Back in May, news of an upcoming, updated Acer Chromebook Spin 514 landed. Now you can see the full specifications and pricing. Acer’s new AMD Chromebook starts at $559.99.
To be clear, there is an Acer Chromebook Spin 514 with an older AMD processor that launched in 2021. And there’s also a model with a MediaTek Kompanio 828 chipset. This new device is neither of these and has a model number of CP514-3H-R2D2. No, the final four characters of the model name aren’t lost on this lifelong Star Wars fan.
With an AMD Ryzen 3 5125C processor clocked at 3 GHz, this Acer Chromebook Spin 514 should easily outperform its predecessors. And it should do well in the graphics department too as the 5152C leans on an improved, integrated AMD Radeon GPU. The two CPU cores of the 5125C use AMD’s Zen 3 architecture. Since this particular chipset is so new, I haven’t found any benchmark results to offer a comparable Intel processor.
Rounding out the other specifications, you see much of what the prior Acer Chromebook Spin 514 design and hardware offer. Here’s what you get for $559.99:
| CPU | 2 core (4 threads) AMD Ryzen 5125C (3.0 GHz) |
| GPU | AMD Radeon GPU with 3 cores and up to 2 GB of video memory |
| Display | 14-inch, 1920 x 1080 touchscreen, IPS, 100% sRGB color gamut support |
| Memory | 8 GB LPDDR4x memory |
| Storage | 128 GB flash memory, type not specified |
| Connectivity | 802.11ax (2×2) WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.2 |
| Input | Backlit keyboard, multi-touch trackpad webcam with privacy shutter, dual-array microphone, fingerprint sensor |
| Ports | 2 USB Type-C Gen 3.2 ports, 1 USB Type-A Gen 3.2 port, 1 HDMI, headphone/microphone combo jack |
| Battery | 3-cell battery with up to 10 hours expected runtime |
| Weight | 3.31 pounds |
| Software | ChromeOS automatic updates through June 2030 |
Aside from the updated processor, this AMD Chromebook from Acer boasts fantastic color reproduction on the 14-inch touch display. I noticed that there’s no fingerprint sensor, which shouldn’t be a deal-breaker for most people. However, the specs indicate there’s no microSD card slot, which may give more people some pause. At least the stereo speakers aren’t bottom firing as you’ll find on several older Acer Chromebooks. The speakers flank the keyboard.
It’s hard to say if the $559.99 price is a good value or not because there are still too many unknowns. How will this AMD Chromebook perform? How good is the webcam? Is the battery claim accurate or not?
I won’t know the answers until I get my hands on the new Acer Chromebook Spin 514. And it’s not due out until the third quarter of the year. That could mean we see some review units handed out in the next few weeks, so we’ll have to wait and see.
5 Comments
Looks like the first of the AMD Mendocino APU Chromebooks. Pricing this at $560 is highly questionable. (Or I should say that putting it in a hardware kit that costs $560 instead of using one of the many better CPUs available is questionable.) Mendocino – made on TSMC’s 6nm node after AMD got cold feet on using Samsung’s 4nm node – is designed for low power, meaning thin (perhaps fanless) with long battery life. When I first heard about Mendocino I honestly thought that they were going to replace MediaTek MT8183 (in the Lenovo Duet), MediaTek Kompanio 828 and Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c SOCs in tablets. You would expect a $560 Chromebook to be an AMD Ryzen 3 5425C, because that offers about the same CPU performance as an Intel Core i3 but a 6 core iGPU that isn’t that much worse than the 80EU one on the 11th gen Intel Core i5. Also we weren’t supposed to be getting Mendocino devices until Q4. So this guy is 2 months early.
Still, I wonder what these OEMs are doing. No NUC Chromeboxes even though they would be perfect for Steam gamers. No Zen 3 or Zen 3+ Chromebooks. And no ARM Chromeboxes even though they would be great for developers. And even though plenty of manufacturers are buying Intel’s remaining 11th gen Core i5 and Core i7 stock to make inexpensive devices (mostly taking the laptop chips to make mini PCs) no ChromeOS manufacturers are doing it. I am halfway to the point of just giving up and buying one of the many Tiger Lake Core i5 mini PCs that you can get for as little as $399 and putting Chrome OS Flex on it (I really don’t use Android apps much when not in touchscreen mode anyway), and the main thing keeping me from it is finding confirmation that multiple monitors and Crostini Linux will work.
I admit I find AMD’s architecture path and names more confusing than Intel’s sometimes. So I’m not sure this is a Mendocino chipset. The linked AMD specs page shows it at Barcelo. Is that a sub-brand of Mendocino?
You are right. This CPU is merely a refresh of the Ryzen 3 3250C processor that was used in the Acer Chromebook Spin 514 that was released in January 2021. Mendocino will be better in every way.
Qyad core vs dual core.
6nm vs 7nm.
LPDDR5 vs LPDDR4.
RDNA 2 versus Radeon.
I wouldn’t complain much if this cost $350 but it is approaching $600. Meanwhile the Steam Deck – which has twice as much RAM – starts at $399 and even the median version with a 256 GB SSD costs less at $529. Also I cannot fathom a dual core Windows laptop costing this much. Or if it did it would be a Core i3 that would perform a lot better.
Thanks for the confirmation. Yup, it appears this is more of a transitional refresh, which makes me think: “What’s the point?” My Steam Deck reservation should be coming up any day now and I’m actually intrigued to see not just how well my PC games are on it, but how well it works as a Linux desktop with external accessories. Maybe I should try to run ChromeOS Flex on it. ????
Envious. My Steam Deck won’t arrive until October at the earliest. Let us know if you can get Chrome OS Flex – especially Crostini – going on it!