Acer Chromebook 315 (2020) Laptop Review

The Acer Chromebook 315 has a simple, cheap-looking design. It has a silver-color plastic chassis, a full keyboard with a numpad on the right, and fairly thick plastic bezels, especially the bottom chin. The speakers are down-firing, and there aren't any air vents. If you prefer a 2-in-1 convertible laptop you can use as a tablet, check out the Lenovo Chromebook C340 15 (2020).

The Acer Chromebook 315 feels well-built despite being entirely plastic and having no obvious gaps in the construction. The keyboard deck and display have a bit of flex, but the entire laptop feels sturdy when closed. The finish doesn't scratch easily or pick up many fingerprints and smudges. The hinge feels solid and stable.

The hinge is okay. It feels strong and smooth and doesn't wobble very much while typing. You can't open the lid with one hand, as there's too much resistance in the hinge.

The Acer Chromebook 315 and its power adapter are compact and lightweight.

Accessing the internals is easy; you only need to remove 10 Phillips screws and undo the bottom panel's clips with a prying tool. Unfortunately, the RAM and storage drive aren't user-upgradeable. See the user manual here.

• Acer Chromebook 315 laptop
• 45W USB-C power adapter and cord
• Documentation

The Acer Chromebook 315 is available with the following displays:

• 15.6" TN 1366 x 768 60Hz
• 15.6" IPS 1920 x 1080 60Hz
• 15.6" IPS 1920 x 1080 60Hz touchscreen

The 1080p screen looks reasonably sharp and provides enough room for split-screen multitasking. It has a 16:9 standard aspect ratio, which is well-suited for media consumption since most videos are in that format. However, a 16:10 or 3:2 aspect ratio would have been better for productivity, as the increased vertical space lets you see more text when reading a document or website, so you don't have to scroll as much. For the best viewing experience, it's best to get a model with an IPS panel because the TN panel isn't as sharp and has worse viewing angles and color reproduction.

The Acer Chromebook 315 is only available with 60Hz displays, which is typical for most Chromebooks. The response time is very slow, resulting in visible ghosting behind fast-moving objects. The other panels will perform similarly.

The display's contrast ratio is great for an IPS panel but still relatively low compared to other display technologies like VA and OLED. This contrast level makes blacks look gray in dim settings. The TN panel likely has a lower contrast ratio.

The display doesn't get very bright. It's fine for indoor use, but you may still have visibility issues in well-lit or sunny rooms. That said, it does get very dim, which helps reduce eye strain when viewing content in the dark.

The display's reflection handling is decent. Its matte coating disperses direct reflections, making them less distracting. However, bright light sources, like a lamp or open window during the day, can still be distracting due to the display's low brightness. These reflections are visible, even with the screen at maximum brightness.

The display's black uniformity is alright. There's clouding throughout as well as some backlight bleed along the edges. These uniformity issues are only noticeable when viewing dark content in a dim setting.

The 1080p IPS display's horizontal viewing angle is okay. The image quickly dims and washes out the further off-center you go. It's fine for sharing content with people around you but not ideal for color-critical work. The TN panel is likely much worse in this regard.

The 1080p IPS display's vertical viewing angle is okay. The image looks dimmer and gains a slight bluish tint when viewed from above or below. The TN panel performs much worse and likely exhibits chroma inversion when viewed at sharp angles, severely degrading image quality.

The 1080p IPS display's accuracy is sub-par out of the box. The white balance is fair, but many colors are visibly inaccurate due to the display's narrow color gamut, especially the saturated reds, greens, and blues. The gamma sticks to an almost flat 2.2, making dark scenes too dark and bright scenes too bright.

The 1080p IPS display has a poor color gamut. It doesn't even have full sRGB coverage, making most content look slightly washed out. Its coverage of the wider Adobe RGB and DCI P3 color spaces is too low for color-critical work like photo and video editing. The TN panel likely has the same color gamut.

The display is entirely flicker-free, which helps reduce eye strain.

The Acer Chromebook 315's keyboard is passable. The layout feels spacious and is easy to get used to. The overall typing experience is good, as it has stable keys with a good amount of travel. However, it can be tiring to type on over long periods, as the keys require a lot of force to actuate. Unfortunately, the plastic keycaps feel cheap, and there's no backlighting.

The touchpad is decent. It's a bit small and is offset to the left, which might take some time to get used to. While it tracks movements well, none of the gestures work reliably. The buttons feel tactile, but you can only click in the bottom half of the touchpad.

The speakers are sub-par. They sound boxy and unnatural, with no bass whatsoever. On the upside, they get very loud and don't distort much at higher volume levels.

The Acer 315 has a decent webcam. The image looks reasonably detailed; however, some finer elements are blurry, and the exposure is a little too high. Voices sound clear over the microphone, with only a little bit of static in the background.

The Acer Chromebook 315 has a good port selection. The USB-A ports support USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transfer speed of up to 5Gbps. The two USB-Cs also support USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transfer speed as well as charging and video output.

The wireless adapter is an Intel Wireless-AC 9560.

The Acer 315 is available with the following CPUs:

• Intel Celeron N4000 (2 cores/2 threads, up to 2.6GHz)
• Intel Celeron N4020 (2 cores/2 threads, up to 2.8GHz)
• Intel Celeron N4120 (4 cores/4 threads, up to 2.6GHz)

The N4000 and N4020 are dual-core processors without Hyper-Threading, whereas the Celeron N4120 is a quad-core processor with no Hyper-Threading. They're all power-efficient CPUs; the N4020 has a higher burst frequency than the N4000 and might give a barely noticeable performance improvement when loading programs or webpages. However, both are more than capable for web browsing or media playback. The N4120 will perform much better in multitasking and highly threaded workloads than the N4000 and N4020, thanks to its two extra cores. If you want a Chromebook with newer, faster CPU options, check out the Acer Chromebook Plus 515 (2023).

This laptop is only available with integrated graphics. All three CPUs use Intel UHD Graphics 600, with the only difference being that the Intel Celeron N4120's graphics have a slightly faster burst frequency compared to the ones on the N4000 and N4020. However, this marginally faster clock speed doesn't result in any noticeable performance increase. The Intel UHD Graphics 600 is designed for light productivity tasks, so don't expect to do anything remotely intensive.

You can configure this laptop with 4GB or 8GB of RAM. The memory isn't user-replaceable.

You can configure this laptop with 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB of eMMC storage. The storage isn't user-replaceable.

The Acer Chromebook 315 equipped with the Intel Celeron N4020 performs poorly in the Geekbench 5 synthetic benchmarks, which is expected of a power-efficient dual-core CPU. The system still feels relatively snappy and responsive because Chrome OS runs well on low-end hardware, but you'll likely experience slowdowns and stutters when multitasking with multiple Chrome tabs or applications. The Celeron N4000 performs very similarly. The Celeron N4120 performs much better in multi-threaded workloads due to its increased core count, so it's the best option for heavier multitaskers. We can't run the GPU compute test. The integrated Intel UHD Graphics 600 likely performs poorly in computational workloads.

Cinebench R23 doesn't run on Chrome OS.

The Acer Chromebook 315 isn't suitable for Blender work. The CPU is far too slow, and Blender doesn't support the integrated GPU. If you need to render images in Blender, getting a workstation with a dedicated GPU or an Apple MacBook Pro with Apple silicon is best.

The Acer Chromebook 315 performs terribly in the Basemark GPU benchmark. You might be able to play some card or puzzle games from the Google Play Store, but even then, you might experience frequent stutters.

The 32GB eMMC drive is slow. However, the system still feels reasonably responsive because Chrome OS is a lightweight operating system that mostly runs web-based applications. The slow read and write speeds mainly affect processes like installing or launching a large app and file transfers.

The Acer Chromebook 315's battery lasts easily through an entire school or eight-hour workday with plenty of charge to spare. You can also get through multiple feature-length films or TV show episodes without needing to charge.

Borderlands 3 doesn't run on Chrome OS.

Civilization VI doesn't run on Chrome OS.

CS:GO doesn't run on Chrome OS.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider doesn't run on Chrome OS.

This laptop has a fanless design, so it's completely silent under load, which is great for noise-sensitive surroundings like classrooms. The keyboard deck is cool when idle and only gets mildly warm under load, with the warmest spot being between the "4" and "5" keys.

We couldn't test the performance over time, as Cinebench R23 and UNIGINE Heaven aren't compatible with Chrome OS.

The Acer Chromebook 315 runs the 64-bit version of Chrome OS. There's no extra software other than the apps that typically come with Chrome OS.

Every Chromebook has an "expiration date" at which it stops receiving software updates. According to Google's official document, the Acer Chromebook 315's end of life is June 2026. Google may extend this date as they have for other Chromebooks; it's best to check their official document for any changes. For this particular unit, Google states that managed devices with the Chrome Education or Chrome Enterprise Upgrades will continue to receive security and management updates and support until June 2027, but there won't be any feature updates.