Acer TravelMate Spin B3 review: Robust 2-in-1 laptop with pen input

The robust, black plastic case has a rough surface that offers a good grip to the fingers and is not prone to fingerprints. The short edges of the B3 are protected from bumps by rubber slats. The computer does not show any faulty workmanship. Even though the base unit and lid can be warped slightly, this remains within limits. The battery is built-in. After the bottom has been removed, the insides are easily accessible.

There are three USB connections (2x Type-A, 1x Type-C) that support the USB 3.2 Gen1 standard. The USB-C port supports Power Delivery and DisplayPort via USB-C. So together with the HDMI connection, the Spin B3 has two video output ports. Something that is found rarely in devices such as the TravelMate is the Gigabit Ethernet port. The microSD storage card reader is a slower representative of its kind (measured using our AV PRO SD 128 GB V60 reference storage card).

The 2-in-1 device has two cameras: a webcam (0.9 MP) for video conferencing and a camera (5 MP, HDR, max. 2560 x 1920 pixels) for photos. The latter is located above the keyboard and can be used in tablet mode. While the webcam only offers standard fare, the 5-MP camera produces fairly decent results.

The WLAN transfer rates that we measured under optimal conditions (with no other WLAN devices in close proximity and a short distance between the laptop and the server PC) are basically okay, but they remain behind the capabilities of the WLAN chip used here (Intel Wireless-AC 9560).

With the TravelMate Spin 3, Acer offers a 2-in-1 device that can handle simple applications from the Internet and office areas.

The TravelMate does not offer any manufacturer specific power profiles. We use the "Highest Performance" Windows profile for the benchmarks and "Balanced" for the Akkutest battery test.

A TDP of 6 watts allows passive cooling of the Pentium Silver N5030 CPU (Gemini Lake) used here, which runs at a basic clock speed of 1.1 GHz. Via Turbo, the speed can be increased up to 2.6 GHz (4 cores) and 3.2 GHz (single core).

While it briefly runs through the multi-thread test of the Cinebench R15 benchmark at 2.6 to 2.7 GHz, the clock speed then drops to 1.8 - 1.9 GHz. The single-thread test runs at 2.8 GHz. The speed is the same in mains and battery operation.

We evaluate whether the CPU Turbo is also used constantly by running the multi-thread test of Cinebench R15 in a constant loop for at least 30 minutes. The Turbo speed can only be kept at a high level for a few seconds. After that, it drops to values below 2 GHz.

Overall, the benchmark results are a bit disappointing. The performance of the N5030 remains below its capabilities, as the comparison with the Lenovo IdeaPad 1-14IGL05, which is also cooled passively, shows.

The combination of a Pentium Silver and 4 GB of working memory is able to handle simple applications from the office and Internet areas. While the system usually runs smoothly, you should only expect to run few applications and browser windows concurrently, since otherwise things become more sluggish. A part of the computing performance remains unused, because the working memory (DDR4-2400, onboard) only runs in single-channel mode. It is not possible to activate dual-channel mode at a later point. The PCMark results range at the expected level.