This must be the season for 14-inch Chromebooks. Dell announced one today as did Acer, whose Chromebook 14 arrives in October with a starting price of $349. Acer hasn’t said what’s inside the device for that cost, but all models will have a 1080p IPS display; some will add touch capabilities to the screen. None are true 2-in-1 devices like the previously announced Acer Chromebook 13 Spin, however. These are all traditional laptops but built with an aluminum chassis, which is great for this price.
I like that Acer moved to USB-C charging because that brings convenience if you use other mobile devices with that connection. You also get a pair of full-sized USB ports as well as headphone jack, microSD card reader and HDR webcam. The small side bezels are a nice touch too, as is the backlit keyboard and Gorilla Glass covered trackpad. Acer expects the Chromebook 514 to get 12 hours on a single charge.
Adding a 14-inch Chromebook to the Acer line provides a range of screen size choices; there’s the previously mentioned 13-inch models that are priced much higher, as well as the recently announced 15-inch Chromebooks too.
But without details on the processor, memory and storage, it’s hard to say if these should be contenders for your purchase. I’d guess the base $349 model uses an Intel Celeron processor (or perhaps even an ARM chip), 4GB of memory and 32GB of eMMC storage. If that’s your jam, assuming I’m correct on the specs, it’s a solid daily workhorse for most people. Once you add Android apps, and the potential for Linux packages though, you might want a little more under the hood.
Note that I did ask Acer PR about the lack of detailed internals, saying that I assume those would be announced at a later date. The response was “Correct”, as I’d expect.
