Chromebook with Snapdragon chip and LTE: Acer’s Spin 513

With the Spin 513, Acer announces a Chromebook convertible that comes with a Snapdragon chip and integrated LTE and costs little.

Acer has presented the first Chromebook based on the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c today. With a weight of around 1.2 kilograms and a case thickness of less than 16 millimeters, the Chromebook-Convertible, which is enclosed in an aluminum case, is comparatively mobile.

Solid office fare, unusual processor

The 13.3-inch touch display delivers full HD resolution and is protected by Corning’s gorilla glass. With one battery charge, the device should last about 14 hours. When it comes to RAM, buyers can choose between a configuration with four and one with eight gigabytes of DDR4 memory. Up to 128 gigabytes of eMMC memory are provided for local data storage.

The special feature of the new Chromebook Acer, however, is the processor used. Here Acer uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c. The SoC (System-on-a-Chip) has eight Cortex-A76 cores and an Adreno-618-GPU, as well as an integrated LTE modem.

Also read: Acer Spin 5 2020 Review

The core is a chip based on the Snapdragon 730 smartphone SoC, which is used for example in the Google Pixel 4a in the 730G version. The Snapdragon 730x have been available since spring 2019 and were announced at the time as chips for the upper and middle class. The 730 was intended to bring functions previously only known from top smartphones to the lower-priced upper class.

By the way, Acer delivers solid office hardware with the Spin 513. Above all, the backlit keyboard makes a good contribution to the suitability for everyday use. The Spin 513 offers two USB C 3.2 ports with display port mode and charging function, as well as a USB A 3.2 port. Wireless communication is via Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5 and LTE.

The Spin 513 is not the first Chromebook with ARM chip architecture. Qualcomm alone hasn’t played a role here so far. Chromebooks with chips such as the Samsung Exynos, for example from Samsung itself, or Chromebooks with media technology SoCs, such as the Lenovo Chromebook S330, have been around for a long time.

Acer also offers the Spin 513 in an enterprise version. These Chromebooks can be configured and administered centrally via the IT department of the respective company. The web-based administration allows, for example, to easily control updates, configure applications and install extensions and policies.