Acer Chromebook 14, Aluminum, 14-inch Full HD, Intel Celeron N3160, 4GB LPDDR3, 32GB, Chrome, CB3-431-C5FM

TL;DR version: this computer is great! It does everything I could ever want a mobile device to do without replacing my desktop! fantastic pricetag too!I spent many months of painstaking research and so much shopping to find a mobile computer that i could actually like and love.. i was so afraid of buying the wrong device and having it turn into nothing but a waste of space in some junk drawer like my last laptop..I do think I finally found the solution but i had to try a chrome book for a while first before i finally decided to buy one because i was a bit afraid that i wouldn't find it useful. boy is chrome OS useful.. in fact i think it's the future. for all computers including desktopsthings i love about it and are important to me:---1080p screen.---light weight feels good in my hands---14 inch screen. i would have been fine with 13 inch but 14 is a bonus!---touch pad works great! i don't have issues with accidental moving or accidental clicking..---$300 price tag!!!!!---looks freaking beautiful.. as high quality looking as a macbook pro or something.. I love using it.. and it complements my work and home desktop without replacing my desktops. I still like using desktops but now I have this to supplement without replacing the desktop for gaming and serious office work. I never want to use a laptop for serious work or gaming.---the chrome os works better than windows in reliability and mobile functionality than windows 10. specifically, when browsing i can navigate forward and backward with a two finger swipe left/right. i can also go between tabs by 3 finger swipe left/right. both of these features are amazing and are not available on any laptop that runs windows 10. Furthermore. windows 10 is way too complicated and takes a lot of work to set up. WIth chrome OS. everything is easy to set up. there are not a million settings to mess with and i like that because it's just a mobile device! i don't want to have to spend tooo much time with it.---the selfie cam is wide angle so i can easily have up to 3 people in frame shoulder to shoulder.---the mic is good and people hear me well when using video chat.---i can use chrome web apps to do most anything.. office 365.. netflix/youtube, hangouts is a good chat app wish more people would use it like they love apple chat so much... i can download movies and watch without internet. google office can be used offline. gmail may be used offline. google keep is awesome. I like how cloud apps sync to the file folder.things that might make it better..---if it was made of solid single piece aluminum or titanium construction. the touchpad doesn't have a very crisp satisfying click..---I think if the CPU was faster, i could load up google slide presentations faster.. there is so much lag when i go from one slide to the next that google slides is essentially not usable on this laptop. I don't recommend this device to anyone who wants to make/edit presentations or read a lot of pptx files. The CPU is just slow for this task. I haven't experience any problems at all for cruising facebook or playing videos.. So I for one find it very strange that reading pptx files on google slides would be so slow.. it's probably a intensive task to convert the slides.. It is also a little slow to load pages on onenote.com. I'm not sure if onenote.com is slow because of internet loading speeds or slow because of CPU though.---if it had a touch screen and ability to flip into a tablet (without the sacrifice of the dell inspiron 7000 series which are really ugly computers in my opinion.)---if the speakers were upward facing towards me they would sound less muffled sometimes. generally the speakers aren't very high quality.. but headphone jack is fine.---if it had an sd card slot for expandable memory---if the hard disk was larger than 32 gigs to store more downloaded movies.---a setting to change text size of everything would be nice.. hard to use the device lying down as the text is a bit small when my eyes are 3-4 feet away as they generally are when i try to use a laptop lying down. i can zoom a little in chrome so that can help but it doesn't work with the apps in chrome os. only chrome browser.---a back-lit keyboard might be nice---maybe if it had a mini display port that would be cool i don't know...

Docking and undocking my work PC is a PITA, it never recovers correctly so I often have to reboot, and it's a little bulky. I was going to go with a iPad or similar to have portablility back for meetings and such but didn't want to drop the cash and also wanted something with more of a keyboard. After looking around I decided I wanted to try a chromebook with 4Gb/32Gb combo for $200 or less. I couldn't find that anywhere and most models were 768 resolution,I was about to give up on chromebooks. Then this guy showed up with ram and storage I was looking for, 1080 screen and aluminum slim chassis was a huge plus in my opinion which convinced me to bump my budget $50. I was looking at Dells offerings and they were thick plastic, to get what I wanted kept pushing me to $300+ plus range, and had trouble finding a screen better than 768. The Acer was a no brainer for me. When I unboxed it, I noticed it had more bulk than I was expecting, nothing terrible, weight seems to be toward the hinge, must be where the battery is located. The aluminum is cold to the skin at first touch, but much better conductor for cooling I would imagine than plastic. I am a guy with no patience for slow PCs so I was leary about what I was getting myself into with a chrome book. It is surprisingly quick to boot and sleep/awaken, something Windows still struggles with. Google play store has all the apps I use in Windows and I have only had for a few days so I am still honeymooning with it but so far I like it a lot. I spent quite some time streaming Youtube with its first full charge and I had at least a full 8 hours out of it, I would suspect if I was just browsing and didn't have the display cranked I could have gotten more. I was also impressed with the sound quality that it had while watching videos. I have a strange new obsession watching train crossings live on youtube lately and the trains look clear and the horns sounded authentic, I had to turn it down so I didn't anger the wife watching TV. The display is crisp and has a wide viewing angle, it doesn't have that funky LCD color fade if the screen is tilted the wrong direction slightly and is somewhat matte to reduce glare. The keyboard has shallow keys that take a little getting used to and the mouse pad takes a little more pressure than I think it should need to click so sometimes I need to take an extra half second to realize I need to push harder. I have converted to tapping the pad instead of clicking because it easier, right clicking is accomplished with using a two finger tap. Only thing I really wish it had was illuminated keyboard, but that can be remedied with a USB light for $10 which will likely affect battery life, it's kind of cheesy solution but for the price point I think I am asking a lot. I have recommended this to people I know and I would also to you, I don't think you will find anything better than this for the price today. Just remember it is a Chromebook and not a full PC it has some limitations but I have been impressed with its performance. I loaded Hearthstone just to see how it would run, it had long load times but once I was into the game the motion was fluid, the audio clear and I began to forget I was on a chromebook. I have an Alienware 15r2 at home, comparing the two I was impressed that the chromebook was able to keep up. Certainly it had lower frame rates, less visual effects and much longer load times, but the game was still good looking, smooth and playable. I wouldn't run anything crazy on this but for what it is I was impressed. If you are on the fence, give a shot, I think you'll like it. (images taken with iPhone of screen in dark room, looks better in person)

Works great