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In this post we will compare Acer Spin 3 vs Lenovo Flex 14 to find out the the best budget entry level laptop.

Acer Spin 3	Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 14
Buy Now	Buy Now
Pros	Pros
Clean aesthetics, decently built overall, Gets a convertible touchscreen, Fast keyboard, but noisy and shallow, Performs well and runs cool with daily use, Gets updated speakers and an OK camera, Big battery and long battery life, Competitively priced in its segment.	Nice looks and good build quality, Matte IPS screen, Fast and quiet keyboard, but rather shallow feedback, Solid everyday performer, runs cool and quiet, Configurable and allows for RAM/SSD user upgrades, competitively priced.
Cons	Cons
All plastic construction, some parts flex a fair-bit, Chunky and heavy for a modern convertible, The shallow keyboard needs time to get used to, and lacks backlightning, Dim and uneven display, The fans are active all the time, even with basic use	Rather dim and washed out panel, Fans unnecesarily always active with daily use, Battery life shorter than expected, Test for wireless issues

SPECIFICATION

DISPLAY

Storage and Expansion

I/ O

Communication

Battery

Keyboard & Mouse

General

DETAILED REVIEW:

DESIGN

Acer Spin 3:

The biggest highlight of this laptop is that this is a 2-in-1 convertible laptop. Here we get to see a plastic body on this laptop which sort of reduces the weight of the laptop. It’s build quality is nice and feels quite solid in hand. On opening the lid of the laptop we get to see glossy silver finishing at the bottom which protects the laptop from the scratches and things like that. So, this is a 2-in-1 convertible laptop. Here, on this laptop we have two hinges which are quite sturdy and it’s not like usual hinges on the other 2-in-1 laptops which are not that sturdy.

So, with this 2-in-1 convertible laptop we can use the laptop in traditional laptop mode, flat mode, reversible laptop mode, tent mode, and tablet mode.

Lenovo Flex 14:

It feels that the laptop is pretty well built. The deck of the keyboard is made of metal but the bottom of laptop is made of plastic and the lid of the laptop is made of plastic with a nice rubberized texture so it is not that slippery. Even the hinges here are really nice, sturdy and strong.

KEYBOARD & TOUCHPAD

Acer Spin 3:

Here, we have an island style keyobard with backlit enabled features. The layout of this keyboard is quite normal and the keyboard feels good while working for a long time. The keys on the keyboard are quite responsive and the key travel is around 1 MM and they offer the actuation force of about 80 grams which gives a pretty good tactile feedback. The deck of the keyboard is made of textured plastic and the palm rest is also very good and feels very comfortable when the palm is resting on the deck.

Here, we also have a fingerprint sensor on the top left corner of the trackpad. So here we also get to see a little bit of biometric security, which is quite good for those who are concern for there privacy. The trackpad on this laptop is very large size with 4.1 inches x 2.6 inches. Now the trackpad is also made of plastic and its very clicky and responsive and it comes with windows precision drivers and it handles all types of gestures very well.

Lenovo Flex 14:

The keyboard is really nice and the key travel is just decent than some of the other Lenovo Ideapad out there. The typing on these keyboard is just as comfortable as on the other keyboards. The keys here are really nice as I mentioned before and the space between the keys is also decent. The layout of the keyboard is pretty standard and the keyboard here also has the backlit functionality. The trackpad is also really good and responsive and we also get to see a finger print scanner which is really for those who are very concern about there privacy.

DISPLAY

Acer Spin 3:

Now, over here we got a widescreen 14-inch FullHD screen with the resolution of 1920p x 1080p. It also has the backlit IPS panel with the multi touch available as well. This laptop has a 78.9% screen-to-body-ratio and the bezels of the screen are very thin as well. This screen maxes out at 240 nits of brightness and it’s plenty bright as well so you will have no problem using this laptop in outdoor conditions. This screen as nice wide viewing angle of almost 180-degrees so your content would look good even at a very skewed angles. This screen also has the features of multi-touch which is very convenient if love using laptop in the table mode.

Lenovo Flex 14:

Here, we get a 14-inch 1080p screen with touchscreen functionality as well. The screen is not the most brightest screen I have looked at but other than that the display is really nice and its got a nice warm color tone to the screen and it looks really sharp and the screen also looks very pleasing. The touch on the screen is also responsive as well. This screen has got a big bezel at the bottom which does not look that good as now a days most companies are trying to reduce bezels as much as they can. On the top we get to see a 720p webcam which is just fine and it also has a camera shutter to protect your privacy.

SPEAKERS

Acer Spin 3:

Here, we get to see dual front facing speakers on this 2-in-1 convertible laptop and these speakers provide loud audio with decent bass. These speakers are in such a position where it would always be facing you whether you are using traditional laptop mode or tablet mode. The maximum volume is around 74 decibels and even at its maximum volume I didn’t find any distortion and that’s pretty impressive for me with these little speakers.

Lenovo Flex 14:

The speakers on the Lenovo Flex 14 are pretty decent and this speakers are located at the bottom left and bottom right. Here, we do not get a lot of base but the speakers are still pretty crisp and clear. The speakers here are nice and loud and good stereo separation. However if you still want better sound than the speakers than I would suggest to put in a pair of headphones.

PERFORMANCE

Acer Spin 3:

On this laptop we have got the eight generation core i7 processor 8565U from the Intel Whiskey Lake. This is quite nice as most of the 2-in-1 convertible laptop uses slower processor, So this is really nice job done by Acer. This is a four core processor with the minimum clockspeed of 1.8 GHz and the maximum clockspeed is 4.6 GHz and it uses 15-watts and it can automatically overclock itself from 1.8 GHz to 4.6 GHz while maintaining 15-watts of power consumption. Hence, we can get snappy performance while the laptop is still cool. This is one of the best CPU under this category and you will not experience any problem to run any application or game on this laptop. I was able to open more than 50 tabs on this laptop and I am very convinced with the performance of this laptop.

It also has integrated the Intel UHD Graphics 620 in this 2-in-1 convertible laptop and its a nice GPU and it produces 37 fps on the dirt 3 benchmark. Now, the average playability threshold is 30 fps, so you will be able to do some casual gaming on this laptop without any problems.

You will also be able to enjoy smooth video playback without any dropped frames but it is a integrated GPU so don’t expect to see high level of performance.

Lenovo Flex 14:

Here, we get the i5-8265U processor with 16 GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. Now, when I was testing the performance I was watching videos at 1080p 60fps and I didn’t show frames dropping and the video was running very smoothly. The laptop is really good if you are doing the basic work like browsing web, emailing, word processing, etc. all of these things are fine.

BATTERY

Acer Spin 3:

The company means Acer claims that it can give you 12 hours of battery which I don’t think that it can be true. As I have tested I was able to get somewhere around 7 to 8 hours of battery life while surfing the web through wifi and the brightness at 150 nits. So according to me you are not going to get 12 hours of battery life but this is still a decent battery life for an Ultrabook.

Lenovo Flex 14:

The battery life on this device will be somewhere around 6 hours if you are doing some basic task and if the brightness is turned down then you might be able to get some more battery life. But however this device is not going to give a great battery performance.

PORT SELECTION

Acer Spin 3:

There is an HDMI port for connecting to an external monitor and we also have an SD card reader. But here we do not have an USB Type-C port which is kind of bad.

Lenovo Flex 14:

On the left side, we have a power cord, a full size HDMI port for using external displays, a USB type-C port and its only for transferring data, not for charging or watching videos. And microphone jack is also on left side as well.

On the right side, we have got two full-sized USB 3 ports, full sized SDcard reader and power switch as well.

WEIGHT & DIMENSIONS

Acer Spin 3:

Acer Spin 3 weights 1.7 kg or 3.65 pounds ad its dimensions are 12.9 x 9.4 x 0.8 inches.

Lenovo Flex 14:

The weight of this laptop is 3.65 pounds or 1.65 Kg.

WHICH ONE YOU SHOULD BUY?

Now, both laptops are nice and it comes down to the personal prefrences that which one you want. Now if you ask me I would definitely take Acer Spin 3 as it has a better battery life, better display. better speakers for me this is the one that I would like to buy.

Jignesh

I'm Jignesh Prajapati, a passionate tech enthusiast from Ahmedabad, India. In 2016, I took a bold leap, leaving my job to embark on a blogging journey. Despite exploring various niches, my heart found its true calling in technology. Today, I am the proud Founder and CEO of my tech blog - The World's Best and Worst