ACER Switch 11 Pro 2-in-1 Laptop Review

By Steven Kean

ACER Switch 11 Solid-State Drive Performance

OEM Drive Space Used

The ACER Switch 11, arrived with a 128GB SSD, taking a look at the properties of the drive, I found that Windows 8.1 and the pre-installed software took up 15.5GB of the space, leaving 94.5GB free.

ACER-Switch-Benchmarks-Drive-Usage

Like most systems, ACER pre-installs a large amount of software, there are over 18 pre-installed apps. These apps include a mix of free and trial based apps. Here is a small list of the pre-installed applications:

  • Kindle
  • Netflix
  • Hulu Plus
  • Amazon
  • Ebay
  • Flipboard
  • Booking.com
  • AccuWeather
  • Next Issue Magazines
  • Evernote Touch
  • MS Office 365 (30 day trial)
  • McAfee LiveSafe (30 day trial)
  • ACER Software (ACER Store, Care Center, Video Player, Recovery Management, and more)

One of the ACER pieces of software changes the Theme as you change modes from Laptop, Tablet, or Stand/Tent. By default, in laptop mode it shows a nice, colorful field. In Tablet mode, it is a green room with an outline of the tablet on the floor; in Stand/Tent mode it the blue room. These can easily be changed by the user. The software isn’t ground breaking, it is just a fun way to be able to customize the various modes.

Should you decide to reinstall the operating system, ACER makes the drivers for the Switch 11 available online and can be found here.

CrystalDiskInfo 5.6.2

ACER-Switch-Benchmarks-CDInfo

With CrystalDiskInfo we can see that the SSD used in this specific Switch 11 is Kingston RBU-SNS8100S3128GD. It supports SATA 6Gbps along with the common features such as SMART, NCQ, APM and TRIM. I was unable to find any specific information on this SSD on Kingston’s site, however their other M.2 drives have a rated speed of up to 550MB/s read and 520MB/s write.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0.4 x64

CrystalDiskMark 3.0.4 is a great little benchmark that gauges the performance capabilities of a storage device. It is an industry standard, and many drive manufacturers will use this benchmark to test their drives. It provides a benchmark of Sequential and Random read/writes with a queue depth of 32. CrystalDiskMark was run after all the benchmarks were installed, rather than a true “Out of Box” or empty drive rating.

ACER-Switch-Benchmarks-CDM

The Kingston SSD performs pretty well, receiving a 465.7MB/s read and 345.3MB/s write speed; certainly not the fastest drive out there but very respectable performance none the less.