Acer Chromebook Spin 311 (2021) Laptop Review

The Acer Chromebook Spin 311 has an unremarkable design. It's thin and light but feels cheap due to its all-plastic construction. The bezels are thick, with 'Antimicrobial Corning Gorilla Glass' printed at the top left corner, which you can't remove. It's a convertible 2-in-1 laptop, meaning you can flip the screen around to use it as a tablet. There are two speakers on the bottom and ports on both sides of the laptop. It's only available in the Pure Silver color scheme.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 311 feels decently well-built. Although it's entirely plastic and doesn't feel particularly premium, there are no gaps in the construction, and it doesn't scratch or gather fingerprints easily. There's some flex in the keyboard deck but almost none in the display. The feet are okay. If you want a similar laptop with better build quality, check out the Lenovo Chromebook C340 15 (2020).

The hinge is good. It feels solid, and it has a 360-degree range that allows you to flip the screen around and use it as a tablet.

The Acer Spin 311 Chromebook is very portable due to its compact size. The power adapter is also small and lightweight.

The serviceability is bad. It's easy to access the internals since you only have to remove some screws and unclip the bottom panel; however, the only user-replaceable part is the battery, which we don't expect most users will need to replace during the lifetime of the device.

You can see the user manual here.

• Acer Chromebook Spin 311 laptop
• 45W USB-C power adapter and cord
• Documentation

The Acer Chromebook Spin 311 screen has a low resolution, but the pixel density is passable because the screen is relatively small. It's sharp enough for general web browsing and video playback; you just don't get much space for multitasking. The bezels are thick, which some people might find distracting. If you're looking for a 2-in-1 laptop and want a significantly better-looking screen, check out the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 (2020).

The Acer Chromebook Spin 311 is only available with a 60Hz display, which is typical for a budget Chromebook. The response time is slow, causing visible ghosting, so it isn't ideal for viewing fast-moving content or gaming.

The contrast ratio is decent for an IPS panel. However, it's still relatively low compared to other display technologies like VA and OLED. This contrast level makes blacks look gray in dark settings. Chromebooks have a built-in Content Aware Brightness Control feature, a type of adaptive brightness, but it doesn't seem to affect the checkerboard pattern used for testing.

The screen brightness is mediocre. It doesn't get bright enough to combat glare in well-lit or sunny environments. However, it gets very dim at the lowest brightness setting, which is great for viewing content in the dark as it's easier on the eyes. If you want a Chromebook with a brighter display, check out the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 (2023).

The reflection handling is good. It mainly struggles with direct reflections, so it's best to avoid having bright light sources directed at the screen because the reflections can be distracting even with the screen at maximum brightness.

The black uniformity is mediocre. It looks patchy, and there's backlight bleed along the top and bottom edges. That said, it's still better than most budget laptops, which typically use TN panels, and the uniformity issues are only visible when viewing dark-color content in a dim setting.

The Acer 311 has a passable horizontal viewing angle. Colors fade relatively quickly as you move off-center. It's okay for most uses, but it isn't ideal for sharing the screen with someone else, especially if image accuracy is necessary.

The vertical viewing angle is acceptable. The image looks dimmer and washed out when viewing from above and below, but you still have a bit of leeway to tilt the screen to your liking before the image becomes inaccurate.

The out-of-the-box color accuracy is decent. The white balance is only slightly off, but most colors appear inaccurate due to the panel's poor color gamut. The gamma doesn't follow the sRGB curve at all, causing most scenes to appear darker than they should. On the bright side, the color temperature is almost exactly at the standard 6500K target.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 311 has a poor color gamut. It doesn't even cover the commonly-used sRGB color space, so some content can appear dull or washed out because the colors lack saturation. It also has very limited coverage of the wider color spaces like Adobe RGB, DCI P3, and Rec. 2020. This display isn't ideal for any color-critical work or for viewing HDR content.

The backlight is entirely flicker-free at all brightness levels, which helps reduce eye strain.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 311's keyboard is passable. The keys are well-spaced, so it doesn't feel cramped even though the laptop itself is very compact. It's fairly comfortable and satisfying to type on as the keys are easy to actuate, have a good amount of travel, and provide tactile feedback. They aren't the most stable keys, though, and they feel a bit cheap. Also, there's no backlighting.

If you're looking for a similarly priced Chromebook and need a Numpad, check out the Acer Chromebook 315 (2020).

The touchpad is sub-par. It's small, and the clicking mechanism feels low-quality. Palm rejection doesn't always work; however, accidental triggers don't happen often enough to be a major issue.

The speakers are okay. There's more emphasis in the high-mid and low-treble frequencies, which helps bring vocals forward, and they get pretty loud with minimal compression at max volume. However, like most laptop speakers, they have almost no bass. If you're looking for a Chrome OS device with a 360-degree hinge and want significantly better-sounding speakers, check out the HP Chromebook x360 12 (2021).

The webcam's video quality is bad. The image is bright enough, and the color reproduction is decent, but the overall image is still soft and lacking in detail due to the webcam's limited resolution. The microphone sounds clear but quiet, and there's also some background noise.

The port selection is very limited. The single USB-C port supports USB 3.2 Gen 1 (up to 5Gbps data transfer speed) and video output, and it's also the laptop's sole charging port. This means that if you connect to an external display that doesn't support power delivery, you can't charge the laptop while using the display. The USB-A supports USB 2.0 data transfer speed (up to 480Mbps).

The wireless adapter is a Qualcomm Atheros QCNFA324.

There are many models of the Acer Chromebook Spin 311 with different CPU configurations. However, the CP311-3H series, to which our unit belongs, is only available with the MediaTek MT8183 SoC (System-on-Chip). It's a low-power ARM-based processor with four performance cores to handle more demanding tasks and four efficiency cores to save power in lighter workloads. It's powerful enough for general productivity and media consumption, but don't expect to do any CPU-intensive tasks like video editing or 3D modeling. If you have a heavier workload and need a Chromebook with newer, faster CPUs, check out the ASUS Chromebook Plus CX34 (2023).

The Mali-G72 MP3 is an integrated GPU on the MediaTek MT8183 SoC. It has enough graphical processing power to handle general web browsing, video playback, and a good portion of the games from the Google Play Store. However, it struggles in very graphically demanding games or tasks like video editing.

You can only get the this laptop with 4GB of RAM. It's enough for light productivity and media consumption, but you'll see some stutters and slowdowns if you have many apps or Chrome tabs open at once.

There are two storage options: 32GB and 64GB. Chrome OS takes up more than a third of the available space on a 32GB model, leaving very little space to install apps or store files locally. It's best to get the 64GB model because you can't upgrade the storage after purchase.

The Acer Spin 311's Geekbench 5 scores are awful. It can handle general web browsing, video playback, and light productivity tasks like word processing, but not demanding workloads like video editing or physics simulations. We can't run the GPU compute test on our version of Geekbench 5 because it doesn't support the proper graphics API, though it'll likely perform just as poorly.

Cinebench R23 doesn't work on Chrome OS.

Blender doesn't run on Chrome OS. It runs on Linux, but Ubuntu Desktop installations don't officially support ARM-based SoCs, and the same goes for Blender itself. That said, the MediaTek MT8183 SoC and its Mali-G72 MP3 integrated GPU will likely perform poorly in 3D rendering tasks.

The Mali-G72 MP3 integrated GPU performs terribly in the Basemark GPU benchmark. It can handle games from the Google Play Store, but you might see some stutters in very graphically demanding titles.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 311's eMMC storage drive is very slow. However, the system still feels reasonably responsive and snappy because Chrome OS is a light operating system, and most tasks are web-based. The slow read and write speeds are only noticeable when transferring files or installing and launching a large app. The 64GB storage drive will perform similarly.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 311 has exceptional battery life. It lasts almost two full workdays of light productivity like web browsing, and while it's shorter for video playback, it's still enough to get you through a couple of movies and TV shows. Gaming significantly shortens the battery life, but it's still better than most gaming laptops with a dedicated GPU. Battery life varies greatly depending on your usage.

Borderlands 3 doesn't run on Chrome OS.

Civilization VI doesn't work on Chrome OS.

CS:GO doesn't work on Chrome OS.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider doesn't work on Chrome OS.

The Acer Spin 311 has exceptional thermal and noise performance. The keyboard deck doesn't get hot under load, and there's no fan noise because it's a fanless device.

We can't test the performance over time because UNIGINE Heaven and Cinebench R23 aren't compatible with Chrome OS. It likely suffers from some performance loss under load, which is typical for a fanless device.

The Acer Spin 311 runs on the 32-bit version of Chrome OS. Chrome OS doesn't support x86 applications like Adobe Premiere or DaVinci Resolve, which means you can only use web apps through the Chrome browser, Android apps from the Google Play Store, and Linux apps. If you need a laptop that can run full x86 applications, check out the HP Stream 11 (2021).

Every Chromebook has an 'expiration date' at which it stops receiving software updates, and according to Google's official document, the Spin 311's end-of-life is June 2028. Google may extend this date as they have in the past for other Chromebooks; it's best to check their official document for any changes.