The newest Chromebook Spin 713 is just as good as last year’s model.
Acer has made three significant upgrades to the best-in-class Chromebook Spin 713. The first is that the device now has Intel’s newest 11th Gen processors. The second is that the USB-C ports both ufabet support Thunderbolt 4. And the third is that it now has an optional fingerprint reader.
These aren’t the most revolutionary spec bumps in the world. The rest of the Spin 713 remains the same: it has a fantastic 3:2 touch display, a good backlit keyboard, a smooth touchpad, and good value for its premium components. But the changes add up. And they serve to push the Spin 713 even further ahead of its competition than it was before. It’s very much still the Chromebook to buy.
The Spin 713’s standout feature is its 2256 x 1504 panel. It’s one of the best Chromebook screens I’ve ever used. Colors really pop, details are crisp, and it gets plenty bright. Though the screen is glossy, I rarely saw glare, and what I did see didn’t hinder my work.
But my favorite aspect of this display (and of this Chromebook as a whole) is the 3:2 aspect ratio. You get noticeably more vertical space than you would from a standard 16:9 display of a similar size. Less scrolling, less zooming out, more room for all your tabs and apps. I’m a fan of 3:2, and I’ve been happy to see more laptop models taking it up over the past year.
The Spin is the first Chromebook to be certified through Intel’s Evo program, which is meant to recognize the best portable Intel laptops on the market. The Spin did everything I needed it to, including editing big batches of photos and running multiple demanding apps at a time on top of Zoom calls and Spotify streams, quite fast and without any performance issues.
That was also true of last year’s Spin 713. What’s new this year is that I’m hearing the fans. Last year’s model was very quiet, but the fans were almost constantly spinning in this model. The noise wasn’t always annoying, but it was often audible. This makes me anxious about the Spin 713’s ability to cool a Core i7, so even if Acer sells a Core i7 model later this year, I’d recommend that most people stick with a Core i5 model unless you know you need an i7. (The Core i5’s performance here is going to be enough for 90 percent of people.)