REVIEW: Go full swing with the Acer Spin 7

Dubai - It's sturdy and sleek - but is it enough to be your new machine?

I still have my good ol' Acer Aspire laptop. Though it's now my back-up machine, it will forever hold a special place in my heart because it's the first gizmo I've ever bought since I first stepped foot in Dubai and my first-ever laptop. Almost nine years later, it's apparently starting to kick the tech bucket; I'm only able to access my files using the Command Prompt (that's what I've been telling everyone; make sure you at least have some knowledge with MS-DOS commands in the event your computer conks out like mine did).
Well, they've got a nice potential replacement for me: the Acer Spin 7, a 2-in-1 that means business.
Once it revealed itself from the box, I immediately fell in love with its cool black all-metal finish (I'm serious; I took an extended look at it, rotating it in my hands for a minute or so). At a shade under 1.10cm, it's really thin and almost beats out another thin Acer laptop, the 0.99cm Swift 7, the 1.5cm Dell XPS 13, the 1.42cm Lenovo Yoga 910 and the 1.7cm Apple MacBook Air. My only beef with it is that your fingerprints will take a good cloth-scrubbing for them to disappear.
Its 14-inch Corning Gorilla Glass 5-covered LED-backlit touchscreen is crisp, giving you clarity with whatever you're viewing, though it doesn't have pen support. Speaking of backlit, its keyboard, which is a joy to type with, doesn't have backlit keys, which is really surprising.
And it's quite a minimalistic design. Over to the left edge, you'll find the power and volume rocker, while on the right are the 3.5mm audio jack and two USB Type-C ports; maybe a couple more of the latter would've been even sweeter.
And since we're dealing with a 2-in-1, wait 'till you swing it all the way, 360 degrees. Go ahead and do what you want with it: laptop, tent, tablet or flat. In any case, it'll serve its purpose.
Performance-wise, you won't encounter much of a problem with it; this machine has a Kaby Lake Intel Core i7 brain, and it walks the talk once you start firing app your apps and programs (I feel so old when I use 'programs'). This also means it's fanless, so despite its name, you won't get that 'spinning' sensation from inside. It's also blessed with 8GB of RAM, though it could've been more neat if there was more than the 256GB SSD on it (thanks to all my files).
Which brings us to a little downside: there's no option to add to that storage. And if you were expecting more aside from the ports we've mentioned above, there's a couple of dongles for your standard USB and HDMI stuff. Generous, indeed.
Up to eight hours of battery life is promised, though you're sure to reach out for its charger at anytime between five to six hours especially if you're heavy on videos and can't get enough of the brightness. And with enjoying videos goes hearing them: this convertible has some Dolby Audio Premium slapped in with Acer's TrueHarmony, so it belts out pretty decent audio.
All said - and for a cool Dh4,999 - the Acer Spin 7 is not without its weaknesses, but it can hang in there with its peers. I wonder if it's time for me to permanently retire that Acer laptop and make room for a new 'back-up'.
- alvin@khaleejtimes.com