Acer Chromebook Spin 311 review

The Acer Chromebook Spin 311 is suitable for school use. It is a compact laptop that is easy to carry around, with a battery that lasts for nearly sixteen hours of light productivity.

Chrome OS is installed on the 11.6-inch convertible notebook known as the Acer Chromebook Spin 311. Despite its plastic chassis, the notebook is well built and is easy to carry around due to its small size. Since it is a 2-in-1 notebook, you can rotate the screen to use it as a tablet thanks to the 360-degree hinge. It has a System-on-Chip (SoC) based on the low-power ARM architecture and can only handle simple tasks such as web browsing and video streaming.

However, it has a fantastic battery life that allows about 16 hours of mild productivity. Unfortunately, the video quality of the webcam is poor, the touchpad is rather small, and the keyboard, while providing a comfortable typing experience, lacks backlighting. In addition, it has a small, dull screen that looks a bit faded. However, thanks to the absence of fins, it does not overheat under load and is quiet.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 311 is a respectable device for video viewing. The speakers have sufficient volume and sound quality, but the screen’s faded appearance and lack of brightness make it difficult to avoid glare in well-lit areas. It is also not the best choice for dimly lit spaces because the low contrast makes blacks appear gray. It offers the advantages of light weight and long battery life.

Its small size makes it a very portable laptop, and the battery easily lasts a standard working day with ample battery life. However, the small low-resolution screen, tiny touchpad, and inferior camera make the overall user experience suboptimal. Although the keyboard is fine for typing, it lacks backlighting and there are few ports available, so you need to carry a dongle or USB hub for wired devices.

Design

The Acer Chromebook Spin 311 is really a compact machine, and its design, construction, and aesthetics complement its size perfectly. First, the color is black: black on the back, on the keyboard, and around the screen. But this makes the whole aesthetic cohesive and attractive for a small Chromebook. The main body of the Acer Chromebook Spin 311 is of the same matte black material, but the “top” or back of the screen features a very nice diamond molded panel.

It appears to have been created for durability and to protect the screen, but aesthetically it works as well, adding texture and fun weirdness to the design. Overall, however, the shell is sturdy and solid, reassuring for those looking for a sturdy Chromebook.

The only minor exception is a small noticeable edge on the keyboard panel, especially for those who are strong typists. This contrasts with the overall solidity and sturdiness of the chassis. Although the keyboard is the same size as the larger Acer Chromebook 314, its overall placement in a smaller chassis makes it feel cramped, to say the least, and thus not as comfortable as larger Chromebooks.

Keyboard and Touchpad

The Spin 311’s keyboard is undoubtedly its strongest feature. Although we are self-proclaimed mechanical keyboard snobs, we can fly while typing on the Spin 311. It rivals the typing experience of the Dell XPS 15, which is very impressive considering the Spin 311’s low price. It is no accident that the typing experience is excellent. The keys on the Spin 311 have a travel distance of 1.6 mm, which adds a good amount of responsiveness with each key press.

This is a feature that Acer highlights, even on the Chromebook’s factory sticker. It seemed like a marketing ploy, but after using the Spin 311, the touchpad is just as responsive, despite being small. It is wide but short, so while we scanned from side to side without a problem, our finger occasionally fell off when it moved up or down. This is not a criticism, but it is something to note.

Display

The Spin 311 has an 11.6-inch IPS display with a resolution of just over 720p (1366 x 768). This is a compromise display. On the one hand, the screen is coated with antimicrobial Gorilla Glass, which protects against most drops. On the other hand, the maximum brightness is low, as is the resolution, and the bezels are thick. However, the resolution stands out the most. Even at 11.6 inches, the resolution was too low. It felt like watching a video file compressed too many times, with fast scenes fading into a blur of pixels.

Our benchmarks confirm much of our experience with the Spin 311. We measured a maximum brightness of only 204.2 nits, which fell below 200 nits in some corners. The Spin 311’s display also produced only 70.4 percent of the sRGB color spectrum, a disappointing result considering that a similarly priced competitor, such as the Acer Chromebook R 11, can deliver 73.2 percent of the sRGB spectrum.

Audio

The Spin 311’s stereo speakers below work surprisingly well, although they are not that impressive. The speakers are small, and the sound has a strong bias toward the mid-to-high frequencies. This is great for movies and TV shows, as it emphasizes dialogue. For music, it makes some instruments stand out more than others. In a piano riff melody, such as Valours from Anomalies, the upper midrange frequencies of the piano stand out from the music.

In such a melodically dense piece, the sudden jump in volume can be jarring. However, the speakers work. They can be turned up loud without distortion, something that even the best Windows machines struggle to do, and they were always clear, even when the Spin 311 was sitting on our laps.

Webcam

To get a usable machine for less than $300, you’ll have to cut a few corners, and one strong point is the camera. The Spin 311’s 720p camera is not very good. Even in decent lighting conditions, the camera shows a layer of noise throughout the image, which becomes even more pronounced when things get darker. Colors are also not the best. Our lips, for example, appear pale or blue in most lighting conditions.

ChromeOS

ChromeOS is like Android for a large machine, at least for the most part. Although you can browse the Google Play Store and download most of the applications on Spin 311, there are still several that are not supported. And these are not unnamed applications. However, Google Play is only part of what makes ChromeOS an attractive option. Google has seamlessly integrated its ecosystem of apps into the OS, not only because they are preinstalled, but also because search queries bring up documents saved in Google Drive along with local files and apps.

There are also small quality-of-life functions. Casting a video from YouTube, for example, requires only a few taps. ChromeOS is not as feature-rich as Windows, but it still gets things done. App management is simple, and multitasking features such as split-screen are not perfect, but at least they are there.

Performance

The first thing you notice when you sit down to use the Acer Chromebook Spin 311 is the satisfying click and clack of the keyboard, and it is surprising how pleasant typing can be on such a small machine. It is especially pleasing that the touchpad is of the same type: easy, flexible and satisfying to use. This satisfaction does not match what we see on the screen, since we had to increase the brightness a lot to see the images more clearly. This inevitably took a toll on battery life.

The increased brightness made the screen brighter, but only in the sense that it becomes brighter and whiter; colors and contrasts do not follow suit, so it is a bit hard on the eyes. Using the Acer Chromebook Spin 311’s swivel mechanism to transform it from a laptop-like device to a tablet is a lot of fun, but also very practical, especially when combined with the touchscreen.

You can go from using it as a regular laptop or notebook computer to a machine that looks purely like a tablet for navigation and touchscreen and then back again, seamlessly and with minimal effort. One important note: when the screen is completely flipped over to be used only as a touchscreen, the keyboard is disabled, so you can accidentally type and scribble keys in strange Google searches.

You can also use the swivel mechanism in various ways to have the device with you at all times, such as putting it in the stage position to watch Netflix. The 12-second startup time from power off to screen access is excellent and means that you can turn off the screen to enter sleep mode and then restart it immediately by lifting the screen-a smooth and fast process.

Battery Life

The Spin 311 has a battery capacious enough to last a full day of work, but it falls short of the advertised 15 hours of battery life. In our web browsing test, the Spin 311 lasted for 11 hours and 41 minutes, a good result, but still more than three hours short of the 15 hours.

Conclusion

From time to time a device appears that defies expectations and exceeds obvious limits. The Acer Chromebook 311 C733U is one such device. With its thick bezels and low-quality TN display, it makes a bad immediate impression. However, on closer inspection, it is a well-designed small laptop.

Many efforts have been made to make it sturdy and durable, including the rubberized chassis and splash-proof keyboard. Meanwhile, performance is decent within limits, thanks to the low ChromeOS requirements and good 2D video functionality. The same goes for battery life, which can be described as a full day thanks to the low-power chip and low-demand OS.

George Southwell
George Southwell
George Southwell is a seasoned content editor at Bollyinside, renowned for his expertise in simplifying complex tech topics. Specializing in "Tips and Tricks" articles, he excels in breaking down iPhone, Android, hardware, and software insights. George's insatiable curiosity fuels his hobby of testing the latest tech updates, keeping him on the cutting edge.

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The Acer Chromebook 311 C733U is one such device. With its thick bezels and low-quality TN display, it gives a bad immediate impression. However, on closer inspection, it is a well-designed small laptop.Acer Chromebook Spin 311 review