Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 Review: A Value-For-Money 2-in-1 Laptop

The laundry list of issues I have with the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 makes this 2-in-1 laptop sound dreadful. However, given the excellent execution of its tablet mode and an unbeatable price, this may be the best value-for-money device of its kind.

Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514

A 2-in-1 laptop-tablet hybrid from Acer that runs on ChromeOS and includes cloud-based AI features.

Pros

• Unbeatable price
• Great typing feel
• Impressive tablet mode
• Seamless AI integration
• Sturdy in all configurations

Cons

• Tinny and poorly placed speakers
• Unsatisfactory battery life
• Low quality camera
• Dim display

Price and Availability

The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 is available starting at $549.99. This base model—the one I tested—sports a 14-inch 1920 x 1200 60 Hz IPS display, an Intel Core 3 100U Hexa-core 1.20 GHz processor, 8 GB of RAM, and 128 GB of UFS. Most of these specs increase with higher-end models.

A 65W power adapter comes included in the box.

Design Looks Budget, but Doesn’t Feel Budget

The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514’s slate gray-colored plastic shell reads like something out of an industrial design 101 class. It left me completely uninspired at first glance—not that I was expecting more from a budget laptop—but my attitude quickly changed after I started using it.

As a writer, my first impression of a laptop will always be its keyboard. It needs to feel good to type on if I’m to enjoy doing my job. Acer nailed this crucial aspect with large, punchy switches and none of the superfluous proprietary keys many laptop keyboards tack on. The only exception to this is the smart replacement of the caps lock key with a Windows-esque launcher key, which can be used in key combinations to access a variety of features, including caps lock. There’s no backlight, but if that was a necessary cut to get a keyboard of this quality in this laptop, Acer chose the correct trade-off. More expensive models offer a backlit keyboard.

I’m a bit less enthusiastic about the trackpad, though it gets the job done. It’s a tad smaller, has occasional sensitivity hiccups, and its unclickable top section feels clunky. That last point is par for the course with non-Apple trackpads, though, and overall, I don’t think most users will end up having too many issues here.

Acer’s suite of ports is also a boon not to be taken for granted in a budget offering. You get an HDMI port, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, one USB-A 3.2 port, and two USB-C 3.2 ports. It’s a minor shame that these couldn’t be bumped to USB4, but I don’t think the target audience here will run into any issues. A slot for a Kensington lock is also included.

A 2-in-1 Design Done (Mostly) Right

This is all preamble to the area where Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 excels: its 2-in-1 form factor.

If you haven’t used a hybrid laptop like this before, the concept is that the touchscreen display is mounted on a 360-degree hinge that becomes a tablet when folded over on itself. Doing so immediately activates a tablet version of the operating system. As an added plus, the flexibility of these devices allows for some useful unconventional configurations, the most popular being folding the device into a tent shape for media consumption.

Some of the problems that often plague these devices are loose hinges, poor weight distribution, and awkward grips. The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 avoids all of these pitfalls with flying colors. The hinge unwaveringly holds its form at every conceivable angle, enough so that considerable force is required to move it. The weight distribution of the tablet mode is even when held in both portrait and landscape orientations. In turn, both of these traits help make gripping the device comfortable, especially since there aren’t any awkward angles to contort around. It’s even more impressive considering 14 inches sits at the largest end of tablet sizes.

I do have a few critiques, though. The small volume button is often hard to locate, and it’s easy to mistake for the power button. Also, the speakers situated on either side of the keyboard emit sound away from the user. I found it all but mandatory to use headphones after transitioning to tablet mode. If there’s one part of the tablet experience that Acer needs to address in future revisions, it’s this.

These are gripes in the big picture of what this tablet mode offers, though. Among the handful of more premium-priced 2-in-1 laptops I’ve used, this is the first I’ve felt has gotten the necessary essentials right. I’d even say this is the ideal way to use the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514, since ChromeOS is naturally well-suited for touchscreens, and it enables you to properly run Android apps.

A Display With an Unfortunate Concession

The budget nature of the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 starts to show in its display. Some of the concessions make sense, while others are disappointing regardless of the price point.

For that first category, Acer made the right call in opting for a larger screen with a baseline 1920 x 1200 resolution than a smaller one with a slight resolution bump. 14 inches is the perfect midpoint between spaciousness and portability and is beastly for a tablet. The downside is the uniform pixelation, though it’s not something most users are likely to notice.

What might be more of an issue is the screen’s dimness. It’s advertised as reaching a peak of 340 nits, which causes the image to look washed out even in dark rooms and crumbles in direct sunlight. I either found the screen dull or uncomfortable to look at, or both. It’s an unfortunate concession as it singularly hindered my enjoyment of the laptop, and even a moderate bump in nits would’ve made all the difference.

Don’t Expect Much of the Camera, Speakers, and Microphone

Remember when I mentioned disappointment in the backwards-facing design of the speakers in tablet configurations? Well, you probably won’t be too keen to use them to begin with, as they’re pretty junk. I don’t use that word lightly: they emit such a tinny sound that even podcasts sound shrill. Expect to have headphones or an external speaker on-hand as the sound that comes out of these speakers is straight-up unpleasant and, to me, unusable.

The camera isn’t much better. The image it produces is smudgy, artifact-ridden, and has an aggressive stroboscopic flash effect in video. These issues are exacerbated by low lighting; the image I included above was taken with every light in my apartment turned on for the best possible outcome. It’s fine for recreational video calls, but not much more. I do like the privacy cover that can be slid over the camera, though.

The microphone’s recording quality is hollow and static-ridden, and voices are easily washed out by background noise. Living in a populous area of New York City, I deal with this a lot! However, I’m actually impressed by how well the pre-installed Recorder app’s transcription feature can correctly pick words out of extremely noisy recordings. Transcriptions are overall more accurate than those I’ve tried in products from other leading brands, which lessens the blow of the microphone’s low quality a bit.

Battery Life Is a Letdown

Acer touts the Chromebook Plus Spin 514’s battery as lasting up to 10 hours, but I didn’t find this to be true. My average battery life from 100% to shut down hovered around 6.5 hours. Testing included web browsing, YouTube consumption, using various pre-installed services, and some idle periods. So, nothing that should be pushing this laptop too hard outside of keeping the brightness maxed.

This probably won’t be an issue if you’re accustomed to charging regularly. However, if your use case demands day-long use away from a power source, this laptop isn’t likely to last as long as you need it to. Some of the sting is taken out by fast charging times, but I still expected more given Acer’s estimates.

ChromeOS Isn’t for Everyone

As you’d expect from its name, this 2-in-1 laptop runs on ChromeOS. If you’re unfamiliar with the operating system, it’s important you understand its unique quirks.

For all intents and purposes, ChromeOS is a glorified hub for Google-owned services and Android connectivity. The Google Play app store is the primary method of obtaining new software, including compatible Android apps. Google’s suite of apps is essentially wrappers on web services. Some—like its office suite—just open a Chrome web page altogether.

This focus on cloud services is how Chomebooks punch beyond their weight, but it’s at the cost of a more versatile operating system like Windows or macOS. However, because its user interface is already not dissimilar to a tablet, it’s a specifically great fit for a 2-in-1 laptop. Just know that if you’re moving to this from a more robust operating system, it will feel like using a tablet on a laptop, along the lines of Samsung DeX. It’s a great experience if you’re primarily in the market for a tablet, but less so if you need a traditional computer.

Sensible AI Features

The maximalism that tech giants have exercised in introducing AI to the public has largely resulted in features that often don’t work and garish generative images of use to nobody. The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 takes a more nuanced approach that feels like it works alongside you when needed, assuming you have the requisite online connectivity.

AI features include live transcription and translation of all audio and video, a writing assistant, and summaries of web pages and voice memos. This last one is probably the least impressive, given the summaries are usually short to the point of uselessness, but the writing assistant will certainly be helpful to some users. You can try this for yourself on Google Docs, though it’s more seamlessly integrated on a Chromebook Plus.

The transcription and translation are the most impressive feature of the bunch, as they provide fairly accurate captions for every piece of multimedia content. It’s a fantastic accessibility feature and a model for AI implementation that the competition should follow.

There’s also a Gemini portal where you can chat up Google’s ChatGPT-like chatbot, though this is, like most other apps here, a wrapper on a web browser. What’s important is that it never feels like any of these features are forced upon you, so if you want nothing to do with AI, you can easily turn it off or ignore it.

Should You Buy an Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514?

The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514 is a product for a very specific person: someone who lives in the Google and Android ecosystems, isn’t a power user, and has a specific interest in using the device as a tablet (perhaps even more so than a laptop). Alternatively, it’s a great second laptop if you need an easy travel companion. For $549.99, this is as good as it gets, especially in the 2-in-1 realm.

However, if you start looking at more expensive variants of this Chromebook Plus, it’s probably worth investing instead in a laptop that runs Windows, or a more powerful tablet.

Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514

A 2-in-1 laptop-tablet hybrid from Acer that runs on ChromeOS and includes cloud-based AI features.