Table of contents
Archaeological dig zone
This article has aged a bit (and maybe gathered some dust). The information it contains is probably as obsolete as a 56k modem or a Flash player. Read it for the lore, not for the how-to!
🤖
AI-generated summary
After Android, I had to try Chrome OS to form my own opinion — and I wasn’t disappointed.
The keyboard
The keyboard quality is genuinely good — not quite at MacBook level, but not far off. The key travel is a bit short, but it remains comfortable. Noise-wise, there’s a slight sound when typing, but nothing like the cheap clatter of a Netbook. The key layout is excellent both in terms of placement and the decision to drop the function keys. One regret: the key travel is a bit shallow.
The FX keys have been replaced by special function keys that are very well thought out.
The screen
It’s average for this price range. Viewing angles are decent — no complaints there. It’s touchscreen, which is pretty fun to show off when someone else is looking at the screen; the touch response is immediate, impressively precise. That said, I find the feature a bit gimmicky — I haven’t got used to touching my computer screen to interact with it. But who knows.
Automatic brightness adjustment is also missing, which is a shame — it’s actually very handy.
The touchpad
Almost on par with a MacBook’s; it would have deserved a glass surface for a perfect glide. But for the price it’s really excellent, especially since Acer didn’t make the mistake of adding physical buttons (left/right click) that would have hurt the overall design. Like on a Mac, the trackpad is clickable and takes up a good amount of space, making multi-touch gestures easy (two-finger swipe to go back, three-finger swipe to switch tabs, two-finger click for right-click).
The webcam
Ouch. The quality is catastrophic — a real shame. It’s nowhere near the standard of the rest of the machine. I don’t understand why they compromised so much here; a decent webcam doesn’t seem expensive. Take a budget smartphone — its camera will almost certainly be better than Acer’s.
Battery life
Very good — expect around 5 hours of browsing at 70% brightness. That seems in line with what’s out there right now. To hit the 7.5 hours claimed by the manufacturer you really do need to turn the brightness down.
Sound
The speakers are placed underneath the machine, which might seem a bit odd at first, but the sound is very good even at full volume. Impressively so — even with the laptop on your lap the sound is clear. The only catch is that you can’t set it on a soft surface like a mattress, otherwise the sound gets muffled.
Weight and overall build quality
The weight was the first thing that struck me when I picked it up — not that it’s “heavy”, but I expected it to be lighter. It’s only about 300g more than a MacBook Air, but you can feel the difference.
The build quality is well above what I’ve seen from Netbooks, though we’re still talking about Acer… The whole thing feels solid — the lid doesn’t flex, the keyboard doesn’t wobble while typing, the vents are well placed. Yes, it has a fan — I hope the next version will be fanless! But there’s nothing to complain about noise-wise; it’s really very quiet, you’ll only hear it in a completely silent room.
The charging cable is also poorly designed — it tends to fall out on its own. A shame.
A quick gripe about the screen hinge: you can’t open it with one hand, and even with two hands it’s not effortless. A small notch would have been welcome to make opening the lid easier.
And would PC manufacturers please stop slapping their hideous stickers everywhere! What a disease…
Silence
Nearly inaudible — it has nothing to envy from a Mac in that department.
The operating system
This is my first Chromebook. I actually bought it specifically to test the OS, and I wasn’t disappointed. The word that best describes this system is simplicity. The whole thing revolves around a browser, so to appreciate it you need to be the kind of person who spends most of their time online on a regular computer. Chrome OS has apps, available in Google’s store, but they’re all web-based. Pretty much every service that lives on the internet has its own app in the store (Spotify, Deezer, Pocket, Wunderlist, Any.do, and of course all Google services).
This system really isn’t aimed at people who edit photos in Photoshop or videos in Final Cut, but rather at people who spend their lives on Facebook, Deezer… I think it’s the right system for the majority of people, but it doesn’t replace a primary computer running Mac OS or Windows.
The speed is genuinely impressive — the computer is hyper-responsive; I even get the impression that Google Chrome runs faster on it than on an iMac. I haven’t managed to catch it out yet. Heavy pages like Facebook, L’Équipe or Eurosport load very quickly, scrolling is smooth. Full HD YouTube videos play without a hitch. In short, it’s a Notebook killer.
In a few words: I’d strongly recommend this computer for a household. I’d even say every person in the house should have a Chromebook, with one powerful Mac or Windows machine acting as a server dedicated to heavy tasks: photo editing, video editing, or Office work.
