Acer Chromebook Spin 713 (2021) review

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 is taking advantage of today's skyrocketing Chromebook popularity as the pandemic stirred up a high demand for budget-friendly, remote-work laptops. In 2020, Chrome became the second most popular desktop OS after Windows. As a Windows user, I bought into the stereotype about Chromebooks being simple, low-end devices that you hand off to younger students in the hopes of avoiding expensive breakage. However, the Chromebook Spin 713 (priced at $699) is a part of the rising tide of Chromebooks changing that perception, bringing a more up market, business-friendly approach to ChromeOS.

The Chromebook Spin 713 carves a nice niche for itself with the enthusiast or professional crowd, as well as students and mobile professionals. Its powerful processor makes it great for running heavier Android or Linux apps. We really wish it had pen capabilities, but the Spin 713 is a compelling premium system that earned its place on our Best Chromebooks page. 

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 price and configuration options

There’s only one variant of the 2021 version of the Chromebook Spin 713. Priced at $699, our review unit is pretty specced out as far as Chromebooks go. It has a 2.4-GHz quad-core Intel Core i5-1135G7 CPU with 8GB of RAM, a 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD, integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics and a 13.5-inch, 2256 x 1504-pixel “CineCrystal” IPS LCD display in a 3:2 aspect ratio. For wireless connectivity, it comes with 802.11ax WiFi and Bluetooth 5.0.

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 design 

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 sports a business casual look with a neat gray chassis, and chromed-out hinges and display edge. The dark-gray lid, featuring Acer and Chromebook branding, is simple and fingerprint-resistant. It’s eye-catching without being too ostentatious. The laptop sports a shape that’s a bit more square than usual due to the display’s 3:2 aspect ratio. This helps to maintain the laptop’s compact footprint, but the panel doesn’t feel cramped either.

The Chromebook Spin 713 measures 9.3 x 11.8 x 0.7 inches and weighs 3.2 pounds. This is a bit bulkier than the competing Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 (2.7 pounds, 12 x 8.0 x 0.6 inches) and significantly larger than the Lenovo Chromebook Duet (2 pounds, 9.4 x 6.3 x 0.3 inches). 

Opening the lid, you’ll see a gray Chiclet keyboard with a keyboard deck and touchpad in a matching shade of gray. The display has a fairly large chin with the Acer emblem on it, but the other three bezels are more reasonably sized. The bottom of the laptop is home to speaker grills and exhaust vents. While in laptop mode, the bottom edge of the display, along with some rubber feet at the bottom, assist in raising the angle of the keyboard to a comfortable position.

The Chromebook Spin 713’s display can be flipped 360 degrees, allowing it to convert between laptop, tent and tablet modes. The hinge is very stable in the tent position, and feels smooth, with an appropriate amount of resistance, when switching the display between different positions. Due to its hefty weight, users may find it uncomfortable to use in tablet mode for extended periods of time. This is particularly the case when playing mobile games that rely on tilting the display for movement.

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 durability

The Chromebook Spin 713 is also pretty durable due to its MIL-STD-810G certification. This means it can survive a drop from four feet. 

Additionally, the display and touchpad are made with Corning Gorilla Glass for added sturdiness. The notebook’s compact frame makes it easy to recommend for environments where toughness and convenience are paramount.

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 ports

The Spin 713 has an ample selection of ports. On the right side, there’s two Thunderbolt 4 ports, a full-sized HDMI port and headphone jack. 

Along the left, you get a power button, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, microSD card slot and volume rocker. The volume rocker, in particular, is an underrated feature in convertible laptops. This often overlooked detail makes it much easier to adjust the volume when using the device in tablet mode.

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 display

One of the Spin 713’s strong suits is its display. The 13.5-inch panel has a 2256 x 1504-pixel resolution with a 3:2 aspect ratio. Watching YouTube or Netflix videos is really nice with the slightly larger display. Colors pop, but aren’t too saturated. I found animation with bright colors to look particularly impressive.

I watched the trailer for Pixar’s Luca, and the Spin 713 gave a good representation of the blues, greens and purples of the underwater scenery. It did great with the sandy, earthy colors of the ground and buildings in the land-based scenes. The cobblestone roads and rustic unevenness of the stucco buildings were clear and detailed. Even in darker scenes, it was easy to see the architectural minutiae of the buildings and the subtle changes in color. 

The Spin 713 reached a display brightness of 427 nits. This is significantly higher than the Chromebook average of 306 nits and better than both the Galaxy Chromebook 2 (390 nits) and the Chromebook Duet (372 nits). 

With regard to vividness, the Chromebook Spin 713 achieved a respectable 79.3% of the DCI-P3 color gamut. While lower than the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 (83.9%), this was higher than the Lenovo Chromebook Duet (74.9%) and the Chromebook average (70.7%). 

As far as the touchscreen capability goes, the Chromebook Spin 713 worked as expected. The 10-touch capacitive panel reacted swiftly and accurately to all my finger swipes. It was particularly useful while playing games such as Rise Up and Mario Run.  Web browsing and consuming multimedia was easy in tablet mode. 

There was a slight misstep however, as the on-screen keyboard didn’t launch as easily as expected when entering text into a search field. Instead, I had to tap the field several times to get the on-screen keyboard to launch. This made the device less appealing as an Android or iOS tablet.

With its 3:2 aspect ratio, the Spin 713 seems ideal for note taking, but there is no support for pen input at all. I tried using my Surface Pen and Logitech Crayon on the device, but neither worked. This is such a missed opportunity and I wish they would make that an option in a future iteration of this device. It’s one of the top things we would change about 2-in-1s. 

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 audio

The Spin 713 speakers are located at the bottom of the keyboard deck. When used in laptop mode, this leads to flat, weak audio. However, in tablet mode or tent mode, the speakers sound significantly better, getting both louder and experiencing more depth. 

Playing “Money” by Moonchild sounds like two different songs depending on how the laptop is placed. If used in laptop mode,the vocalist comes through loud and clear, but the instruments are muddled. However, switching to tablet mode or tent mode, I heard the bass, flute, keyboard and drums much more clearly. 

This seemed to be a trend with a lot of the music I tried. During “O Grande Amor” by Ryuichi Sakamoto & Morelenbaum2, the cello was pretty difficult to hear in laptop mode which was disappointing because it’s the best part of the song. 

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 keyboard and touchpad

The Spin 713’s Chiclet-style keys are slightly smaller than most keyboards. It takes some getting used to, but it’s not a deal breaker. In the 10FastFingers.com typing test, I averaged 63 words per minute, just shy of my 65-wpm average on other devices. The keys themselves feel appropriately springy with good travel. If you’ve ever used a Chrome OS device, the keyboard layout may take some getting used to as the Caps Lock key is replaced with a Search key, and there is no Windows or function key. 

The 4.2 x 3.1-inch touchpad is a good size and is paired with a deeper palm rest area, which was very comfortable. The touchpad has that extra bit of height so it’s wonderful for scrolling through content. However, I did experience some sensitivity at first where even a slight movement of my finger on the touchpad would send the cursor flying to some far off corner of the screen. I mitigated this by changing the setting on the touchpad to the second-slowest speed, which made it much more usable. This also made the touchpad gestures much more responsive and userful for switching between apps and virtual desktops. I also really liked the clickiness of the touchpad. I only had to press about a third of the way down to get a satisfying click. 

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 performance

The Spin 713 proved to be a great performance with its 2.4-GHz Intel Core i5-1135G7 processor, 8GB of RAM, a 256GB PCIe NVMe SSD and Intel Iris Xe graphics. It had no problems running 22 Google Chrome tabs simultaneously, including a Zoom call, a YouTube video, as well as a bunch of web pages, Google Docs and Sheets. It never felt sluggish, but the fan did kick in after a while. 

Clearly performance is the Spin 713’s strong suit. When we ran Geekbench 5.0, our overall performance test, the Spin 713 got a score of 5,174, trouncing the 2,874 Chromebook average. Meanwhile, the Galaxy Chromebook 2 (Core i3-10110U CPU) only notched 2,163.

On the Jetstream 2 browser speed test, the Spin 713 had a result of 168.88, much faster than the 109.09 Chromebook average. The Galaxy Chromebook 2 coming in at 103.74 and the Chromebook Duet only reaching a measly 31.89. 

The Spin 713’s integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics performance was noticeable while playing demanding Android games such as Real Racing 3 and Genshin Impact. Every game ran smoothly with no signs of lag. 

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 battery life

Battery life was not a concern for Spin 713 as my daily driver for work and leisure. The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 has above-average battery life, coming in at 10 hours and 35 minutes on the Laptop Mag battery test, which consists of continuous web surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness. The laptop easily outlasted the 9:39 Chromebook average and the Galaxy Chromebook 2 (8:18). However, the Chromebook Duet had the longest run at 12:46. 

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 heat

Despite its stellar performance, the Chromebook Spin 713 maintained relatively tepid temperatures. After running a fullscreen video for 15 minutes, we measured key spots on the laptop. The touchpad reached 76 degrees Fahrenheit while the center of the keyboard and the undercarriage hit 81 degrees. 

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 webcam

The Chromebook Spin 713 has a fairly typical 720p webcam. It suffers a bit in low light; images looked grainy and skin had a rosier complexion. In brighter environments with natural light coming in, the image looks significantly better, with much less graininess and more accurate skin tone. So just be sure you’re having your Zoom calls at a corner office with good lighting rather than a server room. Or you can check out our best external webcam page for something with better performance. 

Acer Chromebook Spin 713 software and warranty

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 comes with Chrome OS bringing with it Google’s suite of productivity apps such as Docs, Slides and Sheets. Lesser known apps such as Calculator, Text (text editor) and Google Canvas (for drawing), are also onboard and are really well made, useful and round out the experience. There is no bloatware, which is a nice departure from the world of Windows. 

It is also important to note that Chrome OS can run Android apps. This is a hit or miss depending on how good or useful this is, and there are different caveats depending on the app. Caveats include how well the app scales to a tablet form factor or how well it works with a keyboard and touchpad. Even so, most of the Android apps I tested worked in this form factor. This ranged from productivity apps such as Microsoft Word to games like Real Racing 3 and Genshin Impact. 

Another very cool Chrome OS feature is its ability to run Linux apps. This function needs to be enabled in the dev settings and it helps to have a bit of Linux and command line expertise to get apps installed. Once enabled, it opens up a whole new world to Chrome OS users. I just did really simple things like install the Linux versions of Firefox and Spotify and I found that they run flawlessly. Firefox is actually my preferred browser, so it was very cool, and a little ironic, to run it in Chrome OS. I think it is a common misconception, even one that I held previously, that you’re limited on ChromeOS, but there are certainly a lot of different options to install and run different apps.   

The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 comes with a standard one-year warranty. See how Acer fared on Tech Support Showdown and Best and Worst Brands, our annual special reports.

Bottom line

The $699 Acer Chromebook Spin 713 is a solid Chromebook with a lot going for it. It is definitely more of a power user device given the hardware it’s running. You could also make the argument that it is overpowered for a Chrome OS device given that most of what the operating system is designed to do can be accomplished with much less expensive hardware.

Where the Chromebook Spin 713 carves a nice niche for itself with more enthusiast or professional users. Its powerful processor makes it great for running heavier Android or Linux apps. For a student or professional that may want to dabble in Linux or test their Android or web apps, this hardware definitely fits the bill. 

That said, if you’ve already experienced Chrome OS and are enamored with it (or want to take it to the next level), you can’t go wrong with the Chromebook Spin 713. It truly has a lot going for it, including it’s fantastic screen and solid build quality. It has every port most users need on a day-to-day basis. It also has class leading performance, making it great for business users, students and the home tech enthusiast.