Acer Chromebook 314: At First Glance
Acer Chromebook 314 comes with the standard design principle that made Chromebooks more attractive to many people at their first arrival.
Going by its specs, the Acer Chromebook 314 doesn’t feature an expensive display neither does it feature a quad-core processor, nor a touchscreen, but Acer promises an excellent battery life.
Moreover, you need not empty your account to get this Chromebook. The Acer Chromebook 314 is quite affordable when compared with other Chromebooks in its category
As of the time of writing this review in October 2021, the Acer Chromebook 314 goes for the price of $249.99. Can the Acer Chromebook 314 be any good considering even at this affordable price?
Let’s find out!
Acer Chromebook 314: Design, Dimension & Weight
The Acer Chromebook 314 is a sophisticated laptop with a fine plastic chassis. In fact, its design is beautiful enough to qualify the laptop for comparisons with some premium laptops.
To lay more emphasis, the Chromebook 314 is aesthetically beautified with an attractive steely blue livery. The premium quality material Acer used to build this laptop makes its entire body sleek and smooth.
In addition, it makes the laptop solid. The Acer Chromebook 314’s quality design and build are what give it an edge over its contemporaries.
As for the design specifics, this laptop has the Acer and Chrome logos beautifully placed on its lid.
On opening the lid, you will see a 14-inch panel that has a basic HD resolution of 1366 x 768. The HD display panel doesn’t offer an excellent viewing experience.
In fact, the viewing angles on the Acer Chromebook’s display are also not impressive. Unless you sit up close to the display, you will struggle to view contents from most angles.
As a result, you can’t enjoy using the Acer Chromebook in bright sunlight. Nonetheless, the 1366 x 768 resolution of the Chromebook is just perfect for working indoors.
One other disappointing thing about this laptop’s display is that it is not a touchscreen.
Moving to the keyboard, the Acer Chromebook 314 has a well-built and decent keyboard. This keyboard is incredibly comfortable to type on.
Interestingly, this Chromebook’s keyboard delivers well with the help of the trackpad. Talking about the trackpad, it is smooth and very responsive.
Moving on to the ports, you won’t find a lot on the Acer Chromebook 314.
The Acer Chromebook 314 features two USB 3.0 and two USB-C on both sides. These ports are not only used for charging, they can also be used to connect external devices.
In addition to the ports I mentioned above, the Acer Chromebook 314 has a MicroSD slot, headphone jack, and a Kensington lock.
Since Chromebooks do not come with too many ports, I think the Acer Chromebook 314’s port collection is decent enough.
In terms of measurements, the Acer Chromebook 314 is a pretty portable laptop with a weight of 1700.9 g. The laptop’s weight will come as a surprise when you lift the laptop for the first time because the laptop looks hefty.
In comparison, the Acer Chromebook 314 is slimmer but not lighter than the Acer Chromebook 14. To be more specific, the Acer Chromebook 14 has a measurement of 340.3 x 236.2 x 17 mm with a weight of 1678.2 g
On the other hand, the Acer Chromebook 314 has a measurement of 323.1 x 231.1 x 19.8mm with a weight of 1700.9 g.
In conclusion, the Acer Chromebook 314 scores an eight in this design review because of its well-built and attractive design.
Acer Chromebook 314: Processor (CPU) Performance
The Acer Chromebook 314 comes with a 2-core Intel Celeron N4000. Being a low-end processor, the Intel Celeron N4000 is often seen in budget laptops, tablets, and Chromebooks.
This processor is dual-core with a basic frequency of 1.10 GHz and a maximum frequency of 2.60 GHz. Since it is paramount to understand how this processor works we will take a look at how it performed in a benchmark test.
One thing for sure is that you shouldn’t expect a ten over ten performance from this laptop’s CPU. It is a Chromebook after all – they are primarily designed for basic computing operations.
For the benchmark test, I took a look at how this laptop performed in the Geekbench 5 test. For clarity, the Geekbench 5 test is used to analyze the CPU performance of laptops.
Notably, the higher the point on the benchmark, the better the laptop’s performance. The good news is that the Acer Chromebook 314 performed well in this test.
The Acer Chromebook 314 scored 428 points on the Geekbench test. It performed better compared to the Lenovo Chromebook Duet that scored 263 points.
Unfortunately, the Acer Chromebook 314 fell short of the Surface Laptop Go that had 1205 points. Nonetheless, the Acer Chromebook 314’s performance is good despite being equipped with a low-end processor.
As a result, I will be rating the Acer Chromebook 314 a seven in this processor performance review.
Acer Chromebook 314: Memory (RAM) Performance
The Acer Chromebook 314 comes with a 4 GB LPDDR4 memory type. This memory has a single slot memory attached to the motherboard.
Hence, it cannot be upgraded.
Nonetheless, the need for upgrading may not be necessary since the Acer Chromebook 314 is a Chromebook. Chromebooks are designed to be capable of offering fair performance even with a 4 GB memory.
In other to validate the above point, I took down a record of how well the laptop handled memory performance tests.
During the test, the Acer Chromebook 314 had no problem running about 13 Google Chrome browser tabs while streaming some songs on Spotify. On two of these tabs, a Facebook page ran on one and the other was used to carry out Google searches.
However, images took longer to load when too many tabs began to run simultaneously.
For further testing, the RAM’s performance was tested with PCMark for Android.
The PCMark for Android is a benchmark tool that measures the memory performance of a laptop and how it can deliver when it comes to multitasking.
At the end of the PCMark test, the Acer Chromebook 314 scored 7604 points which was lower than that of the Lenovo Chromebook Duet with 8851 points.
It is important to mention that the ability of a laptop to handle a multifunctional task is dependent on both the RAM and the processor of the laptop.
Hence, all things considered, I will rate the Acer Chromebook 314 a seven in this RAM performance section.
Acer Chromebook 314: Storage Options and Performance
The Acer Chromebook 314 features an SSD storage type. This laptop comes with a 32 GB eMMC and a microSD card for storage expansion.
If you usually store a lot of files, the microSD card will come in handy.
In fact, the microSD card along with the 64 GB internal storage capacity should be sufficient for most of your file storage activities. Besides, the Acer Chromebook 314 offers an extra 100 GB of free cloud storage on google drive.
This free cloud storage will definitely come in handy. To know how to activate this free cloud storage, click on this link.
Apart from the storage size that comes with a laptop, it is also important to measure the speed of the storage. To achieve this, I used the CrystalDiskMark benchmark tool.
The CrystalDiskMark benchmark took measures the read and write speeds of a laptop’s storage.
On the CrystalDiskMark benchmark test, the Acer Chromebook 314 performed fairly well. It recorded sequential read and write speeds of 305 MBps and 163 MBps.
Overall, I will rate the Acer Chromebook 314 an eight based on its storage option and storage speed.
Acer Chromebook 314: Graphics Card Performance
Chromebooks do not feature high-end graphics cards. Hence, it is no surprise that the Acer Chromebook 314 comes with an integrated Intel UHD Graphics 600 graphics card.
This graphics card runs at a base frequency of 1.10 GHz and a boost frequency of 2.60 GHz.
Unfortunately, this GPU doesn’t come with a VRAM. For more clarification, VRAM is a GPU RAM type that enables the laptop to process graphics independent of the CPU.
Since the VRAM works independently, it works faster and also improves the performance of the GPU.
To test the GPU performance of the Acer Chromebook 314, the WebGL Aquarium benchmark test was put to use. The WebGL Aquarium is a benchmark that determines how well a laptop’s graphics card can deliver graphics tasks.
On the WebGL Aquarium test, the Acer Chromebook 314 rendered 500 points at 47 frames per second. It outperformed the Acer Chromebook Spin 11 that rendered 500 at 40 frames per second.
The Acer Chromebook Spin 11 outperformed the Acer Chromebook 314. The Spin 11 performed at 47 fps.
From the above test, I will give the Acer Chromebook 314 an eight in this graphics performance review.
Acer Chromebook 314: Battery Life and Performance
For battery life, Acer Chromebook 314 has a 3-cell lithium-ion (Li-lion) battery. Acer promised that this laptop will be capable of offering a battery runtime of 12 hours 15 minutes.
To confirm this, a battery rundown test was carried out. The test involved continuous surfing of the web with WIFI.
Before this test, the laptop’s screen brightness was set to 60 nits while the volume was at 50%.
On this test, the Chromebook 314 lasted for 11 hours and 52 minutes before going off. By today’s standards, this battery runtime is impressive.
In comparison with the Samsung Chromebook Plus that lasted for 8 hours and 49 minutes, the Acer Chromebook 314 is much better.
With the above performance, I would say that the Acer Chromebook 314 offers a long battery life.
Hence, the Acer Chromebook 314 scores a nine in this battery performance review.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. The Acer Chromebook 314 doesn’t have a touchscreen.
No. the Acer Chromebook 314’s hard drive is not upgradable.
You can only make use of a microSD card to expand your storage.
As of the time of writing this review in October 2021, you can get the Acer Chromebook 314 on Amazon for $249.99.
No. This Chromebook comes with an integrated graphics card that isn’t equipped with a VRAM.
Just like every other Chromebook, the Acer Chromebook 314 runs on ChromeOS.
Conclusion
The Acer Chromebook 314 is one of the best affordable laptops thanks to its attractive build quality and good performance. This Acer Chromebook 314 laptop stands out as a portable, affordable and comfortable laptop for performing light tasks.
One big flaw, however, is its low-resolution display. The display is barely visible enough under bright sunlight.
Therefore, if you want a laptop with a Full HD IPS panel and a well-functional window, be ready to pay a significant price.
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