Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

For Chromebook fans, one persistent nagging issue has been the generally under-powered hardware for users who really push their machines - once you have a dozen or so tabs open with a half dozen extensions, many Chromebooks can start to slow down noticeably. Until now, the only option available has been the $1000 Pixel which is a beautiful PC but way beyond the budget for this kind of device. Acer has identified the Chromebook market gaps and solved almost everything in this extremely solid offering - a thin, metal, almost Mac-like build, armed with 4GB of RAM, a full 14" HD display and a Quad-core CPU. Even the touchpad and keyboard perform as well as the very best Chromebooks currently available (which, until now, I would have said were built by Dell and Samsung). The performance never lags, it meets the 10-12 hour battery life promise in my usage tests, and it's quickly become my go-to computer for both home and work. If you're new to Chromebooks, here's what to expect from this Acer machine and the O.S. generally - these are genuinely 'instant-on' machines, highly secure and tightly integrated into Google's suite of apps and tools. Anything that runs in a Chrome browser on a desktop or laptop will run on a Chromebook, and there are novel app-like extensions for almost anything else (calculator apps, command lines, etc.) For an office, you can give everyone a Chromebook and their environment becomes available on login and disappears when they sign-out, and the machines can also be remotely managed if you're a Google Apps customer. For home users, these cheap machines fit many use cases from casual browsing and two-screening, to watching videos and calling family. They're ideal for elderly parents and in-laws who might other spam their own machines with malware since Chromebooks are much harder to break than a Windows 7/8/10 PC. For students and road warriors, the extended battery life and automatic cloud integration makes sync-ing a breeze, especially if you hotspot from your phone. And as with many other Chromebooks, this Acer also comes with some additional freebies such as 100GB of Drive space, Google Music and a dozen in-air Gogo passes (worth over $100 alone). As a 5-year Chromebook veteran, I've been waiting for this machine. It takes the basic premise of the simplicity and security of the Chrome O.S and matches it with high quality hardware at a value price. From the camera and audio quality through to the build styling, every aspect of this PC has been meticulously considered and it represents the best Chromebook that has been delivered to date