Acer Spin SP513-51 stylus review – how to pair?

Does Acer Spin 5 convertible laptop 13.5 2K 2256 x 1504 come with Stylus? 13.5″ Acer VertiView 2K 2256 x 1504 Widescreen IPS LED-backlit Touch Display (3:2 aspect ratio) Intel Iris Plus Graphics. Co-engineered by Intel and Acer, the Spin 5 features a 10th Gen InteI Core i7 processor and integrated Intel Wi-Fi 6, the Spin 5 opens more possibilities than ever before—via performance, connectivity and entertainment. Get details in Acer Spin SP513-51 stylus review.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Thin and light
• 3:2 display perfect for note-taking
• Colorful display
• Powerful 10th-Gen Intel CPU
• Stylus included
• Two Thunderbolt 3 ports
• Fantastic battery life
• Feature rich stylus included

Cons

• 3:2 display not ideal for 16:9 video
• Gaming isn’t great
• Bloatware includes desktop pop-up ads
• Sound is so-so

Specs – Acer Spin SP513-51 convertible laptop with stylus

• CPU: Intel Core i7-1065G7
• Graphics: Intel Iris Plus Graphics
• RAM: 16GB LPDDR4X
• Screen: 13.5-inch FHD (2256×1504) VertiView IPS Display
• Storage: 512GB PCIe NVMe SSD
• Ports: 2 x USB 3.1 Type-C with Thunderbolt 3 (DP and USB-charging available), 1 x USB 3.1 2.0, HDMI 2.0, MicroSD reader, 3.5mm headphone jack with microphone headset support, DC-in, N-lock, Stylus dock
• Connectivity: Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax 2×2, Bluetooth 5.0
• Camera: 720pHD webcam
• Security: Fingerprint sensor
• Weight: 2.65 lbs (1.2kg)
• Size (W x D x H): 11.81 x 9.5 x 0.59 inches (300 x 235 x 14.9 mm)
• Battery: 56Whr, 4-cell lithium-ion

Price – Acer Spin SP513-51 laptop with stylus

The Spin 5’s base model costs $999. It’s equipped with an Intel Core i5-1035G4 CPU, Intel Iris Plus graphics, 16GB of RAM, a 512GB SSD, a 2256 x 1504-pixel touchscreen display, and Windows 10 Home.

The Spin 5 was originally priced starting at $899, but that was before the pandemic. You can get one direct from Acer for $999 with a 10th-gen Intel Core i5 or go up to a Core i7 for $1,099. In the UK, it sells for £1,099 and AU$2,162 in Australia. All in all, while the deal isn’t as good, the Spin 5 is still reasonably priced for everything you’re getting. 

Compare Acer Spin SP513-51 laptop with stylus

Acer Spin SP513-51 convertible laptop with stylus review

Design

Opening the lid, you’ll find that the Spin 5 has a squarish, 13.5-inch display; it is taller than it is wide with a 3:2 aspect ratio. The side bezels are slim, but the Spin 5’s large chin —  sporting a bold silver Acer logo — would make Jay Leno envious. The top bezel is thick to accommodate the 720p camera.

Light weight

The Spin 5 is 2.6 pounds and 0.59 inches thick. This Acer laptop is thinner and lighter than its 2-in-1 competitors: the Lenovo Yoga C940 (3 pounds, 0.6 inches thick) and the HP Spectre x360 13 (2.7 pounds, 0.7 inches). 

Ports

The Spin 5 has two USB-A and two USB-C ports. The latter are Thunderbolt 3 and they can also be used for charging. However, it also has a barrel-connector charger so you can use both USB-C ports for other things. All three are on the left side, though, so you can only charge it from that side. Still, along with a full-size HDMI out and a microSD card slot, this laptop has more connections than most. 

360° Hinge

The laptop features very special hinges. They allow you to open the lid at 360° and to use Acer Spin 5 in different modes: laptop, tablet, presentation and so on. In this case, if used in the standard “laptop” position, the back part slightly rises for additional ventilation. Acer calls this mechanism Dual Torque Hinge. Display is well fixed, in this case, one hand can open the laptop at about 30°, then you need to hold it. Which is quite normal with a 360 ° rotation design.

Screen

Acer Spin 5 convertible laptop 13.5 2K 2256 x 1504 added a bright 2,256×1,504-pixel resolution, 13.5-inch touchscreen. The 3:2 screen ratio gives you much more vertical space and, since its roughly the size of a sheet of paper, it’s more comfortable to use for notetaking and sketching with the included active pen. 

Hardware

The equipment looks respectable on paper: A modern Intel Core i7-1065G7 Ice Lake CPU with integrated Iris Plus Graphics G7, which is currently the most powerful Intel graphics, combined with an ample 16 GB of RAM and a 1-TB SSD are impressive. 

The processor used is the efficient Intel Core i7-1065G7 quad-core CPU, which has a low clock speed of 1.3 GHz guaranteed but is able to increase the speed up to 3.9 GHz on a single core.

Graphics

The Spin 5 played Dirt 3 at 64 frames per second with the graphics set to 1080p on Very High, which matches the category average. The Yoga C940 (51 fps) and Spectre x360 13 (47 fps) couldn’t keep up with the Spin 5.

On the 3DMark Fire Strike graphics benchmark, the Spin 5 sailed past the category average (1,358) with a score of 2,772. The Spin 5 also demolished the Yoga C490 (2,138) and the Spectre x360 13 (2,615).

Touchpad

The spacious 4.3 x 3.1-inch silver touchpad features a Windows Hello-compatible fingerprint reader on the top-left corner. The trackpad successfully delivered quick and accurate responses to Windows 10 gestures, including two-finger scrolling and pinch-to-zoom. 

Keyboard

The Spin 5 sports an island-style, backlit keyboard with well-sized keys for a pleasant typing experience. On the 10fastfingers.com typing test, I reached 84 words per minute, which is lower than my typical 85-wpm average. The minor dip in my wpm score could be attributed to the slight mushy feel of the keys, but otherwise, I have no other complaints about the Spin 5’s keyboard.

Acer Spin 5 convertible laptop 13.5 2K 2256 x 1504 Stylus review

The pen’s tip feels good on the Gorilla Glass display. Sort of like a wax pencil writing on glass. There’s enough friction that you don’t feel like you’re writing on glass but the movement is still fluid. I used it a lot with Microsoft’s OneNote and Whiteboard apps and it worked perfectly, even if it’s a little thin for me to use for an extended time. 

I played around with the Active Pen on Paint 3D. I sketched a quick comic, drew a delicious burger and scribbled a message. The Active Pen provided silky-smooth pen input as I made sweeping strokes on the digital canvas. As I tested the stylus’s latency, I observed little-to-no lag. 

The fast-charging Acer Active Pen is included with the Spin 5. Stick this bad boy into its stylus garage for just 15 seconds and you’ll receive 90 minutes of unfettered use. The stylus features 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, which helps the Active Pen to simulate a smooth pen-to-paper feel.

Acer Spin 5 convertible laptop 13.5 2K 2256 x 1504 Performance review

The Iris Plus graphics are great for an integrated GPU, but AMD’s integrated Radeon graphics can hold their own against even some discrete mid-range graphics cards. The fact that the Spin is still in contention during our 3DMark benchmarks is really a point in its favor. It won’t come out of the ring a winner, but you have to respect its punch.

As for multitasking, the Spin 5 is a champ. The latest Ice Lake processors chew through all but the most demanding apps without breaking a sweat. What’s more, the 16GB of RAM are going to make memory-hungry apps like Google Chrome or Adobe Photoshop much more manageable.

On the Geekbench 5.0 overall performance test, the Spin 5 scored 4,289, which crushed the score of the average premium laptop (4,041). The Yoga C940 (16GB of RAM) and the Spectre x360 13 (8GB of RAM), competitors that share the same CPU as the Spin 5, lagged behind the Acer 2-in-1 with scores of 4,055 and 4,074, respectively.

When we tested for brightness, the Spin 5’s screen emitted 425 nits, which outshone the category average (379 nits). The Spin 5 is also brighter than the Yoga C940 (339 nits) and the Spectre x360 13 (369 nits).

The Spin 5 proved that its panel is quite colorful; the convertible covered 111% of the sRGB color gamut. Although this score is lower than the category average (119%), the Spin 5 bested the Yoga C940 (104%) and Spectre x360 13 (109%).

On our storage test, the Spin 5’s 512GB SSD duplicated 4.97GB of multimedia files in 8 seconds, which translates to 678 megabytes per second. This is faster than the category average (147 MBps). Comparing the Spin 5 to its rivals that also sport 512GB SSDs, the Yoga C940 (1,084 MBps) outpaced the Acer convertible, but the Spectre x360 13 was sluggish (339 MBps). 

Battery life

As for battery life, it hit a solid 8 hours, 51 minutes on our streaming video test with the display brightness and volume set to 50%. That’s a little shy of what Acer expects you to get, so it should be possible to get better battery life with some more power management. I can say I had no problem writing, web browsing and streaming music for an entire 8-hour workday and still had an estimated 30% (1 hour, 50 minutes) remaining on the battery. 

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