Acer adds another affordable laptop to its line, and the device's medium-range specs make the investment very tempting for its price range. With the Acer Chromebook 14, the company addresses the two biggest concerns that Chrome OS users face when choosing laptops from the line: battery life and processing power.
The OEM opted for a full-metal jacket for the latest Chromebook 14, making its design look solid and sturdy. The aluminum chassis with rounded corners pulls 3.42 pounds, giving it quite a bit of portability. The design of Acer's device somewhat resembles the one from the Toshiba Chromebook 2, which in turn takes a lot of notes from the sleekness of the MacBook Pro.
Acer takes a new route when it comes to the laptop's screen. Most Chromebooks have modest displays, but the manufacturer packs a 14-inch IPS screen on the Acer Chromebook 14. This comes with a caveat. It is possible to purchase the laptop with a 1080p resolution, but this comes at the cost of 2 hours of battery life.
The manufacturer touts that the standard Chromebook 14, able to display 1366 x 768 resolutions, offers as much as 14 hours of battery life on a single charge.
Acer is not the only OEM working hard at keeping the price for the Chromebooks down. Dell is only a recent example with its Chromebook 13, which ranges from a basic price of $400 to a strong $900, should you choose to equip it with hefty storage space, a lot of RAM and and i5 Intel Core CPU.
Looking at what the latest Chromebook from Acer offers, it looks like the $299 price tag is a steal for a 14-inch notebook: if battery life is essential to you, the 1366 x 768 variant could be what you're looking for. Those looking for more processing punch can opt to have the 4 GB of RAM installed. Acer's Chromebook 14 comes loaded with a default RAM of only 2 GB.
Acer did not disclose the full details on what to expect from the full line of Choromebook 14, but preorders are open on Amazon. The laptop's configuration shows an aluminum chassis, a 1.6GHz Intel Celeron chipset, 4 GB of LPDDR3 RAM, 32 GB of storage and a screen capable of displaying 1080p IPS resolutions.
