through large windows, the screen isn't as attractive as it is in a dimly lit room.

Be that as it may, the touch aspect of the Acer Spin 3's screen is fluid and responsive.

And while I have my quibbles about using Windows 10 on a touch panel, the bottom line is that the Acer Spin 3's touch-capable display works as advertised—in whichever of the four modes you have the machine bent into.

The Acer Spin 3 starts at $499, but only the SP314-51-59NM model I reviewed is compatible with Alexa.

While the $499 model comes with a dual-core Intel Core i3-8130U processor, 4GB of RAM, and 1TB of hard drive space, my $699 review unit comes outfitted with an Intel Core i5-8250U, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB of SSD storage.

Given our impressions of the $499 model just two months ago, I suggest buying this model instead.

Not only does it boast flash storage that's snappier than the 5,400rpm drive of the base unit, but for $200 more, you get a processor with double the cores, to boot.

(The Core i5-8250U is a 1.6GHz quad-core chip, in contrast to the 2.2GHz, dual-core Core i3-8130U.)

Along with Windows 10 Home, the Acer Spin 3 ships with a handful of applications pre-installed.

Included in the mix are Open Labs' music-creation tool Stagelight, as well as Amazon, Dashlane, eBay, Evernote, and Netflix promos, among more commercial offerings such as the Booking.com app and the WildTangent Games store.

The Acer Spin 3 has Bluetooth 4.1 as well as 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and is backed by a standard one-year warranty.

Performance: In Fine Form, for a U-Series

In our performance testing, we pitted the Acer Spin 3 against several competing 2-in-1 laptops: the Lenovo Yoga 920, the Dell Inspiron 13 7000, and the Asus ZenBook Flip 14.

Likewise, we paid close attention to how it stacks up to its larger 15.6-inch sibling, the Acer Spin 5 ($799.99 at Acer) .

Because the Spin 3 wields a fairly common 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-8250U processor, the performance didn't differ all that drastically from that of its family and these rivals.

In fact, all but two of the laptops in our performance comparison charts also use the Core i5-8250U—the Asus ZenBook Flip 14 ($1,499.11 at Amazon) and Lenovo Yoga 920 take advantage of the slightly higher-clocked Intel Core i7-8550U, another U-series low-power processor in the same family.

The major differences don't come into play until we get to the graphics testing.

Whereas the Acer Spin 3 relies purely on integrated graphics (Intel UHD Graphics 620, to be exact), the Asus ZenBook Flip 14 has an advantage, in a discrete Nvidia GeForce MX150 graphics chip with 2GB of VRAM.

Thus, in PCMark 8, our productivity benchmark, the Acer Spin 3 scored 3,271 points, almost indistinguishable from the Dell Inspiron 13 7000's leading score.

And while the Spin 3 technically came out ahead of the Core i7-equipped Asus ZenBook Flip 14, it's well within the margin of error.

See How We Test Laptops

The Acer Spin 3 sang a similar tune in Handbrake, where the Asus ZenBook Flip 14 led the pack by a hair at 1 minute and 9 seconds (1:09).

The Acer Spin 3, on the other hand, converted our test file in 1:22, faster than the Acer Spin 5, which trailed at 1:29.

The Core i7 showed a decided, but not enormous, edge.

Our graphics benchmarks were another story.

Across the board, the Asus ZenBook Flip 14 and its GeForce chip came out on top in every test.

In 3DMark's Cloud Gate subtest, the Acer Spin 3 scored 8,099 points, compared with the 12,556 of the Asus ZenBook Flip 14.

In Fire Strike Extreme, the Acer Spin 3 managed 483 points, versus the 1,280 pulled off by the Asus ZenBook Flip 14.

The remaining laptops in our graphics-performance benchmarking fared about the same as the Acer Spin 3, no surprise as they all rely on the same Intel UHD Graphics 620 silicon.

Furthermore, the Acer Spin 3 ran Unigine's Heaven benchmark at 21 frames per second (fps) at Medium graphics settings, and 5fps at Ultra.

Its results on Unigine's Valley test were similar.

Compare that with the Asus ZenBook Flip 14's results, and you'll see why the Acer Spin 3 is not much of a gamer.

Still, neither of these systems is fit for playing AAA games anywhere from High to Ultra settings; casual or Web-based games will be fine.

Even the ZenBook Flip 14 suffered in Ultra quality Heaven and Valley benchmarks, outputting just 15fps and 18fps, respectively.

The Money, Quite Literally, Talks

All in all, this remix of the Acer Spin 3 is a perfectly adequate 2-in-1 hybrid laptop with the standout feature being that it's Alexa-equipped.

A handsome, albeit glossy, 1080p display and a pair of flexible hinges that let you flip the system inside out are also standouts.

Although the bezels are a bit thick and the machine is hefty, the Acer Spin 3 does have some price appeal.

It costs just $699, $150 less than the Dell Inspiron 13 7000 with the same specs, but a bigger screen.

(Dell's convertible is a 13.3-incher.) Still, considering that its big distinguisher, Alexa, will be available on other, non-Acer laptops later in the year, the Spin 3's greatest weakness is that it fails to distinguish itself very strongly from other 2-in-1 laptops in its class beyond being first to the Amazon party.

But it's certainly a solid-enough effort for its class.