Acer Chromebook Review

I'm a die-hard Apple fan. I won't even look at anything else, much less consider buying it. Except... I'm a die-hard Apple fan who works for a nonprofit, is saving up to buy a house, and has no extra income to speak of right now. So when my beloved MacBook Pro showed signs of biting the dust rather soon (always a bad thing when it literally won't even connect to the Internet anymore), I knew what I wanted: I wanted an 11-inch MacBook Air. The 256gb SSD refurbished is around $900, which I thought was okay. But I also want a normal iMac, with a stinkin' big hard drive so I don't run out of space for the foreseeable future.

I promise, I'm about to get to the Acer review. I started consulting on the side recently, and literally only needed a computer with a little bit of a hard drive that would be able to connect to the Internet. Not too much to ask, right? The problem was I needed it right away, and didn't have time to save up for an Air. I hadn't been super familiar with Chromebooks, but thought I'd look them up on Amazon anyways.

When I logged onto Amazon and saw the Acer Chromebook 11, I thought there was a pricing mistake. Seriously, less than $175 for a computer? What the heck? I looked up the specs for the MacBook Air and saw that the Chromebook was startlingly similar in most ways, except for the fact that the Chromebook had 2gb of RAM instead of 4, like the MacBook. It also only has a 16gb SSD, but comes with Google Drive (more on that below) I bought it (with more than a little guilt over buying a non-Apple product!) and have been using it for almost a month.

The Good:
Seriously, this thing is a 90%-er. It absolutely rocks. It's ridiculously light, and feels good/stable. It's made out of plastic, which I was initially concerned about, but I've found out it wipes off remarkably well. It's also impressively fast. It loads web pages easily and quickly (for the most part, more on that below), and the battery life is simply incredible. I was home all day yesterday recovering from a wisdom tooth pull (ugh), and I used it for hours upon hours without it failing. The battery also recharges very quickly, which has come in really handy.

The keyboard has a good feel, and clicks nicely, which may sounds stupid but I'm really picky about my keyboards. It has a built-in webcam that's decent (though maybe nothing to write home about), and my family has had fun taking funny pictures with the camera and built-in software.

Features!

I'm also impressed at all the features - it has two USB 3 ports, headphone jack, SD card reader, and even an HDMI port. Pretty impressive for a sub-$200 computer! Also, it should be noted that the speakers are just fine - a little tinny, but I like the speakers right below the computer. It amplifies them when on a hard surface, but when on a soft surface (half the time I'm typing on a couch or a bed), it's significantly muted.

Like I said, I mostly use it for the Internet, and that does a pretty good job most of the time. I should also point out that it came with a lot of extras - 100gbs of Google Drive for 2 years, 12 Gogo air passes, and a 60-day trial of Google Music. Because I bought it on Amazon, I also got a year of Amazon Unlimited Cloud Storage for a year (which is apparently a $59.99 value)

The Neutral:
There are definitely some things I've had to get used to. The 16gb hard drive is smaller than my phone, so I'm constantly cleaning things out that I download and putting them on the Google Drive, or Dropbox. It's basically another step or two to save things, but it's not usually a huge deal.

Because I'm used to a glossy screen, and this is matte, it took me a good week to get used to it without hurting my eyes. It's a good screen, and fine resolution, but I feel like the resolution doesn't come through in the matte screen. Not a huge deal, but again, something to consider.

I'm used to utilizing lots of different browsers (Chrome, Firefox, and Safari), and it's odd to me to only have one. Most of the time I don't really notice, but it was something that was jarring at first.

The Bad:
Remember how I mentioned it only has 2gb of RAM? I didn't think it was going to be a big deal, but if I have more than two browser tabs open the thing slows down considerably, or even locks up. There were a few times last week when it would freeze and restart with no warning, which was really annoying. It turns out though that I hadn't updated it in a bit and that seems to have solved the issue. Still, if you want to have Netflix or Spotify running in the background, you can only have one other tab open, tops.

This is a stupid thing to include in the "Bad" column, and I know it, but the thing has no caps lock! Instead of a caps lock button, it has a "search" button. Which is fine, I suppose, for the people who want to use the search, but I can't tell you how many times I've tried to caps lock and have ended up typing in the search bar. Only 10 seconds, tops, but takes me out of my productivity mode.

The Bottom Line:
Like I said, this thing is a 90%-er. There are some workarounds that need to be done if you're used to doing everything on one computer (for instance, I now edit photos on my phone), but if you're looking for a really inexpensive computer that will do most things you need, I think it's great. I'm planning on using this for the foreseeable future, and will only get the iMac in the future (still need someplace to store all my stuff!). It's a great alternative to a tablet, or in addition to a tablet, and it's pretty fun to use. All in all, I'd highly recommend it.

To Buy: Amazon, Acer