Acer TravelMate Spin B1 B118-RN-P6BE

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Reviews for the Acer TravelMate Spin B1 B118-RN-P6BE

79% Preiswertes Alltags-Convertible ohne große Schwächen
Source: Chip.de DE→EN Archive.org version
Single Review, online available, Medium, Date: 10/13/2017
Rating: Total score: 79% performance: 57% features: 70% display: 88% mobility: 84% ergonomy: 93%

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Model: The TravelMate Spin B1 was introduced in May as Microsoft's next big play in the education sector. Its core attributes are the affordable price, the sturdy chassis and the 2-in-1 design. The education sector is hotly contested and most manufacturers want a piece of the pie. The Acer TravelMate Spin B1 is such a device. More precisely, the Acer TravelMate Spin B1 is a convertible designed to take the place of books and other tools within the educational sector. The TravelMate Spin B1 does not look or feel very upscale, but the design is robust and the base unit, in particular, is torsionally very rigid. Even localized pressure has next to no effect. Strangely enough, the hinges, which allow the display to flip a convertible-typical 360°, have a lot of play. However, touch control is only available in tablet mode. Since this is a convertible, the Spin B1, of course, features a touch display in addition to the touchpad and the keyboard. An active digitizer-stylus is included as well. The pen functions flawlessly and accurately even at the very edges. Since it supports pressure levels, it can be used for drawing as well. The TravelMate Spin B1 reacts quickly and accurately to both finger and stylus input.

Acer did not take any shortcuts when it comes to the display, as all variants of the TravelMate Spin B1 are equipped with an 11.6-inch Full HD display (1920 x 1080 pixels). The display is based on IPS technology and it is reflective because of the glass panel up front. As it is typical for IPS displays, the viewing angle stability is excellent and easily surpasses those of TN-based panels. Under the hood, it has a Intel Pentium N4200 processor, 4 GB of DDR3 RAM and an Intel HD Graphics 505. The Intel Pentium N4200 is a quad-core processor, which utilizes Intel's Apollo Lake architecture. As an Atom-based CPU, the processor is ideal for notebooks where the lowest possible price is of the utmost importance. However, it features a 256 GB NVMe solid state drive storage which increases performance on the device. Since there is no fan, the Spin B1 is completely silent, no matter how hard the CPU and the GPU are working. It appears that Acer implemented a TDP restriction which becomes active when both the processor and the graphics card are running at their respective maximums, which prevents excessive heat generation. The connectivity options are decent with Ethernet, HDMI, USB 3.0 Type A and audio combo-jack at the left side of the convertible. At the right side of the device, there are an SD card reader, USB 2.0 Type A, and a Kensington lock slot. There is also an Intel Wireless 7265 wireless card to feature WiFi. In short, this device is really suitable for students without any major drawbacks.

Hands-on article by Jagadisa Rajarathnam

Series:

While most manufacturers are trying their best to contribute to the education sector, such as Apple with their iPad, Google with its Chromebook, Microsoft with their affordable Window notebooks, Acer decided to join the list too with its latest venture the Acer TravelMate Spin B1 series. In general, this model is a convertible designed to take the place of books and other tools within the educational sector. The core attributes of this TravelMate Spin B1 series has to be the sturdy chassis, the 2-in-1 design along with an affordable price tag. In terms of its design, the TravelMate Spin B1 definitely does not feel or look very upscaled but the design itself is robust and particularly, the base unit is torsionally very rigid. The overall chassis which was made out of thick, black plastic gives next to no effect even with localized pressure.  As far as the display is concerned, this model comes in with 11.6 inches with a 16:9 ratio and high-resolution of 1920 x 1080. This obviously accounts for better viewing experience for users but it should be noted that it does not take a whole lot of pressure to affect the picture on the display with pressure. While the hinge allows the display to flip up to 360-degrees, it still needs experimentation to decide if such excessive movement is detrimental to the longevity of the hinges.

The notebook has been incorporated with a chiclet keyboard without a backlight which is definitely acceptable for its price. However, the keys do carry matte, rough surface which makes the whole typing experience not absolutely great for the users. The keyboard also is not as wide as it would be on a regular notebook, which is another factor that would require time for the users to get use to. TravelMate Spin B1 also features a touch display with an active digitizer-stylus which supports pressure levels and can be used for drawing as well.  Acer TravelMate Spin B1 has been incorporated with ports for Ethernet, HDMI, USB 3.0 Type A and an audio combo-jack port. The location of the ports in this model really needs extra attention as all the ports have been jammed together on the left side. This is obviously unavoidable due to the size of the model itself but it should be noted that there might be a possibility of port contention depending on wat is being plugged in by the user. Another possible drawback for some users would be the exclusion of the Type-C USB in TravelMate Spin B1. Apart from that, the model comes in with Intel Pentium N4200 quad-core processor which utilizes Intel’s Apollo Lake architecture along with a 4GB of DDR3 RAM and Intel HD Graphics 505. There is also a 256GB NVMe solid state drive storage which increases the performance on the device. The graphic card supports most non-demanding games with ease. Acer has definitely made the product available with possible features for its price range.

Intel HD Graphics 505: Integrated low-end graphics adapter with DirectX 12 support, which can be found in some ULV SoCs from the Apollo Lake series.

Non demanding games should be playable with these graphics cards.

» Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Graphics Cards and the corresponding Benchmark List.

Pentium N4200: An Apollo Lake family, quad-core, ultra-low-power processor (SoC) that saw the light of day in 2016. Its four CPU cores run at 1.1 GHz to 2.5 GHz; these are not Hyper-Threading-enabled meaning there are no additional threads. This chip has a fairly competent integrated graphics solution, the Intel HD Graphics 505, and eats very little (~6 W). The Pentium N4200 is based on the Goldmont CPU microarchitecture that came to replace Silvermont (2013), bringing with it several welcome improvements. The CPU is Secure Boot-compatible; technically, it will have no issue running 64-bit Windows 11. The average N4200 in our database competes with the Core i5-3339Y, a low-power SoC launched in 2013, in multi-thread performance.» Further information can be found in our Comparison of Mobile Processsors.

11.60":

This is a standard display format for tablet computers or small convertibles. You see more on the screen than on a smartphone but you can't use big resolutions well. On the other hand, mobility is not a problem.

Acer: In 1976, the company was founded in Taiwan under the name Multitech and was renamed Acer or Acer Group in 1987. The product range includes, for example, laptops, tablets, smartphones, desktops, monitors, TVs and computer peripherals. Since 2007, the group has merged with Gateway Inc. and Packard Bell, which also market their own laptop product lines.

Acer computers are designed for a variety of purposes, including ultrabooks for mobile use, gaming laptops for gamers, affordable options for everyday tasks, and 2-in-1 convertible laptops for versatility. Acer's product portfolio also includes tablets that offer portable computing and multimedia capabilities.

79%: This rating is not earth-shattering. This rating must actually be seen as average, since there are about as many devices with worse ratings as better ones. A purchase recommendation can only be seen with a lot of goodwill, unless it is about websites that generally rate strictly.

» Further information can be found in our Notebook Purchase Guide.

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