Netbooks often got a bad rap for their numerous faults only in hindsight, they had a far greater touch on on the computing industry than most realize.

The modern-24-hour interval netbook was introduced by Asus in 2007 with the Eee PC. This new grade of computing device arrived on the brink of a global fiscal crisis and apace carved out a niche for itself as an affordable alternative to traditional notebooks. At their peak, netbooks accounted for twenty percent of notebook global sales but their success – at least, as Windows machines – would be short-lived.

Manufacturers began churning out sub-$400 netbooks at a rapid pace, loading new systems with incrementally faster hardware in an attempt to accost criticism that they were painfully tedious. In mid-2009, Google acknowledged the elephant in the room – the fact that netbooks were running a Windows operating system designed for much faster hardware – and vowed to gratuitous netbooks with a new, lightweight operating system called Chrome Bone.

The first Chrome Bone laptops, affectionately dubbed Chromebooks, wouldn't go on sale until June 2022. By that fourth dimension, netbooks already had i human foot out the door as the arrival of the tablet in 2022 (and to a bottom degree, Apple tree'due south impossibly thin MacBook Air) sent the market in a unlike direction. Similar their netbook ancestors, price – and by proxy, build quality – was a key differentiator of early Chromebooks. In early on 2022, Google broke those the rules with the Chromebook Pixel which was essentially a loftier-cease notebook running Chrome Bone. Starting at $1,299, the Pixel was accounted by near to be significantly overpriced just more than anything, it gear up precedent for premium, aesthetically pleasing Chromebooks.

Such is the case with the Acer Chromebook 14, a graceful machine that aims for a perfect alloy of style, features and performance. Different the Pixel, this laptop comes in at simply $300, powered by a quad-core Intel Celeron N3160 processor and Intel HD Graphics 400 alongside 4GB of LPDDR3 RAM and 32GB of flash storage.

The fourteen-inch, LED-backlit, matte-stop Active Matrix TFT LCD is of the IPS variety with a Full HD resolution. Information technology's framed by an average-sized bezel, an integrated webcam and dual microphones at the tiptop and Acer's branding on the bottom. The system measures 0.vii" (elevation) x 13.4" (width) x 9.3" (depth) and tips the scales at iii.42 pounds. Both the lid and chassis are constructed of silver aluminum with the chapeau featuring a brushed finish similar yous'd find on a premium laptop. The Chrome branding is printed directly on the hat next to an inset Chrome logo that's roughly four inches above the raised Acer bluecoat.

Along the right edge of the Chromebook, you'll observe activeness and battery LED indicators, a combination headphone / microphone jack and the charging jack. Moving to the left, we find a Kensington lock slot, two USB 3.0 ports and an HDMI port. The front and rear edges are featureless while on the bottom, yous've got four anti-slip feet, two downward-firing speakers and of course, all of the regulatory information and that sort of affair. I popped off the bottom console by unscrewing 10 small Philips-caput screws merely there doesn't appear to exist any expansion options as it relates to RAM or storage.

The chiclet-style keyboard sits in a recessed section of the deck. Acer has replaced the traditional function keys higher up the number row with handy shortcut keys for frequently used tasks. The board exhibits very lilliputian flex, is enough spacious and features a familiar layout although the key travel is a chip too shallow for my liking.

But below the keyboard is a massive trackpad with integrated click buttons. I'yard typically not a fan of big trackpads every bit my wrists almost always touch the pad while typing and crusade sporadic mouse arrow movement simply this is one of those rare exceptions. Even with a pregnant portion of my wrist resting on the pad, in that location's cipher unintended mouse movement.

Acer's Chromebook fourteen packs a 3-prison cell, 3950mAh lithium polymer battery that's rated to provide upwardly to 12 hours of runtime on a single accuse. Recharges come courtesy of a tiny power brick that could exist described as "beautiful" even. In our official battery exam which consists of running a 720p rip of the movie Inception on loop at full brightness, the Chromebook 14 lasted seven hours and 28 minutes. This would easily be enough to go along you entertained on a cantankerous-state flight with juice to spare. I tin can certainly attest to the battery'south longevity equally I managed to get several days of coincidental utilise out of it earlier needing to charge it for the first time.

The Chromebook's stellar battery life partially comes at the expense of the display. The matte-stop all but eliminates glare associated with glossy screens and sharpness is spot on at 1080p resolution. Color accuracy is too very acceptable but effulgence is arguably the Chromebook 14's master shortcoming. Even at its brightness setting, the display is a fleck dimmer than I would normally use indoors. As a result, using the system outdoors on a sunny solar day is futile.

I can certainly attest to the bombardment's longevity as I managed to become several days of coincidental employ out of it before needing to charge it for the offset time.

Conversely, the Chromebook 14's sound system may be the all-time I've e'er heard on a notebook. I was able to play through my Rhapsody playlist at maximum volume with nil distortion. Audio was rich and vibrant with very distinctive highs. The downwardly-firing stereo speakers are best experienced on a difficult surface similar a desk where sound can bounce off of. At 1 bespeak, I even sat the Chromebook on a cloth-lined cat tree and still got corking results. Acer really knocked it out of the park hither.

Intel's Celeron line of processors probable conjures ane of two responses from users: an overclocking monster from the earlier days of calculating or a lackluster chip found in budget-minded PCs. The Celeron N3160 found in this Chromebook is a 64-scrap quad-core chip with 2MB of L2 cache that's clocked at 1.6GHz (Burst to 2.24GHz). It'south built on a 14-nanometer process and has a TDP of just vi watts which makes it incredibly energy efficient – then much then, that it is passively cooled. The system never got remotely warm during performance, even when stressing it to the max. With most laptops, it's easy to detect where the processor is positioned within the system – simply feel around for the warm spot. On the Chromebook fourteen, there simply is no warm spot which makes locating the CPU – at least, based on rut – incommunicable.

If you value a truly silent computer equally I do, you'll no doubt appreciate the fanless approach. A fanless organisation as well requires less maintenance equally there's no agile cooler sucking dust into the motorcar (and no fan to replace years down the road).

What's really surprising here is that it doesn't feel as though you're working with a Celeron processor and just 4GB of RAM. The system cold-boots to the "enter password" screen in just 10 seconds and wakes upward from sleep mode the instant the hat is opened.

Browsing the web, the overwhelming majority of sites I encountered ran incredibly smoothen. I'd occasionally stumble onto a site with a lot going on – like Zillow, for instance – where the limitations of the hardware briefly surfaced in the form of stuttering or hesitation while scrolling.

In the handful of games I tried including Free Rider Hard disk drive, Swerve and Roulette, gameplay was silky smooth with no slowdowns or jitters. Criterion testing with Google Octane 2.0 and Mozilla Kraken 1.one puts the performance of the Celeron processor somewhere in the neighborhood of a current or last-generation flagship smartphone. That may audio underwhelming for a notebook but once again, given its purpose-built operating system and the fact that it runs web apps, it's plenty fast for most applications.

All things considered, I was really impressed with the performance of the Chromebook 14. I was expecting an experience alike to a sub-$300 Windows laptop but that most definitely wasn't the case.

Connectivity-wise, the Chromebook 14 leaves lilliputian to be desired. In lieu of a physical Ethernet jack, you become 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi likewise as Bluetooth, an HDMI port, a headphone jack and 2 USB 3.0 ports. Despite its excellent trackpad, I still prefer to apply a wireless mouse like my old Logitech Performance MX if I'1000 going to be working for whatsoever length of time. This of course consumes one of the USB ports, leaving the other costless for a USB flash drive, external difficult drive or charging cable for my smartphone.

The learning bend with Chrome Bone is minimal. Anyone that uses Google's Chrome browser or is invested in Google'southward ecosystem should feel similar a seasoned veteran on a Chromebook. They're incredibly intuitive and easy to set up; if you take an older relative that's new to calculating -- something that's becoming less common -- a Chromebook would serve equally an splendid introduction.

But of course, if you're coming from Windows non everything works exactly similar you might be used to right off the bat. For example, storage management is not Chrome OS' potent suite, at least not in its current iteration. As information technology sits today, managing content stored both locally and in the cloud on Google Drive is handled through the Files app, which is rough at best. Merely last week, nevertheless, information technology was revealed that Google is testing a Chrome OS storage manager that looks to greatly amend on this shortcoming.

Working with documents on the Chromebook isn't every bit seamless of an experience every bit you'd become on a Windows PC, either. For case, in the Files app, I come across my Google Drive storage where I accept a "Getting started" PDF – a handy guide if you're new to Google Drive. Clicking information technology brings up a prompt telling me that the file type isn't supported and suggests I head to the Chrome Web Store to remedy the affair. Equally an average user might do, I follow the prompt and install a PDF viewer, caput back to try the file over again and strike out yet again. Merely when I visit my Google Drive via the web am I actually able to open the PDF. Information technology is little things like this that may frustrate some non-tech savvy users.

Speaking of Google Drive, the Chromebook 14 is eligible for a two-year subscription that offers 100GB of cloud storage space. If yous do a lot of work on a desktop or some other platform, yous may already know how valuable a service like Google Drive can be as it makes it incredibly convenient to access content from all of your devices.

For most casual not-gaming tasks, yous'll find that Chrome Bone is quite sufficient. Even offline, you've got a plenty capable system in which productivity tasks like Google Docs function albeit on a limited ground. For example, you tin even so blazon up a newspaper and save it locally although you don't get the do good of spell cheque until y'all reconnect to the web.

In another instance, when I attempted to load an old .wmv video file from a web server, I learned that this was a proprietary format owned past Microsoft that typically doesn't play well on non-Windows devices. This of class wouldn't have been an result with a standard Windows notebook.

How securely you dig into the Chrome Web Store for apps and extensions will depend straight on what all yous practise with the arrangement. Ane of the offset apps I picked up was VLC and although I was disappointed to not discover an app for Rhapsody (and thus, had to heed via the website), an app for the more popular Spotify is readily bachelor. Some will no doubt gravitate towards social media apps that facilitate access to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and the like although those aren't really for me. If y'all collaborate with co-workers, the Trello app volition no doubtfulness come in handy while a password manager like 1Password or LastPass will of form exist a necessity. In lieu of my detailed monthly financial spreadsheets, an app like Mint would serve as a solid – and let's be honest, a much more thorough – stand-in to my manually-updated Excel spreadsheets.

The Chrome Web Store is Google's online store for free and paid web apps for Chrome OS. Recall of it as Google Play for web apps but on a much smaller scale. The Chrome Spider web Store has been criticized equally one of the weak points of Chrome OS due to its limited offerings. Information technology too doesn't help that you'll need an active Internet connection to use some apps although if you've been keeping up with news every bit of late, yous already know that Google is working on calculation the power to apply the Google Play Store and Android apps on a range of Chromebooks, Chromeboxes and Chromebases.

Google says the Acer Chromebook 14 should exist able to run Android apps subsequently this year or onetime in 2022, at which time it'll go a far more than capable machine.

Above all else, the one takeaway with Chrome OS that yous should know is that information technology'southward only not Windows. Information technology doesn't have the vast programmer back up that Microsoft'south OS enjoys but in the same respect, it's not nigh as bloated equally Windows, either, which allows it to run so smoothly on what would exist unsuitable hardware for a total-blown copy of Windows. At that place are apps that back up many of today's well-nigh pop services just y'all won't be able to do everything on it similar you can a traditional PC. As long as you keep your expectations in bank check, you'll be fine.

Acer's Chromebook 14 is an accommodating tremendous value at just $299. Short of Google'south own Chromebook Pixel which commands an astronomical $i,299, yous'll be difficult-pressed to detect ane that offers this level of fit and finish, especially in this toll range. Although dim, the display is of great quality, the audio arrangement and touchpad are outstanding and the machine is dead silent cheers to the passive cooling system that virtually eliminates heat. The keyboard is well-congenital just the key travel is a little shallow for my liking. Operation from the Celeron processor is more than than acceptable and rarely shows its limitations.

If y'all were burned by netbooks or are looking for an excellent 2d computing device, I'd recommend giving Chromebooks a chance – you may exist just as pleasantly surprised equally I was. With firmly planted roots, a waning PC market and back up for Android apps on the horizon, the Chromebook's future looks bright. Given its toll, it'due south hard to get wrong with the Acer Chromebook 14.

Pros: Fantabulous build quality. Superb trackpad. Tiptop-notch audio organisation. High-resolution matte brandish . Good value.

Cons: Dimly lit screen. Shallow fundamental travel.