Acer Chromebook Spin 713 (2020)  Laptop Review

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 is a business-styled laptop with a tall 3:2 aspect ratio. It's thin, with two down-firing speakers on the front and exhausts on the bottom near the back. The hinge rotates a full 360 degrees, meaning you can use the laptop as a tablet.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 feels well built, particularly for a Chromebook. The bottom of the device is plastic, with solid, tough-feeling feet that help keep it from sliding around. The top frame and body are metal, and the hinge is stable and has a lot of resistance. There are small rubber nubs beside each hinge that prevent the laptop from bumping up against a wall, which feel a bit loose.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713's hinge is exceptional. It rotates a full 360 degrees so that you can use the laptop in tablet mode. There's a lot of resistance, so it feels very solid and doesn't bend while typing, yet it's still easy to open with a single finger.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 and its included charger are very portable, and you can easily pack them in a bag to bring along. However, its tall 3:2 aspect ratio means you might have some trouble stuffing it into bags meant for more compact laptops.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 has poor serviceability overall. You only need to unscrew nine Phillips head screws to access the internals, but you need to pry the panel open with something sturdy and can't use just your nails. There aren't any replaceable components other than the battery, which we don't expect you to have to replace over the usable life of the machine, so you need to get the configuration you want when you buy the device. Opening the laptop and making changes to the hardware may void the manufacturer's warranty.

• Acer Chromebook Spin 713 laptop
• 45W power adapter and cable
• Documentation

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 has a tall 3:2 aspect ratio that gives you more vertical room, meaning you won't have to scroll as much. Its display is a touchscreen, so you can use it as a tablet if you flip it all the way around. Its high resolution and pixel density make content look clear and crisp. The bezels are thin on the sides and top, but the bottom chin is noticeably thicker. The Chrome OS settings show a lower screen resolution of 1410 x 940 at the default scaling, but this lower resolution is only a quirk of the software. It rescales the UI, but the quality of images and text isn't affected.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 doesn't support any variable refresh rate technology, which is typical of most Chromebooks. You can see a lot of ghosting and image trails in our motion blur photo, so the response time is visibly slow. Fast-moving content doesn't look very clear as a result. If you want a Chromebook with a higher refresh rate and faster response time, check out the Acer Chromebook 516 GE (2022).

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 has a good contrast ratio, but blacks still look gray when viewed in the dark. The contrast ratio may vary between units.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 gets bright enough to use in very well-lit rooms, but visibility is still a problem outdoors or in direct sunlight due in part to the screen's glossy finish. It gets very dim at the lowest setting, so you can comfortably use the laptop in the dark.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713's glossy screen excels at handling indirect glare, meaning you can use it in a bright room. However, direct reflections are still distracting, even with the screen at maximum brightness.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713's screen has decent black uniformity. There's only a bit of backlight bleed along a couple of edges and corners, but it isn't distracting and is only visible when viewing a dark image in a dark room. Black uniformity may vary between units.

The Acer Spin 713's IPS display has reasonable horizontal viewing angles. The screen doesn't dim too much or look too washed out even at extreme angles, but those who care about perfect accuracy still need to be right in front of the display to get the best image quality.

The Acer Spin 713 has decent vertical viewing angles. Colors don't look badly washed out, and the screen doesn't dim too much, even at sharp angles. You still have freedom when tilting the screen forward and backward, which lets you use the laptop comfortably in many different situations.

The Acer Spin 713 has decent color accuracy out of the box. There's a noticeably warm tone, as the color temperature is off from our 6500K target, but most colors are very accurate. However, darker scenes are too dark, while most scenes are a little too bright. Color accuracy may vary between units.

The Acer Spin 713 has an excellent color gamut. There's full sRGB coverage, so all the colors commonly used in standard web content are properly displayed. While there's very good Adobe RGB coverage, it still might not be enough for professionals working in photography. It has very good coverage of the DCI P3 gamut which is used for standard HDR content, but its poor Rec. 2020 coverage means we don't consider it a wide-gamut display.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 uses a completely flicker-free display, which helps reduce eye strain for some people.

The Acer Spin 713's keyboard is very good overall. It feels good and is comfortable to type on, and it's quiet enough to use in noise-sensitive environments like classrooms. There's a good amount of travel, and the keys are light enough not to cause strain when typing over extended periods. The key material feels a bit cheap, and the keys aren't amazingly stable, but they still feel fine overall. You can turn the backlighting off or adjust it across four brightness levels.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 has a decent touchpad. It's a little more square than most, giving you more vertical space when scrolling. It tracks movements and gestures well, and clicking feels okay. Unfortunately, you can only click the bottom of the touchpad and not anywhere else. Clicking and dragging occasionally gets interrupted due to the mouse click no longer being registered, so you may accidentally drop files somewhere you didn't initially mean to.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 has decent-sounding speakers. They have a relatively neutral profile, but they lack bass like most laptop speakers. There isn't much compression at maximum volume, but that said, they don't get very loud. The two speakers fire downwards, so content might sound different depending on the surface the laptop is sitting on.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 has an adequate webcam and microphone. The webcam registers colors well, but the image looks overexposed and warm. There's also a loss of fine details in objects like the strands of hair and the weaving of the Yoshi, but you can still make some of it out. The microphone picks up voices loud and clear, but they sound dull, and there's noticeable static. If you want a similar laptop with a better webcam, check out the Acer Chromebook Spin 714 (2022), a newer version of this laptop.

Update 01/18/2022: We've re-evaluated the scoring and lowered the score by 0.5 point because one of the USB-C ports is used to charge the laptop, leaving only one available USB-C port.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 has a good selection of ports. Two USB-C ports support USB 3.2 Gen 1 (up to 5Gbps), charging, and video output to external monitors via DisplayPort out. The USB-A port supports USB 3.2 Gen 1 (up to 5Gbps). Along the right side of the laptop, you'll find the power button and the volume rocker. If you use multiple wired peripherals, you might need to use a USB-C dongle or USB-A hub.

The wireless adapter is an Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201.

We tested the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 with a dual-core Intel Core i3-10110U. You can also get it with the more power-efficient Intel Pentium Gold 6405U or the more powerful quad-core i5-10210U or quad-core i7-10510U processors. They all have hyperthreading, which allows multiple processes to run on the same core for faster multitasking compared to processors without hyperthreading. While the Pentium Gold CPU is already more than capable of executing typical light productivity tasks, web browsing, or video playback on Chrome OS, the more powerful processors make multitasking and launching programs even smoother. We expect the i7 to be overkill for most tasks in Chrome OS, although it might come in handy if you need to run Linux apps.

All models of the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 use integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620, which Intel calls "Intel UHD Graphics for 10th Gen Intel Processors". The only difference is that their maximum frequency gets faster for higher-end processors, but the difference isn't noticeable at all in any practical scenarios.

Our model of the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 has 4GB of DDR4 RAM, but you can get it with 8GB or even 16GB of RAM. 4GB is enough to properly run light productivity tasks on Chrome OS, as well as most Google Play Store apps aside from very demanding games, but it gets sluggish if you have lots of browser tabs open. You should get 8GB if you expect to have to multitask heavily. 16GB won't give any extra noticeable benefits for most Chrome OS tasks but might be beneficial if you run heavy Linux applications.

Our model of the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 is equipped with 64GB of eMMC storage. It should be enough to accommodate most apps and games you need if you intend to use cloud storage for larger photos and videos, but you can get it with a 128GB eMMC drive if you need more space to keep important files locally. You can also get it with a significantly faster 128GB or 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD, which speeds up booting the laptop and launching applications.

Our model of the Acer Chromebook 713 with the Intel Core i3-10110U has sub-par performance in the Geekbench 5 benchmarks. Its single-thread performance is decent, which benefits tasks like photo editing, but its multi-thread performance is disappointing, making tasks like video encoding take a lot longer. The Pentium Gold variants perform worse in general because they don't support boost clocking. On the other hand, the i5 and i7 variants have significantly better multi-thread performance because they have two more cores. However, their single-thread performance will only increase moderately compared to our i3 model. We can't run the GPU compute test because Geekbench doesn't support the proper graphics API. However, we don't expect the integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620 to perform well in computational workloads, regardless of the processor.

Cinebench isn't compatible with Chrome OS or Linux.

Our Acer Chromebook 713 with the Intel Core i3-10110U takes over 15 minutes to render the relatively simple bmw27 scene, so it isn't suited for enthusiasts or professionals working with 3D renders. To perform this test, we used the Linux version of Blender and ran it in a container. We can't run the GPU render test because the Linux version of Blender doesn't support the proper API, but we don't expect the integrated graphics to perform any better than the CPU. We expect the i5 and i7 variants to render the scene in under 10 minutes, but still not fast enough to be appropriate for critical 3D rendering work. The Pentium Gold variants will take significantly longer than 15 minutes and aren't suitable even for amateur or enthusiast 3D rendering work.

The Acer Spin 713 performs awfully in the Basemark GPU benchmark, typical of a dual-core CPU without a dedicated GPU. The i5 and i7 variants will perform better in CPU-bound games such as those with plenty of physically interacting particles, but none of the CPUs are suitable for running graphically intensive games at high settings.

The Acer Spin 713 with eMMC storage has poor performance on paper, but the laptop still feels fast and responsive because Chrome OS is lightweight. The write speeds are very slow, so downloading files or installing apps take noticeably longer compared to launching them. Some variants use significantly faster PCIe NVMe SSDs, making booting and launching applications take almost no time at all. The SSD's speed may vary depending on the size, as larger SSDs tend to perform better.

The Acer Spin 713 has a remarkable battery that should last a full day for work and school, so you won't need to bring the power adapter around or constantly have to find a place to charge. There's also enough screen on time to last through quite a few movies or many TV show episodes. We expect the battery on the Pentium Gold 6405U models to last even longer. Battery life varies greatly depending on usage.

Borderlands 3 isn't compatible with Chrome OS or Linux.

Civilization VI isn't compatible with Chrome OS or Linux.

CS:GO isn't compatible with Chrome OS. Even if you run the Linux version in a container, we don't expect the CPU and integrated graphics to provide a satisfactory gaming experience.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider isn't compatible with Chrome OS. We don't expect the CPU and integrated graphics to provide a satisfactory gaming experience even if you run the Linux version in a container.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 has impressive thermal and noise handling. At idle, the laptop feels only slightly warm and is almost completely silent. Under load, it gets warm to the touch, with the hottest point being on the center-right side above the keyboard, so it doesn't cause much discomfort. At full tilt, the fans give off a middling-pitched whirring noise, but it isn't bothersome.

Cinebench R23 and UNIGINE Heaven aren't compatible with Chrome OS, so we can't test the performance over time while under load. However, we don't expect any variants to throttle significantly under sustained workloads.

The Acer Spin 713 runs Chrome OS, a Linux-based operating system with functionality built around the Google Chrome browser and Google Play Store apps. You can also run Linux apps like GIMP in a container using Crostini. However, it isn't compatible with many popular x86 applications like DaVinci Resolve. It comes preloaded with the Google Stadia app as it's now part of Chrome OS by default. Otherwise, there isn't any other extra software other than what Chrome OS natively comes bundled with.

Every Chromebook has an "expiration date" at which it stops receiving software updates, and according to Google's official document, the end-of-life of the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 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.

Along the right edge of the laptop, beside the HDMI and USB-C ports, there's an additional volume rocker and power button.