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The Acer Chromebook 514 is mild, nice-looking and good worth for cash. Should you solely want a laptop computer for writing, spreadsheets and electronic mail, and also you’re trying to economize, this is a perfect selection.
Professionals
- Good worth for cash
- Slim and lightweight
- Metallic chassis
Cons
- Show high quality will not be nice
- Efficiency can grind to a halt if overloaded
- Some apps like Spotify will not work
Key Specs
- Assessment Worth: £370
- 14-inch Full HD (1920 x 1080) touchscreen show
- 323 x 232 x 17mm
- Intel Celeron N3350 1.10GHz processor
- 1.5kg
- 32GB flash reminiscence
- Chrome OS
- 4GB LPDDR4 RAM
What’s the Acer Chromebook 514?
The Chromebook 514 is the most recent Chromebook from Acer. It’s properly priced and aimed primarily at consumers on a shoestring finances who need a laptop computer for phrase processing, spreadsheets, and the same old type of PC duties on the go.
The 514 mannequin I’ve been despatched for assessment is the CB514-1HT mannequin, which options an Intel Celeron N3350 processor, 4GB of RAM, and inner storage of simply 32GB – solely 21GB of which is on the market to the person.
That’s a very low quantity of storage, till you keep in mind that Chromebook customers are supposed to leverage the 15GB of Google Drive storage supplied without cost, in addition to the 100GB you will get from £1.59 a month.
In case your computing wants don’t actually prolong a lot past writing and submitting copy, spreadsheet upkeep and a spot of Netflix on the facet, then the Acer Chromebook 514 will meet your wants, for lower than a Home windows-equivalent machine.
Associated: Greatest Laptops 2019
With its steel chassis, the Acer Chromebook 514 appears to be like costlier than it truly is
Acer Chromebook 514 design – It’s a slimline steel laptop computer that gained’t break the financial institution
Chromebooks are low-cost and cheerful laptops working Google’s light-weight Chrome OS, usually priced someplace within the £300-£500 bracket.
Till not too long ago, Chromebooks have additionally been common from relatively naff-feeling flexy plastic and there hasn’t been a lot consideration on the aesthetics entrance. This modified with the launch of the Dell Inspiron Chromebook 14 7000 2-in-1, Google’s personal Pixel Slate and the Acer Chromebook 514.
- Associated: Greatest Chromebook
Whereas this Acer Chromebook isn’t fairly as good to have a look at because the Dell or the Google Slate, its lid and chassis are produced from aluminium, which instantly makes it really feel extra premium than a typical run-of-the-mill Chromebook. The one components of the Acer Chromebook 514’s physique that aren’t produced from steel are the display bezel and the hinge, that are plastic.
I’m just a little unhappy to say that the assessment unit I picked up appeared to exhibit some superficial injury on the highest left nook of the show facet. Among the silver paint had come away, making me surprise what this can appear to be after a few years – most likely not as unhealthy because the LG Gram 2-in-1, however nonetheless.
Paint job apart, the Acer Chromebook 514 weighs a really spry 1.5kg and, because it measures a slim 17mm when closed, it’s going to slip properly into your bag and take up little or no area.
You get two Sort A USB ports and two Sort C USB ports – useful in the event you’re utilizing exterior drives or peripherals that use the older connection. The left-hand USB-C port helps Energy Supply, which, in sensible phrases, means it’s going to perform because the port for the mains adapter more often than not.
You additionally get a microSD card reader, if you wish to switch folders or bolster that not-very-generous quantity of native storage, a 3.5mm jack for headphones, and a lock slot. All of that is par for the course for many Chromebooks lately.
The Acer Chromebook 514’s keyboard advantages from the steel chassis, as there’s no flex right here
Acer Chromebook 514 efficiency and specs – Does the fundamentals, and solely the fundamentals
In case your PC utilization includes primary workplace work, checking emails and social, with a little bit of YouTube rumbling away within the background, the Acer Chromebook 514 will do all of that nicely sufficient.
The keyboard structure is identical as each Chromebook, as is the typing expertise. You get the identical thin-feeling plastic keycaps right here, with the identical low journey and comparatively low spring motion – typing on the Acer Chromebook 514 is ok, nevertheless it’s not precisely snappy. The stable steel chassis, nonetheless, signifies that the deck across the keyboard is free from any apparent flex. The board is backlit as nicely, so working at evening gained’t be a problem.
The trackpad is nicely sized, responsive and correct, if just a little gradual for my tastes, however nothing that some fiddling within the settings couldn’t repair.
The keyboard structure is barely totally different to a typical Home windows laptop computer, nevertheless it gained’t take lengthy to get acquainted
If it’s worthwhile to edit pictures, nonetheless, you’re not in luck. You may nearly get away with cropping snaps in Photoshop Specific on the Acer Chromebook 514, however the expertise will most certainly be irritating. Should you want a Chromebook to do mild photograph work, take a look at the Dell Inspiron Chromebook 14 7000 2-in-1 as an alternative.
You have to be considered along with your tab use with the Chromebook 514 – I are likely to don’t have any fewer than 10 tabs open in Chrome at anyone time (with a kind of usually YouTube on autoplay), and located that, every so often, when writing paperwork, every little thing would gradual to a crawl for about 5 seconds earlier than easing up once more right here. Chrome will be very memory-hungry on Home windows laptops, and also you get 4GB of RAM to play with right here – simply get used to recurrently closing and refreshing Chrome to maintain issues working easily.
Benchmarking choices for Chromebooks are few and much between, however I used to be capable of set up and run Geekbench 4 for Android from the Google Play Retailer. Geekbench 4 includes a CPU (central processing unit) stress take a look at, and can provide you an concept of how briskly any system will run.
The Acer Chromebook 514 I examined featured an Intel Celeron N3350 dual-core processor with a 1.10GHz base clock pace.
Working Geekbench 4 gave me single and multi-core scores of 1391 and 2733 respectively, just a little underneath the Dell Chromebook 3100 2-in-1 (1769 and 3327), and much decrease than what I noticed once I benched the Dell Inspiron Chromebook 14, which gave me 4436 and 8763.
It must be famous that the Inspiron Chromebook options an eighth gen Intel Core i3, which is a way more superior processor than the Pentium chip of the Acer Chromebook 514, and the Celeron N4000 of the opposite Dell Chromebook.
Word that Geekbench 4 pegs single-core scores of 4000, and multi-core scores of 8000, primarily based on the efficiency of a Core i7-6600U laptop computer CPU clocked to 2.60GHz, because the baseline.
I additionally ran Google’s defunct Octane 2.0 benchmark and obtained 10,703 – once more, this doesn’t examine that nicely with the Dell Inspiron Chromebook 14 7000 2-in-1, which gave me 31,575.
In abstract, whilst you can simply write, electronic mail, and crunch numbers on sheets on the Acer Chromebook 514, not all the apps I attempted to run labored. Netflix ran simply tremendous and dandy, however whereas the Spotify app would set up, I used to be greeted with a clean display every time I attempted to run it. With such restricted cupboard space, it’s unlikely that you simply’re going to be putting in many apps on the Acer Chromebook 514 anyway.
The Chromebook 514’s show is pretty middling, however the skinny bezel partially makes up for it
Acer Chromebook 514 show – Is the Acer Chromebook 514’s display ok for Netflix and photograph modifying?
The Acer Chromebook 514’s 14-inch touchscreen show will not be one of many brightest I’ve seen, which means that Netflix and YouTube streams, notably night-time/inside scenes, can generally look gloomy. Issues aren’t so unhealthy that they’re not viewable however the brightness, paired with not-fantastic viewing angles, limits the Acer Chromebook 514’s usability as a Netflix and chill companion. The show can also be unsuitable for photograph modifying.
As we’ve already established, this Chromebook’s elements struggled to run essentially the most primary modifying software program, so the efficiency of the show on this regard is moot, however for what it’s value, I recorded color gamut protection scores of 57.0% (sRGB), 39.6% (Adobe RGB) and 40.6% (DCI-P3), utilizing DisplayCAL 3 and an X-Ceremony i1 colorimeter. That’s far beneath what you want in the event you’re trying to do photograph modifying of any sort.
With the identical machine and software program, I recorded a most brightness of 257.9 nits. This may nearly allow you to work comfortably in most lighting circumstances, although it’s possible you’ll battle exterior on a sunny day. Ideally, you need peak brightness of 300 nits. Black ranges recorded at most brightness had been 0.205, including as much as distinction ratio of 1254:1. That’s fairly good, and about what you’d anticipate from an honest laptop computer. I additionally recorded a color temperature of 6212K, which, once more, is excellent, and near the 6500K best.
In brief, video streams will look ok, however you’ll wish to crank that brightness all the best way up. Photograph work? Overlook it.
One of many two USB A and USB C ports on the Acer Chromebook 514
Acer Chromebook 514 battery – Can I get a day’s use out of the Acer Chromebook 514?
You may wring a working day’s quantity of energy – i.e. seven to eight hours – out of the Acer Chromebook 514.
Working the Geekbench 4 battery benchmark, which simulates primary PC use within the background with the show’s brightness locked at 150 nits, I obtained a results of seven hours and 21 minutes. That’s very a lot consistent with what I noticed day-to-day. Should you can stand to dip the display’s brightness beneath 150 nits then you can also make it final even longer.
If it’s important to work away from a mains socket for some time, the excellent news is the Acer Chromebook 514 solely takes about 90 minutes to totally cost up. From empty, I used to be capable of get round 73-75% of the tank full after an hour on the mains.
On the opposite facet you get the opposite USB C and USB A ports, plus a microSD card reader and a 3.5mm jack
Ought to I purchase the Acer Chromebook 514?
The Acer Chromebook 514 is nice worth for cash. The mannequin I examined is priced at £370 and is completely tremendous for primary PC work, and the steel chassis means it’s resilient and doesn’t appear to be an inexpensive laptop computer. There may be additionally a less expensive variant (CB514-1H) which options most of the similar specs, however a decrease res (1366 x 768) non-touch show.
Whereas the show isn’t good, it’s ok for writing essays, and, at a push, streaming video.
You do should be affected person with the Acer Chromebook 514. Should you throw numerous work at it directly – a number of tabs and YouTube streams, whereas making an attempt to obtain a number of issues from Google Play – it’ll falter.
However in the event you want an affordable laptop computer for phrase processing and also you don’t wish to shell out for Microsoft Workplace, then the Acer Chromebook 514 is a superb choice.
Verdict
A properly priced laptop computer in a steel case that’ll do the fundamentals (and solely the fundamentals).
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