Technologies

Acer Spin 5 Review: Solid 2-in-1 With an OLED Omission

Competing models only slightly more expensive boast OLED displays. But if that’s not a must-have for you, the Spin 5 is a reliably good, lightweight convertible.

The Acer Spin 5 is a lightweight, all-aluminum, two-in-one laptop with a high-resolution, 14-inch display powered by speedy 12th-gen Intel silicon.

Its plain looks, however, are closer to that of the midrange Lenovo Yoga 7i than premium laptop-tablet hybrids like the Lenovo Yoga 9i, Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360 or HP Spectre x360 14. These competing models look sleeker with design flourishes like rounded edges and corners for added comfort and style.

With a price that’s on par with these premium competitors, the Spin 5 begins to lose its appeal. And it has less to do with its staid design and more with a missing feature. While the Spin 5’s 14-inch, 16:10 display is crisp and bright, it’s an ordinary IPS panel rather than an OLED panel that would offer greater contrast and color accuracy.

In 2023, it’s difficult to recommend a $1,350 laptop that lacks an OLED display when OLED models cost only a smidgen more. It’s otherwise a solid commute-friendly two-in-one that even comes with an active pen that stores and charges in the body. You might want to wait for a sale, though.

7.8

Acer Spin 5

$1,350 at Acer

Get Price Alerts

You’re receiving price alerts for Acer Spin 5

Like

Strong overall performance
1080p webcam
Comfortable keyboard
Active pen included

Don’t Like

IPS display can’t compete with OLED
Ordinary appearance
So-so battery life

Acer sells one configuration of the Spin 5 (model SP514-51N-70LZ). It costs $1,350 at Acer and features a 12th-gen Core i7 CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and a 14-inch, 16:10 display with a 2,560×1,600-pixel resolution. In the UK, the Acer Spin 5 costs 1,400. It’s not currently available in Australia.

You may also see some previous-generation Spin 5 models based on AMD and 11th-gen Intel processors. They’re easy to spot because they feature a 13.5-inch display with a taller 3:2 aspect ratio.

With its Core i7-1260P CPU, 16GB of RAM and integrated Intel Iris Xe graphics, our Spin 5 review system is at or near the top of our benchmarks among a group of similarly priced two-in-ones, with one not insignificant exception. It and the Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360 feature a CPU from Intel’s 12th-gen P series, which is more performance-oriented than Intel’s U-series chips found in some of the other models you’ll see in the performance charts. The Spin 5 and Samsung along with the AMD-based HP Envy x360 were the best overall performers. The script flips for the Spin 5, however, with battery life. It lasted 9 hours and 39 minutes on our battery drain test, which was an hour shorter than the next closest system.

Beige and boring but well built

The chief attraction of the Spin 5’s design is its sturdiness. The color of the aluminum is what Acer calls Concrete Gray. It looks as dull as that sounds. And to me, it’s more beige, but the all-metal chassis feels rock solid. There’s no hint of flex when you pick it up by a corner or type thunderously on the keyboard. Even the thin lid protecting the display feels rigid when many thin, aluminum lids flex too much to my liking.

Don’t mistake the Spin 5’s sturdiness for it being clunky or heavy. Weighing only 2.9 pounds, this is an exceedingly portable 14-inch system. The chassis is compact, with thin bezels framing the 16:10 display. Despite the trim chassis, the keyboard feels roomy; the only small-ish keys are the half-height up- and down-arrow keys. The keys offer snappy feedback with shallow travel and allow for speedy and near-silent typing. There’s two-level keyboard backlighting, and the power button doubles as a fingerprint reader that you can use with Windows Hello to log in without needing to bother with entering a password.

The touchpad is a bit undersized but wholly functional with responsive and accurate feedback. You can also navigate Windows via the touch display, which can be tapped and swiped on using your fingertip or the included active stylus. The pen can be garaged in the right edge of the laptop when it’s not needed.

Most 14-inch laptops feature a full-HD resolution, but the Spin 5 bumps it up to a 2.5K resolution(2,560×1,600 pixels) for an incredibly sharp picture. The 16:10 aspect ratio makes a huge difference on a 14-inch panel because, at this size, a widescreen 16:9 panel can feel cramped from top to bottom. It’s less of an issue on larger laptops, but at 14 inches and smaller, a 16:10 panel feels so much roomier vertically. You can see more lines on the screen in long documents and web pages and don’t need to scroll as frequently.

The Spin 5’s screen is rated for 425 nits of brightness, and I measured it even a bit brighter than that at around 450 nits. The display was bright enough to see clearly in my sunny breakfast nook, and I didn’t even need to max out the brightness slider.

OLED > IPS

So, the display is crisp and bright and yet I found it ultimately disappointing because an OLED panel becomes an option right around the Spin 5’s price. For roughly $1,500, you can get an OLED panel on the Lenovo Yoga 9i, HP Spectre x360 14 and Samsung Galaxy Book 2 Pro 360. And once you’ve used an OLED laptop and experienced the incredible contrast with absolute black levels and vibrant color, it’s hard to go back to an IPS panel unless you are shopping under $1,000.

OLED panels trickling down from high-end, high-priced laptops for content creators to midrange models is one of the best laptop trends of the past year. The other? The move from grainy 720p webcams to 1080p cameras. The Spin 5 may have missed out on the OLED trend, but it hopped on the 1080p webcam trend.

You will appear in fine, accurate detail to your video conference mates when seated in front of the Spin 5. The webcam isn’t an IR camera, however, so you can’t use facial recognition with Windows Hello. The camera also lacks a physical privacy cover, and there’s no kill switch on the keyboard to guarantee privacy when the camera isn’t being used.

The Spin 5 offers a useful selection of ports. There are a pair of USB-C ports with Thunderbolt 4 support and a pair of USB Type-A ports so you need to hassle with an adapter for your USB devices. The USB-A ports are split with one on each side of the system, but the USB-C ports are both located on the left side. I wish the USB-C ports were also split across each side because you need to use one of them to charge the laptop, and I would have liked the flexibility to connect the power cord to either side of the laptop depending where the nearest power outlet is located. The Spin 5 also supplies an HDMI port as well as a microSD card slot — a rare inclusion.

As currently configured and priced, the Acer Spin 5 is an awkward proposition. There’s no fatal flaw to this 14-inch two-in-one, but it’s priced right about where OLED models start to become an option. The Spin 5 makes sense if you can find it on sale for closer to $1,000, but a better option is waiting for an OLED two-in-one to go on sale for around what the Spin 5 costs right now.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for May 18, #707

Hints and answers for Connections for May 18, #707.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s Connections puzzle is a mix of difficult and easy. The purple category does what most purple categories do, and makes you really break down how you think about the words. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times now has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group, to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: School days.

Green group hint: About there!

Blue group hint: Sure, let’s go.

Purple group hint: The Scarlett Letter.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Tasks for a student.

Green group: Encouraging responses in a guessing game.

Blue group: Up for anything.

Purple group: What «A» might mean.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is tasks for a student. The four answers are assignment, drill, exercise and lesson.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is encouraging responses in a guessing game. The four answers are almost, close, not quite and warm.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is up for anything. The four answers are easy, flexible, game and open.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is what «A» might mean. The four answers are area, athletic, excellent and one.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for May 18, #441

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle No. 441 for May 18.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands will probably be easier if you have some basic knowledge about a certain type of vessel. You don’t really need to have ever been on one, since the answers show up in books and movies all the time. If you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Riding the wind.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: famed song by Christopher Cross.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints, but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

DULL, TILE, TILER, SEER, GALE, GALES, HAIL, SAIL, LEEK, GLUE, HALL, TALL, HEAT

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you’ve got all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

HELM, HULL, KEEL, MAST, STERN, RIGGING, RUDDER, TILLER

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is SAILBOAT. To find it, start with the S that’s four letters down on the farthest row to the left, then wind across, up and down.

Technologies

Google I/O 2025: How to Watch and What to Expect

With Android 16 out of the way, Google I/O will certainly be all about AI.

Google I/O 2025 takes place on May 20 and 21 with Google’s big keynote happening on day 1. We expect Big G to talk about its myriad innovations across its ever-expanding portfolio of products — almost certainly with a huge focus on AI every step of the way. If we collectively cross our fingers, promise to be good and eat all our vegetables then we may even be treated to a sneak peek at upcoming hardware.

Read more: Android 16: Everything Google Announced at the Android Show

Google also hosted a totally separate event that focused solely on Android. The Android Show: I/O Edition saw the wrappers come off Android 16, with insights into the new Material 3 Expressive interface, updates to security and a focus on Gemini and how it’ll work on a variety of other devices.

By breaking out Android news into its own virtual event, Google frees itself to spend more time during the I/O keynote to talk about Gemini, Deep Mind, Android XR and Project Astra. It’s going to be a jam-packed event, so here’s how you can watch I/O 2025 as it happens and what you can look forward to.

Google I/O: Where to watch

Google I/O proper kicks off with a keynote taking place on May 20, 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT, 6 p.m. BST). It’ll almost certainly be available to stream online on Google’s own YouTube channel, although a holding video is yet to be available. There’s no live link on the I/O website yet, either, though you can use the handy links to add the event to your calendar of choice. Expect links to a livestream to be available closer to the day.

What to expect from Google I/O 2025

Little chat about Android 16: As Google gave Android 16 its own outing already, it’s likely that it won’t be mentioned all that much during I/O. In fact at last year’s event, Android was barely mentioned, while uses of the term «AI» went well over a hundred.

Android XR: Google didn’t talk much about Android XR during the Android show, focusing instead on the purely phone-based updates to the platform. We expected to hear more about the company’s latest foray into mixed-reality headsets in partnership with Samsung and its Project Moohan headset, so it’s possible that this is being saved for I/O proper.

Gemini: With Android being spun out into its own separate event, Google is evidently clearing the way for I/O to focus on everything else the company does. AI will continue to dominate the conversation at I/O, just as it did last year (though hopefully Google can make it more understandable) with updates to many of its AI platforms expected to be announced.

Gemini is expected to receive a variety of update announcements, including more information on its latest 2.5 Pro update which boasts various improvements to its reasoning abilities, and in particular to its helpfulness for coding applications. Expect lots of mentions of Google’s other AI-based products, too, including DeepMind, LearnLM and Project Astra. Let’s just hope Google has figured out how to make this information make any kind of sense.

Beyond AI, Google may talk about updates to its other products including GMail, Chrome and the Play Store, although whether these updates are big enough to be discussed during the keynote rather than as part of the developer-focused sessions following I/O’s opening remains to be seen.