Summary
- The Acer Chromebook Plus 516 offers a 16-inch screen and 96% keyboard for a relatively low price of $479.
- The design has flaws, and the expanded keyboard was clumsy to use to the point of intense frustration due to its center-left orientation.
- This Chromebook Plus has no performance issues, a good selection of ports, and a display that’s plenty serviceable for the price point.
A great Chromebook results from a balance of compromises. This can be thrown off by the likes of the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 (CB516-1H), which offers deluxe features like a 16-inch screen and 96% keyboard at a wallet-friendly price. Unfortunately, it missed its mark due to a few design mishaps.
Acer Chromebook Plus 516 (CB516-1H)
A Chromebook Plus with a 16-inch display, a keyboard with a numpad, and an Intel Core i3 processor.
- A wallet-friendly 16-inch screen
- Plenty of ports
- Solid performance
- Comes with a case
- Expanded keyboard layout feels unnatural
- Clunky and cheap-feeling design
- Intensely tinny speakers
- Pixelated webcam image
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Price and Availability
The Acer Chromebook Plus 516 (CB516-1H) retails for $479 and comes with a power adapter and cord, as well as a protective sleeve.
The Design Raises Some Alarms
Upon first glance, this is pretty standard fare for an Acer Chromebook Plus. The steel-gray casing is inconspicuous and inoffensive but doesn’t look cheap either. I only began calling the quality into question after using the laptop.
While Acer touts the durability of this Chromebook Plus, I’m a bit skeptical. Both the top and bottom of the plastic case give way to minor pressure, and the two hinges that stand in for a proper spine strike me as potential fault points. These are the kind of issues that can easily lead to damage from falls, rugged activity, or regular travel.
Adding to my build quality concerns is the clumsiness of lifting the screen. Tight hinges mean the bottom case lifts alongside the top, resulting in the laptop slamming back onto the desk if you don’t pin it down beforehand. While I got used to this, the force needed to operate the hinge still felt unnecessarily taxing. It’s worth noting this does mean the screen holds its position well, which I’d take any day over a floppy screen on loose hinges.
Speaking of things that don’t stay in place, this Chromebook Plus slips around a lot during use. The two strip-shaped grip-pads on the base aren’t sufficient to prevent slippage. In fact, their rounded shape feels more attuned to locomotion than gripping. This accentuated issues I was already having with typing on the expanded keyboard.
While all these design flaws do add up, for $479 they’re things I could largely excuse if they were the extent of the Acer Chromebook Plus 516’s problems. Sadly, they’re only the beginning.
The Most Frustrating Laptop Keyboard I’ve Used
The most inspired design choice that Acer made with this Chromebook Plus is its 96% keyboard. Nearly every key on a full-sized keyboard is accounted for here, including a number. This sounds great on paper, but in execution it becomes clear that more is less.
To accommodate the numpad, the rest of the keyboard and touchpad are shifted left of center. This threw off all my laptop typing motor functions, resulting in me constantly hitting the wrong keys. I quickly became frustrated with all the dashes I inadvertently typed when reaching for the backspace key, and random numbers when my hands naturally settled to a centered typing position upon opening the laptop. The utter frustration this caused overshadowed my entire experience with the Acer Chromebook Plus 516.
I’m sure with enough time I would have adjusted to the keyboard layout, but I have to question why. Tenkeyless layouts are ideal for most people because they cut out the faff that’s only relevant to people regularly working with numbers and spreadsheets. I’d rather use any other laptop that gives me exactly what I need and nothing I don’t, stress-free.
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However, if a numpad is part of your workflow, my pain may be your gain. This is a unique keyboard for any laptop and makes the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 a great fit for anyone in a relevant profession. Just don’t expect it to replace your daily driver as this numpad is small and cramped. By this same token, you might be better off supplementing a standard laptop keyboard with a properly sized external numpad.
What’s most unfortunate about all this is that I would be singing the praises of this keyboard if not for its ill-advised unorthodox approach. The keys have a satisfying punch to them, and the large keycaps are comfortable. The OceanGlass touchpad is similarly great on its own merits, featuring a glass-like smooth texture that feels great on the fingertips and tactile clicks. If you’re looking at other Acer Chromebook Plus that use these components, I can give the overall quality a seal of approval.
A Solid Budget-Friendly 16-Inch Screen
The easiest way to bring down the price of a laptop is to reduce its screen size. 16 inches is about as big as laptop panels get, and the Chromebook Plus machines that typically sport them cost nearly double the asking price of the 516. The seams involved in making this happen do show, but overall, Acer’s ambitions largely paid off.
The 1920 x 1200 resolution of the screen is lower than ideal for a 16-inch screen, with text in particular being too pixelated for comfortable reading. You’ll need to increase the display size to cull this issue, which means less screen real estate. Yet if your aim in seeking out a 16-inch display is for more immersive media playback or larger fonts, you’re going to find exactly that here, and on the relative cheap.
Everything else is pretty much what you expect from a budget IPS LED panel. 300 nits of brightness will do fine for casual use; I’d usually mark this as being dim—which it is—but the trade-off you’re getting in screen size is a fair compromise. Similarly, the 60 Hz refresh rate feels a tad choppy if you’re accustomed to higher refresh rates, but it gets the job done for the basic task work that ChromeOS is best used for.
Ultimately, I’d typically lean toward the higher pixel density of a 13-inch or 14-inch 1920 x 1200 screen. Still, Acer has delivered on the Chromebook Plus 516’s marquee feature and if you’re in the market for an affordable 16-inch laptop, you won’t find much better.
Video and Audio Components Are a Mixed Bag
The speakers, camera, and microphone range from outright awful to surprisingly alright, in that order.
Let’s get the badness of the speakers out of the way. These are tinny to the point that even spoken audio is unpleasantly shrill and empty. This is one of the worst sets of laptop speakers I’ve encountered. I wasn’t expecting the moon from a Chromebook Plus, but this is the quality I’d more expect to find in a standard Chromebook, and even there I’d take issue. Headphones or an external speaker are a necessity here.
Meanwhile, the 1080p camera is middle-of-the-road. It produces an extremely grainy and pixelated image, almost as if the temporal noise reduction wasn’t working properly. It’ll do the job for casual video calls but lacks the clarity that many require in a professional setting. Acer also included a privacy shutter, which is always a welcome addition, though its switch is deeply embedded in the casing; I ended up needing to use my fingernails.
I was pleasantly surprised by the microphone, which effectively cancels out minor background ambient noise using AI-powered noise reduction. It says a lot that the audio dictation was able to transcribe most of my audio recordings without many errors (this can also be attributed to the quality of this Gemini feature). The audio it produces does warble a fair bit, but I’ve seen much worse in products that should’ve had much better.
A Steady Performer
The Acer Chromebook Plus 516 has been a pretty mixed bag so far, but I only have praise for its performance and battery life.
I never experienced any slowdown or hitches when using the ChromeOS functions that the target demographic for this Chromebook Plus is most likely to use. Web browsing, media playback, video calls, and the like are all duly powered by the Intel Core i3-1315U 6-Core Processor 1.2GHz. While this is far from new technology, it’s more than enough to keep ChromeOS running smoothly, even when multitasking.
The suite of Gemini AI features also remains impressive. I’ve already highlighted its accurate dictation abilities, but generative features like the chatbot also shine and run without issue. AI does a lot heavier lifting in ChromeOS than other operating systems require, which is why a Chromebook Plus is a worthwhile endeavor to begin with. You also get a free year of Google One AI Premium, offering up advanced Gemini functionality and more cloud storage to supplement the native 128 GB of UFS. (If this is your first Chromebook foray, know that a Google One subscription is a virtually essential hidden cost.)
Related
The chip will even handle some light gaming, though the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE with its 2.5K 120 Hz display, Intel Core i5 chip, and SSD is going to provide a much better experience on that front. This is particularly true if you’re planning to stream games from services like NVIDIA GeForce NOW and Xbox Cloud Gaming. If this describes you, the pricier GE is worth considering.
The 516’s ~4500 mAh battery has enough juice to keep the laptop kicking throughout a day of standard usage. My experience of using the Chromebook Plus on and off for a few days without needing to charge is largely analogous with Acer’s claim that it can sustain for 12.5 hours (though that’s assuming you aren’t constantly tapping into intensive functions like AI and gaming). Factor in the laptop’s relatively light weight and the pack-in slip case, and you have a workhorse for your workday that doesn’t need to be battery-babied.
Ports Aplenty
Just about every port that the average user needs from a modern laptop is present here: two USB-C, two USB-A, HDMI 1.4, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. There’s also a Kensington lock slot thrown in for those looking for anti-theft security.
The lack of HDMI 2.0 or 2.1 is a slight shame, if not for 4K 60 Hz output than for a much higher Ethernet bandwidth. Given that ChromeOS is built on the back of cloud features, having an option for faster Ethernet speeds would’ve been great. At the same time, HDMI 1.4 is still completely viable for most use-cases and a smart cost-cutting measure.
Since the back of the laptop is elevated by its raised backside grip-pad, the ports are lifted slightly above surface-level. This makes them a little easier to access, a nice (if slight) touch.
Should You Buy the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 (CB516-1H)?
The 96% keyboard in the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 (CB516-1H) was a non-starter for me, and an unnecessary excess for most people. This alone makes it hard to recommend this Chromebook Plus over traditional options unless your workflow requires a numpad. In that instance, this con could be a pro. Also, 16-inch screens in Chromebook Plus are a rare breed, so this is one of your only options if you desire that larger form-factor.
If you’re looking for alternatives, check out our buying guide for the best budget laptops of 2025.
Acer Chromebook Plus 516 (CB516-1H)
A Chromebook Plus with a 16-inch display, a keyboard with a numpad, and an Intel Core i3 processor.
