Other pluses include a well-spaced keyboard and a sharp Full HD screen. Brightness levels are pretty good by Chromebook standards, and there’s more colour depth than with many budget rivals. In fact, the only reasons not to invest in the Spin 514 are that faster models, with 12th generation Intel CPUs, have now arrived and that the battery life isn’t quite up there with the leading models. But, if you’re happy to live with a slightly dated spec, this is still one of the best value Chromebooks out there. The Acer Chromebook 14 demonstrated acceptable performance on the WebGL Aquarium graphics simulation, which tests 3D rendering. The notebook mustered 47 frames per second with 250 and 500 fish in the tank, while the Dell and Toshiba both sped along at 60 fps with as many as 1,000 fish. The Acer Chromebook 14 did OK on Google's Octane 2.0 performance test, which gave it a score of 7,840. The Celeron N2940-powered HP Chromebook 14 notched a comparable 7,869. However, the e Celeron 3205U-powered Dell Chromebook 13 (14,453) and Celeron 3215U-powered Toshiba Chromebook 2 (17,044) earned better scores. We used the Acer Chromebook 314 to book an important event during our tests, and this presented an opportunity to get a serious amount of tabs, sheets and docs open up at once.

Acer Chromebook 14 - Full Review and Benchmarks | Laptop Mag Acer Chromebook 14 - Full Review and Benchmarks | Laptop Mag

However, the upper and lower bezels are pretty beefy. With the current vogue for vanishingly small bezels in everything from laptops to smartphones and TVs, that prevents the Acer Chromebook 714 from looking terribly contemporary.

Thanks to the quad-core Intel Core i5-8250U CPU, this is a Chromebook with genuine performance chops. It’s capable of much more than just web browsing and media consumption. It’s powerful enough for light content creation on the move. Another slightly marginal aspect is the 14-inch 1080p screen. It’s IPS, so color accuracy and viewing angles are decent. But it’s a little short on punch, brightness and vibrancy. It’s not a terrible panel. But neither is it good enough to be a highlight or a feature you can enjoy in its own right. It’s only really apparent once you start using it that the Chromebook 314 has been built to a budget, and that partly comes down to the keyboard and touchpad. The keyboard itself isn’t bad. It has a spacious layout with good-sized Shift and Ctrl keys, even if I’m not a huge fan of the split-key design on the left Shift and Return keys, where one chunk of the key is actually the key next door. The keys have a slightly uneven wobble if you move your finger tip across the key cap, but the action is crisp and you don’t notice the wobble while you’re typing.

Acer Chromebook 14 CB3-431 - (Intel Celeron N3060, 2GB RAM Acer Chromebook 14 CB3-431 - (Intel Celeron N3060, 2GB RAM

Expertise Laptops, desktops and computer and PC gaming accessories including keyboards, mice and controllers, cameras, action cameras and drones CredentialsWhile we’re hearing good things about some of Mediatek’s new Chromebook CPUs, the MT8183C Acer is using here is one of the older ones. It has eight cores running at a maximum 2GHz, which means it’s faster in some multi-threaded tests than comparable Celeron N4500 and N4200 Chromebooks. The bright, roomy screen makes it ideal to peruse maps and images as well as documents and forms, seamlessly transitioning between tasks. Combine this intensive work out with usual work tasks and still the Acer Chromebook 314 had no trouble doing exactly what was required of it without any hiccups. Get access to more than 2 million Android apps from the Google Play store, along with the latest games, music, movies, TV, books, magazines & more. This is all while retaining the restrained make up and, importantly, a smaller price tag than most laptops, which we have come to expect with good mid-to-high range Chromebooks.

Acer Chromebook 14, Aluminum, 14-inch Full HD, Intel Celeron Acer Chromebook 14, Aluminum, 14-inch Full HD, Intel Celeron

As expected, however, the sound quality takes a dive on those top levels. For enjoying music you’ll want to plug in some ‘phones or a dedicated speaker. With the Acer Chromebook Spin 514 you get a well-designed convertible Chromebook with a Core i3 CPU and 8GB of RAM, giving you ample performance for everyday office work, browsing or study, not to mention Android and Linux apps. The mostly aluminium build gives it a light but premium feel and, at just 1.37kg, it won’t weigh you down.Some Chromebook displays are touch compatible, which makes sense as the OS is basically a spin-off of Android. Unfortunately you don’t get any touch support here, so it’s just as well that the touchpad is decent. The Acer Chromebook 14 is one cool customer. After the laptop streamed 15 minutes of full-screen, HD video, our heat gun registered comfortable temperatures on its touchpad (74.5 degrees Fahrenheit), keyboard (78.5 degrees) and underside (80 degrees). All were less than our 95-degree comfort threshold. While that's a few hours short of the 12 hours of run time that Acer promotes, and well behind the Dell Chromebook 13's 14 and a half hours, it's still longer than day's worth of work. In my hands-on time, the battery paces for closer to 7 hours with the screen at about 65% brightness. Acer’s Chromebook Spin 713 is now getting a little long in the tooth, but it’s still one of the best Chromebooks on the market and, in some ways, superior to its successor, the Spin 714. The 2-in-1 design and 3:2 aspect ratio, 13.5in high-resolution screen is a winning combination for browsing, entertainment, and getting homework or office work done. In fact, the squarer 2,256 x 1,504 resolution display seems oddly larger than most 14-inch screens, and it’s brighter with more vibrant colours, too. These benchmark results place the Acer Chromebook 14 right there with other lower-end, Celeron-based Chromebooks. The Kraken benchmark score of 3958 milliseconds is roughly on par with that of the similarly-specced HP Chromebook 14.