Acer Chromebook Vero 514 Laptop Specifications
The Acer Chromebook Vero 514 is a powerful Chromebook. Although it can be expensive, it offers great performance for the price, as well as decent battery life in a structure that not only looks great, but also helps save the planet. The choice of its port is a bit minimal, this is not the lightest laptop, but an excellent option otherwise.
Key features
14-inch FHD IPS display: Features a 14-inch Full HD display.
Portable design: weighing 1.4 kg, which is heavier aside for a laptop of this size, but should be good for those on the move.
Fast processor: Powered by a twelfth-generation Intel Core i3 processor that provides excellent relative performance.
Introduction
If the Acer Chromebook Vero 514 proves one thing, it is that a budget Chromebook laptop can look good and work well.
It's powered by the Intel Core i3-1215U, which when combined with 8GB of DDR4 RAM and 128GB of SSD, makes this a decently powerful Chromebook – although far from any of the fastest laptops out there
Acer ChromeOS laptop watches run at £499, which looks expensive, especially considering you can get some excellent Windows devices for a bit more. But can these eco-friendly aesthetics help power the Vero 514 to win? Here are my thoughts.
design
Magnificent and sturdy structure
Good keyboard and trackpad
Choosing a stingy little port
The Acer Chromebook Vero 514 looks excellent. It has a grey structure consisting of PCR plastic (recycled after consumption) featuring these small dark gray and green stains across the entire body, making this laptop stand out from the crowd.
One of the most attractive aspects of the Acer Chromebook Vero is that it has an eco-friendly design. Acer claims to use recycled perimeter-bound plastic for its trackpad, along with the aforementioned PCR plastic which makes up 30% of the chassis/screen frame and 50% of the keycaps and speakers. Even the packaging is made from recycled paper, cardboard and other natural fibers.
Here there is a 14-inch screen, with a moderate size around the top and bottom, although the screens around the side are very thin. This provides a more modern look of a laptop with a very powerful aesthetic.
With this rigidity in mind, the Vero 514 is quite heavy, with a total mass of 1.4 kg. Compared to other Chromebooks and Windows laptops with similar prices that I tested this is pretty heavy for 14 inch laptops
But considering the fact that the build quality here is excellent, for a plastic laptop, I can reduce some stagnation for Acer. It's still more than just portable enough to slip in the bag if you're a student or worker on the go, and with the solid finish that the Vero 514 offers, you don't have to worry too much about any potential damage from any bumps or scratches.
The choice of port offered with the Acer Vero 514 is suitable for the price, with one full-size USB-A port, as well as a pair of USB-C (one is used for charging), an HDMI output, and a headphone jack. It would have been nice to get a second USB-A, given how widespread the connector is, but this is more of a personal preference.
The Acer Chromebook Vero 514 is compact keyboard, with over 65% layout, which gives you the primary keys, complete with arrows and a description of functions. When testing the Vero 514 as the main laptop to work for two weeks, the keyboard felt particularly solid, with touch and good feeling. This is certainly by no means a soft keyboard, as cheaper laptops tend to display. Legends clearly appear in all lights, although it is also a backlit keyboard, it is also easy to use after working in the dark!
The trackpad here is a good size and offers plenty of space for your jobs. The existing buttons also look good, without a real sponge. My only problem is that since this is a Gorilla Glass trackpad, it can feel very smoothly at times, causing the finger movements to appear a little volatile.
width
Solid IPS display with great viewing angles
Good colors and overall brightness
Full HD resolution provides decent detail
Acer did not produce any surprises with the Vero 514 touchscreen, opting to use a tried and tested 14-inch IPS screen with Full HD resolution. Overall, it is a good screen with powerful detail and resolution, relative to the screen size.
Watching some episodes of James May: Our Man In Italy has unveiled the Vero 514 panel to offer excellent viewing angles, thanks to being an IPS display, strong brightness, with a quoted level of 300 nits.
The colors here also look decent, they appear a little. The 14-inch screen area here also provides a good midrange for productive work. While you can get bigger with other laptops, you risk making your laptop a lot heavier, and therefore less portable.
performance
Excellent grunt for Chromebook
Good amount of RAM and storage
Speakers sound too slim
Under the hood, the Acer Chromebook Vero 514 is powered by the Intel Core i3-1215U, which features 6 cores, 8 threads and a 4.4GHz boost clock. In essence, this Acer Chromebook allows to feel particularly agile for the light computing tasks ChromeOS was designed for.
The Geekbench 5 results also reflect this, and although it doesn't crash the ground, it still works better than Windows competitors at a similar price like Microsoft Surface Laptop Go 2, one of our favorite affordable laptops.
8 GB of RAM is enough for you to make the mistake of some more intensive tasks, even if ChromeOS itself will hinder you, due to the fact that some applications are simply not supported here. With that in mind, the 8GB RAM provided enough space for me to open a load from Chrome tabs and other apps while working, and the Ferro 514 showed a very slight slowdown in the process.
It's nice to see a 128GB SSD drive, and it gives you plenty of space to put important apps and files on. With that in mind, it's worth noting that Google's G Suite including documents and spreadsheets means that of course you may not need to install any real software, except for apps from the Play Store.
It's also great to see Acer use Wi-Fi 6E for wireless connectivity, ensuring you get the fastest possible internet speeds when paired with a compatible router.
At this juncture, it's also important to note that the speakers of the Acer Chromebook Vero 514 are its biggest weakness. While playing some music tracks on Spotify and watching some shows and movies on Amazon Prime and Disney+, I couldn't help but notice that they looked tinted and muffled. There is no real bass, but there is a lot of sound.
Battery life
Lasted 11 hours and 28 minutes in our test
Able to last for more than one working day
As for battery life, the Acer Chromebook Vero 514 is excellent, as it managed to last less than 11 and a half hours testing the video loop when I turned off the backlight and halved the brightness.
The keyboard backlight seems to malfunction the battery, as when left at the default level and brightness at 50%, Vero has lasted a little more than 6 hours.
There's enough juice in the tank here to be able to spend a day's work without a keyboard backlight, and in my test, I just had to access the charging cable once I finished work to charge the Vero 514 overnight.