Customer Ratings & Reviews

I played with the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 for a while, and I’m still of two minds on what to say about this laptop. First of all, out of the box you get the laptop, an AC Adapter with USB-C charging cable, and surprisingly a zippered cloth laptop sleeve. On the laptop proper you get a simple setup of two USB-A and two USB-C ports plus an audio port and a locking point with speakers on the sides of the keyboard and a fully hinged touchscreen so the laptop can be a tablet, a laptop, or the inbetween where it sits on the keyboard (key input disabled on the keyboard obviously). The laptop is super lightweight and compact without feeling too small for my large hands which is great for a laptop you're going to be traveling with. And this is a laptop you will be using on the move, not for your main home computer because of, in my opinion, the shortcomings of the ChromeOS it runs from. This is probably personal bias but I can’t get used to the navigational differences of ChromeOS over Windows, where I have no start bar or even a search to find the app or program I want. I’m sure it can be overcome with time and experience but after a week its still a roadblock I keep bumping into. The Spin has Gemini AI build into the software so you’re never far from getting help with your spreadsheet, recipe advice, or request for an AI created joke image to insert into an email or presentation. I know a lot of people are opposed to AI but I think its fun! I mentioned this being a travel laptop and that’s the biggest selling point I believe! This laptop has an amazing battery life and combine that with the small and lightweight footprint and its perfect for a backpack or shoulder bag! Measuring about 12.75 wide by 8.5 long by less than 0.75 thick while being right around 3lbs. Makes this the easiest laptop I have ever encountered to use for school or business travel. The sticker claims you get 17 hours of web browsing which I think may be high but I could see you getting 8 or more hours easily without a charge depending on your brightness and usage. On Windows there’s a tool to see how long the battery has been discharging but I wasn’t able to find this information with ChromeOS but I charged it out of the box, used off and on for a full week and I still have 13% battery left and it’s discharging about 0.1 per minute, according to the discharge test. That’s plenty to fly across the country with a fair layover, which bumps the rating on this computer up quite a bit for me. F In terms of other features I found the speaker placement beneficial, I hate speakers that point downward because it always mutes the real sound you get out. With the Spin the sound was plenty loud enough to hear my music and videos over the noise of all the kids running around. The screen is bright and clear, touchscreen works, and touchpads are far from ideal but they work well enough. I had some trouble locating scroll bars on the menus that I was trying to use, they hide to the side to give you maximum view of what you’re looking at and usually they pop out when you get close to them but for some reason I kept failing to get the scroll bar popped out…could be user error or could be something with the system. The webcamera is serviceable but I don’t typically use it, especially since there doesn’t seem to be an option to unlock with facial recognition. Overall this is a solid option for if you have a lot of word processing, spreadsheeting, and emailing to do or if you have wifi you’ll get plenty of web browsing out of this laptop. With Chromebooks you won’t be playing games for the most part or doing any power programs like Photoshop or 3D Animation. My wife is an administrator for a school so this is PERFECT for her due to the long battery life, light weight, small footprint that will fit in her purse, and basic “It Just works” productivity suite that integrates Google Drive up front. I’d recommend this as long as you’re aware its not a flashy option and just there to get the job done.