The system’s 3.09-pound weight isn’t tip-over-and-spill-your-drink top-heavy like some designs we’ve seen, but it’s enough that it doesn’t feel as stable sitting on your lap or desk as you might expect from a 14-inch laptop.īut once you’re used to the imbalanced weight, the Chromebook 514 settles right in as a more-luxe-than-usual member of the Chromebook family, for good and bad. However, the combination of a relatively heavy aluminum lid and a lighter plastic base used in the Chromebook 514 mean that this 0.76-by-12.7-by-8.7-inch laptop isn’t well-balanced.

No, this is a laptop for the grownups in the room. The 514’s steel gray finish is sophisticated enough for an office environment, and it doesn’t look like it’s been child-proofed the way other ruggedized Chromebooks often do. The laptop’s aluminum lid and reinforced plastic chassis are sturdy enough for Acer to tout the Chromebook’s MIL-STD-810H military-grade durability, even if it is just for surviving waist-high drops and other mundane hazards.

Surely, that backlit keyboard and Gorilla Glass-surfaced touchpad are indicators that this is some sort of Windows machine, right? But you’re not imagining it. In a category that has long been defined by cheap plastic builds and marketing that’s targeted squarely at kids in the classroom, it’s easy to think that this well-made, Intel Core i3-equipped laptop is something other than what it is. Well, as Chromebooks go, it is actually fairly premium, but you understand what I mean.

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Chromebook acer 514