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The Acer Chromebook Plus 514 is $299.99 on Amazon right now, reduced from its usual $399.99.
According to price trackers , this is the lowest it’s been, and if you’re looking for a backup laptop or something for really light tasks, it might be worth a look. But let’s set expectations upfront—this isn’t a high-performance machine. It’s running on an AMD Ryzen 3 7320C processor with 8GB RAM and 128GB of eMMC storage, which puts it squarely in the “basic use only” category. You’ll get by fine with web browsing, emails, video calls, or streaming, but anything heavier than that—editing video, gaming, or multitasking with lots of tabs—is probably going to be a stretch.
What it does have going for it is a 14-inch WUXGA display that has a 1920 x 1200 resolution and supports touch, so navigation feels a little smoother, especially when you’re scrolling through articles or zooming in on images. Additionally, it’s got Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1, which makes it more future-proof on the connectivity front. And even though it’s plastic, it’s rated MIL-STD-810H for durability (according to this PCMag review ) and has a spill-resistant keyboard—handy if you’re clumsy with coffee. It also runs on ChromeOS, which means faster boot times and built-in security, plus support for Android apps through the Google Play Store.
The battery life isn’t record-breaking, but it’ll give you a decent chunk of the workday—around 10 hours, depending on what you’re doing. It’s also got two USB-C ports, one USB-A, and a headphone jack, which covers most needs. That said, this is still a budget machine. The Ryzen 3 chip is entry-level, and the eMMC storage is slower than SSDs . You can’t upgrade the storage later either, so you’re stuck with what you get—unless you lean heavily on cloud storage.
