Acer Chromebook Plus 514 Is on Sale at Its Lowest Price Right Now
The Acer Chromebook Plus 514 is now $299.99 on Amazon, down from the regular $399.99.
According to price trackers , this is the lowest it’s ever been, and if you’re looking for a backup laptop or something else for really light tasks, it might be worth a look. But let’s set expectations up front: this is not a performance machine. It’s powered by an AMD Ryzen 3 7320C processor with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC storage, which puts it squarely in the “basic use only” category. You’ll do just fine with web browsing, email, video calling, or streaming, but anything heavier—video editing, gaming, or tab-heavy multitasking—will likely be tedious.
What it does have is a 14-inch WUXGA display with a 1920 x 1200 resolution and touch support, so navigation is a little smoother, especially when you’re scrolling through articles or zooming in on images. Additionally, it comes with Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1, making it more future-proof in terms of connectivity. And although it’s plastic, it has a MIL-STD-810H rating for durability (as reviewed by PCMag ) and has a waterproof keyboard, which is handy if you’re a clumsy coffee spiller. It also runs on ChromeOS, which means faster loading times and built-in security, as well as support for Android apps via the Google Play Store.
The battery life isn’t record-breaking, but it will get you through a decent portion of your workday—around 10 hours, depending on what you’re doing. It also has two USB-C ports, one USB-A, and a headphone jack that covers most needs. However, this is still a budget car. The Ryzen 3 chip is entry-level, and eMMC storage is slower than SSDs . You also won’t be able to upgrade the storage later, so you’ll have to use what you get unless you’re heavily reliant on cloud storage.