My latest review video is of the Acer Chromebook 514. This is a surprisingly good Chromebook for its price (especially today as it’s a Prime Day deal). See my full review on Amazon.
The device is powered by a Mediatek Kompanio 828 ARM processor. In the past these chips performed at or slightly below some of the lower cost Intel based Chromebooks. But this new chip performs much better – especially for graphically intensive tasks like gaming.
Other value-adds here include a full 1080p touch display, backlit keyboard, 8GB of RAM and exceptional battery life when doing basic tasks.
In the video you’ll see this thing running demanding Android game emulators like Reicast and Dolphin exceptionally well. Other Android games work great too although some don’t make the translation very well to laptop form from a touch based app.
Chromebooks are also great for running Linux apps and this one is no exception. The ARM version of Libreoffice runs great here and feels every bit as snappy as it does on Intel devices (even the more expensive ones).
What’s missing? Storage.. At the moment only 64GB of EMMC is available which will limit how many Android and Linux applications can be installed. Unfortunately there’s no SD card slot either.
But overall this is a great deal especially at its Prime Day pricing.