It’s been a little while, but I still think back quite fondly on the Acer Chromebook 514. It didn’t show up in a ton of places and wasn’t widely available, but my review of that Chromebook still stands. It is far better than you would think and it does all the most important things a Chromebook needs to do very well. From the screen to the keyboard to the trackpad to the performance, this device delivers in unexpected ways and does so with absolutely ridiculous battery life.
You can check out our written review or just watch the video below, but this Chromebook is by far and away the best device I can think of for $199 – the price it currently finds itself at. There are some drawbacks, but for this kind of money, they are not even close to being an issue. Thanks to About Chromebooks for catching this awesome deal!
What I love about the Acer Chromebook 514
For superlatives, we have the keyboard, trackpad, performance, battery life, build quality and screen. That’s a lot, and that’s why I say there’s not much to dislike about this one. The 1080p touchscreen is anti-glare and 250 nits, but don’t let that fool you. In practice, it performs far better than those stats would lead on. And the backlit keyboard is super-comfortable for typing while the Gorilla Glass trackpad is huge, smooth, and comes with one of the best click mechanisms I’ve ever tested.
Inside, the MediaTek Kompanio 828 does a great job at handling not just everyday tasks, but decent workloads as well. And it does that with some of the most ridiculous battery life we’ve ever seen on a Chromebook. During my review process, I was getting a solid 12-14 hours of use out of it, meaning I could take it home for the weekend and leave the charger at the office. And taking it out and about never made me worry as the build quality was solid and always felt great.
Things I didn’t love
The only real downsides to this device are the internal storage (64GB), the lack of port selection, and the massive bezel on the bottom of the screen. The bezel isn’t a real issue: it’s just ugly. The port selection, however, is problematic if you really want to keep expanded storage with you at all time. You can definitely use this Chromebook at 64GB with no issues, but there are going to be those who want to expand on that, and the lack of ports will make that tough.
With only 2 USB Type C ports and a single Type A, you’ll need to get creative in order to get more storage. A microSD card would have gone a long way to fix this, but there is no port for it on this particular Chromebook. For what its worth, it was never an issue for me, but I don’t tend to leverage a ton of local storage, either.
$199 is an absolute steal for this device
At the end of the day, $199 for this Chromebook is ridiculous. Of all the devices I’ve reviewed in the past year or so, this is one I continue to look back on and wish I still had around. It was so quietly great at being a solid Chromebook, and if that’s the type of device you are after, you can’t do much better than this device. And at $199, there’s not a Chromebook I could think of that I’d recommend higher.
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