Acer Spin 7 could beat MacBook Air with multi-day battery life

All-day battery life is antiquated, or so says the Acer Spin 7. This new 2-in-1, just announced at IFA 2020 in Berlin, looks to last multiple days on a single charge, thanks to the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G compute platform.

The Acer Spin 7 will support both mmWave and sub-6 GHz 5G frequencies, so wherever any 5G is, you'll be able to get online and stream your favorite movies or dash off a quick email.

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Here's everything we know (and what we're still waiting to find out) about the Acer Spin 7:

Acer Spin 7 price and availability

Acer has yet to announce how much the Spin 7 will cost, or when it's coming out. We will update this story once those details become available.

Acer Spin 7 design and ports

It's hard to see in these press photos, but the Acer Spin 7's been designed with colors to help it stand out from the pack, with a "steam blue" chassis with gold accents. The Acer Spin 7 rotates between the four standard laptop positions: notebook, tablet,  tent and presentation. Its hinge is designed to lift the laptop's keyboard up a slightly, creating an improved angle for ergonomic typing.

It's also designed to create a cleaner user experience, with its display coated in a layer of Antimicrobial Corning Gorilla Glass, and there's a silver-ion antimicrobial agent in the coating used for the keyboard, touchpad and other surrounding surfaces, which Acer says "is proven to show a consistently high microbial reduction rate against a broad range of bacteria under the JIS Z 2801 & ISO 22196 test protocol."

Acer does not specify the laptop's connectivity in the press release, but The Verge reports that the laptop has two USB-C ports and a USB-A port for all of our devices that still use the older, non-reversible connector. There's also a fingerprint sensor for Windows Hello login. 

The Spin 7's tablet mode should be proven most useful with its included active Wacom stylus. The pen offers 4,096 levels of pressure sensitivity, and can be garaged in the side of the computer once it needs a recharge.

Acer Spin 7 display and audio

The 14-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS display in the Acer Spin 7 seems rather normal on paper. Its bottom "chin" bezel looks pretty chunky, while its side bezels are slimmer and the top bezel is somewhere in between. 

The Spin 7 also packs "integrated  Qualcomm Aqstic echo noise cancellation and noise suppression (ECNS) technology" which should enable "high-fidelity sound for an immersive experience."

Acer Spin 7 performance and battery life

Acer's press release didn't talk up the speed of the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 5G compute platform, so we'll need to get it in for ourselves to see how well it allows you to multitask.

However, Acer's claim of "multi-day battery life" is the truly intriguing possibility here. Even though we're all working at home these days, I would love it if any of my laptops here didn't need to be charged every night.

For context, the latest MacBook Air lasted for about 9 hours and 30 minutes during our in-house web surfing test, while the Dell XPS 13 lasted for close to 13. If Acer's claims hold true, we could see numbers that double those.

Acer Spin 7 5G capabilities

The Spin 7's Snapdragon X55 5G Modem-RF System allows it to operate on both the mmWave and sub-6 GHz frequencies, the two different flavors of 5G. Acer claims that the laptop should max out at download speeds of up to 7.5 Gbps, though that's provided you've got 5G in the air near you.

Acer Spin 7 outlook

If the Acer Spin 7 can provide decent performance, and support all the apps you want now (ARM-based processors have not supported all legacy programs), this could be one of the more compelling laptops Acer's put out in a while, with its multi-day battery life.

But what good is a long-lasting laptop if you're having trouble using it for your current workflows?  We can't wait to see how the Spin 7 turns out when we get it in for testing.