Acer’s Spin 5 convertible line now has Intel’s 8th-gen chips

The Spin 5 is one of the cheaper convertible laptops in Acer’s lineup, with a starting price of $799. And at IFA this year, Acer has improved the specifications, adding Intel’s newest 8th-generation Core processors.

Available in either 13-inch or 15-inch sizes, the Spin 5 offers remarkably good hardware despite its spot at the low end of Acer’s convertible lineup. While the company isn’t offering exact configurations or pricing, the updated Spin 5 will come with Intel’s new 8th-generation processors, offer up to 16GB of RAM, and, on the 15-inch model, a dedicated Nvidia GTX 1050 GPU. The Spin 5 also has far-field microphones that let you use Cortana from up to 13 feet away, which should be great for anyone actually using Cortana as a voice-activated assistant.

Both sizes of the Spin 5 should be available in September in both the United States and Europe.

Dell launches XPS 13 with quad-core 8th-gen Intel chips, announces mixed reality headset

August 29, 2017

 
 

Dell has kicked off its IFA show in style, becoming the first company to unveil a laptop powered by Intel’s upcoming 8th-generation Core processors, announcing an update to its XPS 13 Ultrabook with the new CPU on board. The company also announced a new “mixed reality” headset and a new line-up of Inspiron laptops.

The XPS 13, which for years has been a dual-core laptop powered by Intel chips, will double up on cores, gaining quad-core status from later in September. Dell is claiming a 44% performance increase over the current generation of XPS 13s.

Related: All the latest from IFA 2017

The 13.3-inch laptop will be powered by the upcoming Intel Core i7-8550U CPU, which feature a maximum clock speed of and 4GHz. 8th-generation laptop chips are based on the same Intel “Kaby Lake” technology seen in 7th-gen processors, but with double the cores.

The new 8th-gen processors are also coming to Dell’s new Inspiron 7000 series of laptops that include 2-in-1s and regular laptops of 13-, 15-, and 17-inch sizes. The two new machines come in Dell’s standard silver or Pink Champagne and will start from £749 for 13-inch models and £949 for the 17-inch model.

Dell Visor

Meanwhile, the new Dell Visor is one of the most advanced mixed reality headsets for Windows that’s been announced so far. While devices from the likes of Acer make use of internal sensors, the Dell Visor will also use satellite emitters (similar to the HTC Vive) to allow the headset to understand where it is in real space. There’s a flip-up visor (hence the name), and can even be bought with a pair of Visor Controllers. More info about the Visor will be revealed during Microsoft’s IFA press conference on Friday.