Acer Spin 1 SP111-32N review – premium build, average experience

Back to top
Specs Sheet
Design and exterior
Keyboard and trackpad
Screen
Hardware and performance
Noise, heat and speakers
Battery life
Price and availability
Final thoughts
Comments

By Andrei GirbeaAcer Spin 1 SP111-32N, last updated on November 3, 2025

Acer Spin 1 SP111-32N

Summary: The late-2017 Acer Spin 1 is a niche product, a nicely crafted 11-inch mini laptop with a convertible IPS screen, pen support and fairly good IO and keyboard on one hand, but on the other limited performance, tinny speakers and some questionable design choices. It's also more expensive than most other laptops with similar hardware, but again those don't match its build quality and don't get the same screen. So all in all, if you're after one of these small 2-in-1s, this Acer should be on your list, but if you're not absolutely set on an 11-incher, you'll find better balanced products in the pool of slightly larger notebooks.

Our score: 3.75 / 5
Price when reviewed: $450 and up

THE GOOD

compact, light and very well built
simple, sober design
decent IPS screen, as long as you keep it indoors
runs perfectly quiet and cool
decent battery life
fair price

THE BAD

some sharp edges and bits
the keys are small, rather noisy and non-backlit
big ugly bezels around the screen
there's only that much the Apollo Lake hardware can do
tinny speakers
crappy VGA camera

Table of Contents

Specs as reviewed
Design and first look
Keyboard and trackpad
Screen
Hardware, performance and upgrade options
Emissions (noise, heat), Connectivity and speakers
Battery life
Price and availability
Final thoughts

A few years ago netbooks were highly popular, as light, compact and inexpensive laptops you could easily lug around to school or work. They weren’t very well crafted though and didn’t perform that well either, so eventually faded away.

These days there are still a few successors of those netbooks still available out there, most of them targeting budget users and competing against the affordable Chromebooks in the sub-$300 segment.

The late-2017 update of the Acer Spin 1 on the other hand is different. It’s a premium built 11-incher with a fully metallic body, a nice IPS touchscreen with pen support, a convertible form-factor, a pretty good keyboard and to most ends, the hardware to handle everyday demands smoothly. It’s also rather expensive for its class though, with the higher-end configurations going for around 500-600 EUR in Europe and around $500 in the US, and at this level, such a small laptop needs to impress in order to be worth more than a look.

We spent a few weeks with the Spin 1 and gathered all our impressions below, with the nice quirks and the issues we encountered, so by the end of the article, you’ll know if the Acer Spin 1 Sp111-32N is the mini-notebook you’re looking for or not.

Specs as reviewed

	Acer Spin 1 SP111-32N
Screen	11.6 inch, 1920 x 1080 px, IPS, glossy, touch
Processor	Intel Apollo Lake Pentium N4200
Video	Intel HD 505
Memory	4 GB LPDDR3 (Soldered)
Storage	128 GB eMMC (Toshiba G32)
Connectivity	Wireless AC (Intel Dual-Band 7265), Bluetooth 4.0
Ports	1x USB-C 3.0, 1x USB 2.0, HDMI, mic/headphone, microSD card reader
Battery	36 Wh, 45 W power brick
OS	Windows 10
Size327	290 mm or 11.41” (w) x 200 mm or 7.87” (d) x 14.1 mm or 0.55” (h)
Weight	1.18 kg / 2.60 lbs and 0.15 kg / 0.33 lbs power brick
Extras	non-backlit keyboard, VGA camera

Acer offers the Spin 1 in a few different configurations and the one we have here is the higher end variant. The lower-end version bundles an Intel Celeron N3350 processor, 4 GB of RAM and only 32 GB of storage.

Design and first look

The Spin 1 is not like most other 11-inch notebooks available these days. It’s mostly made out of metal and is very sturdily built, as you’ll feel immediately when you’ll get it out of the box. There’s no flex in the screen, very little give in the keyboard deck and no squeaking when grabbing it firmly.

But while it shines in terms of manufacturing, it’s lacks in terms of practicality and finishing, as there are a lot of sharp edges and bits on this computer. The first ones you’ll notice are on the bottom, where the panel doesn’t attach flushly to the edges and the USB ports have sharp metallic corners. Due to the laptop’s thinness, the USBs are not entirely covered by the metallic edge and leave an open gap on the bottom, with pointy corners, as detailed in some of the pictures below.

Then you’ll notice the sharpness of the screen part when trying to open it. There’s no crease on the front lip and the hinges are very stiff, so your fingertips will suffer and you’ll still need both hands to get inside. Lastly, there are the beveled edges around the inner body and the pointy corners, but at least the Spin has a low-profile and these shouldn’t be an issue as long as you mostly use the device on a large desk. On the lap or in cramped spaces, they’ll bite into your wrists.

You’ll also feel them when using the Spin as a tablet, because as I’ve already mentioned in the beginning, this one is a hybrid with a 360-degrees convertible screen. The tablet experience is otherwise decent and the strong build and fanless hardware help enhance it. The big bezel around the screen doesn’t though and make the Spin 1 look dated for this day and age, when most tablets and even most 2-in-1s offer much nicer screen-to-body ratios. At least the panel is good though and there’s support for Acer’s active pen that we previously tested on the Spin 5.

The laptop experience on the other hand is pretty nice, with a decent keyboard, a big enough palm-rest and a screen that can lean back as much as needed. Just don’t forget this is an 11-incher and thus not as roomy as the larger laptops out there.

Acer didn’t skim much on the IO either. There are two full-size USB slots on the sides and a full-size HDMI port, but only a microSD card-reader, yet overall the ports selection is superior to what most other 11-inchers offer.

Bottom point, the Spin 1 is well made, but not that comfortable to use due to its multiple sharp edges and stiff hinges. I would have also appreciated if Acer put a bigger screen on this one, there’s plenty of room for a 12.5-inch panel with smaller bezels.

Keyboard and trackpad

The keyboard on the Spin 1 is a little shrunken from what’s available on the bigger Acer laptops, with 14 x 14 mm keys, but otherwise gets the same layout. The keys are well spaced, just a tad smaller, and those of you with large hands might struggle with this keyboard.

The typing experience is alright if you can get past the potential size issue, as the keys are responsive and travel fairly deep into the frame. They actuate a little to easily for my taste, which lead to a higher than average error rate during my tests, but typing on this laptop is fast though, and with enough exercise can get fairly accurate as well. Just keep in mind that these keys are rather noisy, so typing in a quiet office or library might raise some eyebrows from the people around.

Another important aspect to mention is the fact that this keyboard isn’t backlit, which imo is a little hard to swallow in this day and age.

The trackpad isn’t very big and is made out of plastic, but is nicely indented into the frame and works well with swipes, taps and gestures. Not much to complain about here, other than perhaps the fact that the clicks are a bit clunky.

Screen

The Spin 1 gets an 11.6-inch touchscreen with an IPS panel, a fairly good IPS panel actually, with nice colors and good contrast, as you can see below.

Panel HardwareID: Panda LC116LF3L01;
Coverage: 96% sRGB, 71% NTSC, 75% AdobeRGB;
Measured gamma: 2.1;
Max brightness in the middle of the screen: 255 cd/m2 on power;
Contrast at max brightness: 730:1;
White point: 7100 K;
Black on max brightness: 0.35 cd/m2;
Average DeltaE: 1.04 uncalibrated, 0.60 calibrated.

The calibrated color profile is available here, in case you want to correct the default slight gamma skewage and blue tint.

The brightness levels might not allow you to properly use this laptop outdoors, especially paired with the glare of the glass layer on top of the screen, but for indoor use this is a very nice panel. I noticed some slight light bleeding around the edges on my unit, but as I’ve mentioned in many other reviews, this is unfortunately a lottery with most notebooks today.

The screen is touch-enabled, includes a digitizer and supports Acer’s Active Stylus that should come included in the pack with retail units. It wasn’t included with our sample, but you’ll find my impressions of this pen over here.

Hardware, performance and upgrade options

As I mentioned in the beginning, our version of the Spin 1 comes with an Intel Apollo Lake Pentium N4200 processor, 4 GB of DDR3 RAM and 128 GB of eMMC storage.

The CPU is a quad-core without HyperThreading, but that doesn’t mean much as it’s a 6W processor with low clock speeds (1.1 GHz base frequency, with Turbo up to 2.5 GHz) and there’s only that much it can do in multitasking. It’s also paired with just 4 GB of RAM, which further limits multitasking, especially knowing what memory hogs browsers are these days.

As for the storage, the included eMMC is not as fast as an SSD, but not as slow as the older eMMCs we’ve seen in the past either, so overall it’s not this build’s bottleneck and won’t have as much of an impact on performance as the CPU and RAM. Just keep in mind that Acer also offers this laptop with 32 or 64 GB of storage space and Windows takes a fair chunk of it, so personally I would at least buy a configuration with 64 GB of storage, if not this one with 128 GB of space.

You can get inside this computer by removing the back panel that’s hold in place by a couple of Philips screws, but I doubt you’ll have to, as the RAM and storage are soldered and the only components accessible here are the Wi-Fi chip and the battery.

As far as performance goes, as already hinted earlier, this laptop can handle everyday activities well enough (movies, streaming, music, editing texts, browsing, etc), but you’ll want to keep multitasking at bay. Chrome with a couple of tabs running in the background is enough to send the CPU at 100% loads and at that time you’ll start noticing sluggishness. Of course, you should keep in mind that I’m used to the fast response and performance of the modern ultraportables and my expectations are set high. If you’re coming from an older laptop and especially one without an SSD, this might not feel that slow to you. Still, don’t get false expectations, this Spin 1 is nonetheless a low-power computer and it performs accordingly.

As a side note, this notebook might feel very sluggish out of the box while it performs its mandatory Windows updates. I’d recommend letting it do its thing for an hour or two and then it should work fine. If you hit CTRL+ALT+DEL and find that the CPU is still at 100% load, you’ll know it’s not yet done with the updates. Unfortunately that’s going to be an issue every time it needs to update though, which is fairly often with Windows 10.

I’ve added some benchmarks results below, in case you’re interested in the hard numbers, as well as some HWInfo logs showing the temperatures and overall performance with everyday activities.

3DMark 11: P774;
PCMark 10: 1529;
PassMark: 1114;
Geekbench 3 32-bit: Single-Core: 1527, Multi-core: 5052;
Geekbench 4 64-bit: Single-Core: 1613, Multi-core: 4800;
CineBench 11.5: OpenGL 13.67 fps, CPU 2.05 pts, CPU Single Core 0.65 pts;
CineBench R15: OpenGL 17.65.69 fps, CPU 148 cb, CPU Single Core 45 cb;
x264 HD Benchmark 4.0 32-bit: Pass 1 – 59.61 fps, Pass 2 – 11.95 fps.

Gaming is normally out of reach for such a computer, but if you plan to run some very old titles at lower resolutions, well, you can.

Emissions (noise, heat), Connectivity and speakers

There’s no fan inside inside this computer, no moving parts, and I haven’t notice any coil whining or electrical noise on my sample either, so as a result the Spin 1 is perfectly quiet.

As far as temperatures go, the thin metallic body can heat-up with multitasking, but never to the point where it would get hot or even uncomfortable to use on the lap or hold in hands, which is a benefit of going with the efficient Apollo Lake hardware.

*Daily Use – 1080p Youtube clip in EDGE for 30 minutes

For connectivity Acer went with an Intel dual-band AC7265 that provides wireless AC and Bluetooth. It’s a good mid-level chip and as a result the Spin performed well both near the router and at medium ranges with some obstacles in between.

For audio Acer went with a set of stereo speakers firing though small pinhole cuts on the edges. They’re fairly loud, peaking at around 80 dB at head level in our tests, and they don’t distort or vibrate at high volumes either. The sound coming out of these speakers is tinny though, as they clearly lack bass and lows are only noticeable down to about 130 Hz.

The last thing to mention here is the webcam, which unfortunately is pretty crap, with a mediocre VGA sensor.

Battery life

There’s a 36 Wh battery inside this computer, which is fair-sized for an 11-incher and a good match for the hardware inside, even if the IPS panel is a little more hungry than the poorer screens that are usually bundled in this size segment and even if Acer actually had the space inside the frame for a larger one.

Still, here’s what you should expect with daily use (the screen was set at around 120 nits – 30% brightness):

6.1 W (~5 h 45 min of use) – text editing in Google Drive, Balanced Mode, screen at 30%, Wi-Fi ON;
4.6 W (~7 h 30 min of use) – 1080p fullscreen video on Youtube in Internet Explorer, Balanced Mode, screen at 30%, Wi-Fi ON;
3.1 W (~11 h of use) – 1080p fullscreen .mkv video in the Movie app, Balanced Mode, screen at 30%, Wi-Fi ON;
4.8 W (~7 h of use) – 4K fullscreen .mkv video in the Movie app, Balanced Mode, screen at 30%, Wi-Fi ON;
8.8 W (~4 h of use) – heavy browsing in Edge, Balanced Mode, screen at 30%, Wi-Fi ON;.

The Spin 1 is bundled with a compact and light 45 W power brick and a full-charge takes around 2 hours, as there’s no Quick Charging technology implemented.

Price and availability

The Acer Spin 1 SP111-32N is only available in Europe at the time of this update, with a starting price of 499 EUR for the Petium N4200 / 4 GB RAM / 64 GB storage configuration and about 100 EUR on top for the model with 128 GB of storage space. It’s not yet available in the US, but I’d expect it to start at around $450 – $500, and we’ll update this section once we know more.

Update: The Spin 1 is available worldwide, follow this link for updated configurations and prices.

Overall, the Spin 1 is more expensive than other 2-in-1 laptops with the same kind of hardware like the first generation Acer Spin 1 or the Lenovo ThinkPad N24, but that’s not a surprise, given its nicer screen and the premium build.

Final thoughts

But is the Spin 1 worth that kind of money?

First of all, you’ll have to understand that this is a niche computer and should only be on your list if you’re after a premium crafted mini-laptop with a convertible form-factor and a nice IPS touchscreen, which of course come with a premium. Once you accept these, the Spin 1 is not going to feel overpriced, but you’ll still have to decide if you can live with its quirks, like the uncomfortably sharp bits and edges, the ugly large bezels around the screen, the rattly non-backlit keyboard and the limited performance of the Apollo Lake platform.

If the answer is yes, and if you don’t mind paying extra for the build and screen, like I mentioned earlier, the Acer Spin 1 could be the right pick for you. I’d also have a look at some of the exiting 12-inch Windows tablets though, as well as the slightly more expensive Lenovo Yoga 710, which is also an 11-incher, but built on a faster Intel Core Y hardware platform, with more RAM and SSD storage. Or you can go through this selection of mini notebooks for an updated set of other options. Lastly, if you’re a bit flexible when it comes to the size and weight, you’ll find better balanced products in the 13-inch class of thin-and-lights.

Anyway, that wraps up our review of the Acer Spin 1 SP111-32N, but the comments section is open for your feedback and questions, and we’re around to help out if we can.

Disclaimer: Our content is reader-supported. If you buy through some of the links on our site, we may earn a commission. Terms.

Review by: Andrei Girbea
Andrei Girbea is a Writer and Editor-in-Chief here at Ultrabookreview.com. I write about mobile technology, laptops and computers in general. I've been doing it for more than 15 years now. I'm a techie with a Bachelor's in Computer Engineering. I mostly write reviews and thorough guides here on the site, with some occasional columns and first-impression articles.

14 Comments

isaac

March 6, 2018 at 10:57 am

From the photos, it seems there is a m.2 slot and a screw hole for ssd.
Can anyone confirm this?
- Pawel Siemaszko
  
  April 22, 2018 at 4:25 pm
  
  it seems this way. im also curious about this.from the pictures i cant see precisly m2 slot so dunno if it is there or maybe it is just dummy slot. screw hole is there for sure.
Rudolf

April 8, 2018 at 2:35 pm

My Spin 1 has not a common Windows 10, the Intel Celeron is opearting a castrate Windows 10, the S Version, it's closed for regular Softwares, more like a Windows 10 mobil OS only for App use. But my most used aplications are custom made Softwares no Apps.
The micro SD card is disconnected after standby – the small SSD can not be enlarged by the micro SD card for Data store.
The Bios has an unknown password! The Acronisstick cann't find the SSD.

A Toy like an Android Tab – not worth the money. It was the fastest way to blow away my money. Something for the junk press
tomgadgets

May 24, 2018 at 11:18 am

My Spin 1 SP111-32N-N17H2 does not have the M.2 connector. The slot is there but you can't use it as it is just nothing to connect the SSD.
Daniel Fernandes

June 6, 2018 at 8:37 pm

Right now I am looking into buying the Spin 1 for travelling, but the versions I want supposedly come with Windows 10 S. I have read that it might be possible to upgrade for free to Windows 10 Home/Pro, but the mentions were almost every single time to "Windows 10 S mode". Can anyone explain this to me, and if "S mode" and just "S" is the same thing?

Thanks very much!
- Andrei Girbea
  
  June 6, 2018 at 9:13 pm
  
  You can upgrade from 10 S to 10 Pro. Win 10 is S mode is explained here: microsoft.com/en-us/windows/s-mode . As far as I understand, it's the same as 10 S, but you might want to double check with other sources as well, I've hardly ever used Win 10 S before.
  - Daniel Fernandes
    
    June 6, 2018 at 11:13 pm
    
    Thanks Andrei! I think I found the answer here, saying current S systems will be updated to Win10 Pro S Mode, and can after be removed for free:
    support.microsoft.com/en-gb/help/4020089/windows-10-in-s-mode-faq
Maciej

March 14, 2020 at 12:50 pm

Hi,

I've been very happy with it, but after less than 2 years of use, the battery life became about an hour and it hibernates the computers without warning at the end. I tried to calibrate the battery gauge and change power settings but to no avail. The battery is charging fine, it just lasts a fraction of time than it used to.

Two questions:

Could it be anything else than the greatly reduced battery capacity?
If it is the battery, would anybody know what model am I looking for to replace it?
Shay

October 11, 2020 at 10:06 pm

Hi, just wanted to mention, that I use mine with Ubuntu alongside with windows 10 s.
I know this process of installation is not for everyone and can cause you a damage to your current windows or can even delete your windows.
What I can recommend you, is to set Ubuntu in a portable USB (they have explanation on their website).
And once you have a fully functional version of Ubuntu installed in you USB drive you can boot from it on the next boot of your Acer machine.
I've noticed that Ubuntu 20 supports both the touchpad and the touch screen.
And if you load it from USB you can always remove that USB drive and return to your old windows 10 s
Theo Poyyayil

April 29, 2022 at 5:21 pm

Hello
I was been searching all the coments and info available. You mentioned there is an internal battery. But no where I could find information how this batterie could be replaced once its capacity at zero level.
Can any one help me on rthis issue.
Many thanks for your kind assistance and support on this issue.
Kind regards
Theo
- Andrei Girbea
  
  April 30, 2022 at 9:40 am
  
  you open the laptop and replace the battery. If you can find the part, that is

Keep in mind: We manually approve each comment. This way, we can attend to all your questions and requests. There's no need to submit a comment twice, just be patient till we get to it. Thank you!

Acer Spin 1 SP111-32N review – premium build, average experience

14 Comments

Categories

Latest Reviews

Lenovo Yoga 9i 2-in-1 Aura Edition longer term review (gen 10, Lunar Lake)

Latest comparisons

Asus ProArt P16 vs. Razer Blade 16, Asus ROG Zephyrus G16 comparison