Acer Spin 5 review: What it's like to have Amazon Alexa in a laptop

Let's be clear up front: The Acer Spin 5 is not a bad laptop. You might justify buying it because it's a solidly built convertible with respectable specs for the money, plus a comfortable keyboard and trackpad (not a guarantee in this price range). You might also be intrigued by its Amazon Alexa integration, which lets you perform certain tasks with hands-free voice commands. Still, this convertible laptop has a couple of nettlesome downsides, including a noisy fan and thick display bezels. Meanwhile the Alexa support doesn't really add any value to the laptop, given that you can download the same app on other PCs and get an even better experience with dedicated Echo speakers. The Spin 5 configuration we tested (SP513-52N-85LZ) lists for $900 on Amazon and includes an 8th-generation Intel Core i7-8550U processor with UHD 620 graphics, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and a 256GB SSD.