Acer Chromebook 714
A smart-looking 14in Chromebook with a 1080p display, but build quality lags behind the best
“The Chromebook 714 will last several days between charges and will easily get you through a day of work away from the mains”
SCORE PRICE £458 (£550 inc VAT) from laptopsdirect.co.uk
Chromebooks are a fantastic alternative to Windows machines for children, students and businesses, or anyone who will appreciate a fuss-free approach to OS updates and security. As the Acer Chromebook 714 proves, they’re not all stubby bargain-bin machines, either.
In fact, I’d go so far as to call the Chromebook 714 stylish. Its allaluminium chassis is finished in attractive matte dark grey, it’s reasonably slim at 18mm and weighs 1.6kg: not bad considering that it includes a 14in Full HD display. There is an immediate “but”: while the chassis looks great, the bottom plate doesn’t fit flush with the edges, leaving an ugly overhang, and the touchpad feels loose and rattly when you click it.
That’s a shame because the surface of the touchpad – topped with Gorilla Glass – is smooth and pleasant under the finger and the keyboard is comfortable to type on too. The keys offer plenty of travel and a decent level of feedback, and Acer hasn’t made any compromises in terms of layout. It even finds room for a fingerprint reader, with a Trusted Platform Module (TPM) to ensure an extra layer of security.
There’s a healthy selection of ports scattered around the edges. You get two USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 ports, one each on the left and right edges, and both are power and display-enabled. There’s also a full-sized USB-A 3.2
Gen 1 port on the left edge alongside a 3.5mm headset jack and a microSD card slot on the right, so you can easily expand on the laptop’s 128GB of storage. This laptop’s 14in Full HD screen is large and sharp by Chromebook standards, and a peak brightness of 267cd/m2 and 962:1 contrast ratio are both solid results. A matte finish on the screen reduces glare effectively. Colour performance, however, is poor. The display is only capable of covering 55.9% of the sRGB colour gamut, resulting in an insipid overall appearance.
That’s disappointing for a laptop costing more than £500, but be aware that I tested the “top-end” model. If you instead went for the Acer Chromebook 714 with part code NX.HAYEK. 002, which includes 4GB of RAM, a Core i3 and 64GB of storage, then you’ll pay £450 (it’s on sale direct from Acer UK). The NX.HAYEK.00B model steps up to a Core i5 and 8GB of RAM for £500 (also from Acer), or if more storage is your thing, there’s the NX.HAYEK.007 variant with a Core i3, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage – that’s £500 from John Lewis.
My test machine, which is denoted by part number NX.HAYEK.001, has a guide price of £600, but Laptops
Direct is selling it for £550. That’s a great price considering that it comes with an eighth-generation Core i5-8250U, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC storage. It’s also fast, scoring 103 in Speedometer 1 (putting it near the top of any Chromebook speed ranking) and 366 in MotionMark 1.
More importantly, I found this machine to be nippy in general use. The 128GB of eMMC storage isn’t as impressive, though. I measured disk speed at 180MB/sec read and 134MB/sec write, which is snail-like by modern laptop SSD standards. Indeed, that’s slower than most modern hard disks. Arguably this lack of disk-writing speed doesn’t matter for Chromebooks because they will rarely be held back by local apps that demand instant access to disk-stored data, but you might still occasionally find it frustrating.
This laptop’s battery life is much more impressive. Lasting 12hrs 13mins in our standardised videoplayback test, the Acer is the only Chromebook in recent memory to get close to the superb 14hrs 15mins of the Google Pixelbook Go ( see issue 312, p90). Consequently, as long as you’re not using it continuously, the Chromebook 714 will last several days between charges and will easily get you through a day of work away from the mains.
The Acer
Chromebook 714 is a decent machine, then, but not a particularly inspiring one. Build quality is patchy and the display is disappointing, although performance and battery life are both excellent.
Ultimately, unless you desperately want a Chromebook, I recommend that you spend your
£550 on an Honor MagicBook 14
( see issue 311, p65) instead. The ability to run full Windows apps, a larger, faster SSD and superior build quality (including its screen) mean the Honor MagicBook is a better buy all around.
SPECIFICATIONS
Four-core 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-8250U processor Intel UHD Graphics 620
8GB RAM 128GB eMMC storage 14in non-touch 1,920 x 1,080 IPS display
720p webcam 2 x USB-C USB-A 3.1 3.5mm headphone jack microSD card slot 2x2 MIMO 802.11ac Wi-Fi
Bluetooth 4.2 battery capacity not stated Chrome OS 323 x 239 x 17.7mm (WDH) 1.6kg 1yr limited warranty part code: NX.HAYEK.001