Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 (2024) Laptop Review

See the bottom of the laptop here.

The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 feels well-built. The construction is a mix of metal and plastic (metal on top, plastic on the bottom). It feels very sturdy during regular use, though there's a significant amount of flex on the lid and some on the keyboard deck as well. Despite this, the whole device feels weighty and well-balanced. The finish doesn't scratch or pick up fingerprints easily, and the feet are solid and firmly adhere to the laptop.

The hinges feel very smooth when opening and closing the lid. They're stable, with almost no play at all. Although there's a fair bit of resistance, you can still open the laptop with one hand if you do it slowly. There's almost no screen wobble when typing aggressively.

Accessing the internals of the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 is straightforward. You only need to remove nine Philips screws and gently pry open the bottom panel with a prying tool. Storage is user-replaceable; the slot is compatible with M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs.

See the service guide here.

• User documentation
• Protective carrying case
• Power supply (65W)
• Power cord

The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 is only available with an FHD+ display with touch input support. This resolution works well for this screen size; you can see individual pixels up close, but this isn't an issue at typical viewing distances. Its 16:10 aspect ratio makes it ideal for general productivity tasks, 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.

The display's slow response time results in noticeable ghosting in fast-moving scenes. If you want a Chromebook with a higher refresh rate display, consider the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (2024).

This display has a great contrast ratio and is better than most other IPS panels. However, compared to other display technologies like OLED or VA, its contrast ratio is still quite low. Blacks look grayish in dark settings as a result.

The display gets quite bright. It's bright enough for use in most indoor settings. However, the glossy finish reflects direct light sources like lamps, so it's best not to use it with a light right behind you, as you'll be able to see it in the display. Similarly, it's not suitable for use in sunny environments or outdoors in broad daylight. It gets very dim at the lowest brightness setting, which is great for dark room viewing as it's easier on the eyes and causes less eye strain.

The display's reflection handling is mediocre. Its glossy finish has a mirror-like effect, reflecting direct light sources. As a result, you can still see some reflections from lamps or sunlight coming through a window, even when the screen is at maximum brightness.

The horizontal viewing angle is decent. The image starts getting dimmer and more washed out fairly early as you move to the side. It's still good enough for sharing text documents and casual content, but it's best to be directly in front if you need perfect color accuracy.

The vertical viewing angle is decent. Like the horizontal viewing angle, the image looks dimmer and more washed out from above and below. If accuracy is important to you, this limits how much you can tilt the screen, which might be an issue in tight spaces, like on an airplane or a bus.

This display's color accuracy is middling. Most colors are inaccurate, and the white balance is off, but in practice you won't really notice these issues unless you're trying to do color critical work. The color temperature is slightly cool, but it isn't very noticeable. Finally, the gamma is too high in almost all scenes, making content appear darker than intended.

This display has a great color gamut. It offers full sRGB coverage, the color space used in most content. However, it doesn't offer sufficient coverage of wider color spaces like Adobe RGB and DCI P3, making it less suitable for professional photo editing or for viewing and producing HDR content.

The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714's keyboard provides a fantastic typing experience. The layout feels spacious for a 14-inch laptop, and it's easy to get used to. The keys have a good amount of travel and don't require a lot of force to actuate. Similarly, they provide great tactile feedback and don't feel mushy. A couple of modifier keys suffer from instability, but overall, they're good. The biggest complaint is the quality of the plastic used for the keycaps; it feels cheap compared to the other materials used on the laptop as a whole. You can adjust between five backlight brightness levels or turn it off completely.

The touchpad on the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 is decent. It's an adequate size for a 14-inch laptop but could be bigger. Tracking is good, including along the edges of the touchpad, and most gestures work without issue. There are no issues with palm rejection. Finally, this is a diving board touchpad, so you can only click on the bottom half, but the buttons generally feel good.

The speakers on the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 get pretty loud with minimal compression at high volume levels. Unfortunately, they don't provide a great listening experience. They sound sibilant and unnatural and have almost no bass. They can also be fatiguing to listen to for long periods.

The webcam on the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 is great. The image is clear, colors look natural (although a bit warm), and fine details are easily visible. There's a bit of noise in the image, like in individual strands of hair, but this is very minor. Unfortunately, the microphone is just okay. While voices are understandable, there's a fair amount of static and white noise that diminishes the audio quality. The volume is also very low, so you'll need to manually adjust it. Finally, the privacy cover is a physical barrier, so it doesn't disable the camera or microphone at the software level.

The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 has a decent port selection. Both USB-Cs support Thunderbolt 4 (up to 40 Gbps data transfer speed and video output to two 4k @ 60Hz displays), USB charging, and Power Delivery. The USB-A port supports USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transfer speed of up to 5 Gbps. The HDMI 2.0 port supports video signals up to 4k @ 60Hz.

The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714's wireless adapter is an Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211. The Wi-Fi 6E standard gives you access to the 6GHz band, which provides faster speeds, lower latency, and less signal interference. You need a router that supports Wi-Fi 6E to benefit from these features.

The Acer Chromebook Spin 714 is available with the following CPUs

• Intel Core Ultra 5 115U (8 cores/10 threads, up to 4.20GHz, 10MB cache)
• Intel Core Ultra 5 125U (12 cores/14 threads, up to 4.30GHz, 12MB cache)
• Intel Core Ultra 7 155U (12 cores/14 threads, up to 4.80GHz, 12MB cache)
• Intel Core Ultra 7 165U (12 cores/14 threads, up to 4.90GHz, 12MB cache)

The available processors are all low-power U-Series CPUs typically found in thin and light laptops. Like Intel's recent offerings, they use a hybrid architecture of performance and efficiency cores. However, the new Meteor Lake chips also feature an NPU (Neural Processing Unit) for AI-based tasks, like background-blurring on video calls and image generation in photo editing apps. While they all have two performance cores, the number of efficiency cores and clock speeds differ. Each CPU has eight efficiency cores, except the Ultra 5 115U, which only has four, and with each step up, the product stack sees a bump to the maximum turbo clock frequency. They're all designed for everyday productivity tasks like web browsing or video playback, but you can expect the Core Ultra 7 CPUs to provide a better experience for intensive multitasking (or keeping a lot of tabs open on Google Chrome). As ChromeOS is a lightweight operating system, any of these CPUs will provide a smooth user experience.

You can read more about Meteor Lake's architecture here.

You can only get the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 with integrated graphics. All CPUs come with Intel Graphics. There are some differences in core count and frequency between the models, but they're all low power parts designed for light tasks; don't expect to do anything intensive like play AAA games with them.

You can configure this laptop with 8GB or 16GB of memory.

You can configure this laptop with 256GB or 512GB of storage. The SSD is user-replaceable: the slot supports M.2 2280 PCIe Gen 4 NVMe SSDs.

The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 scores well in Geekbench 5. Its Intel Core Ultra 5 115U is a low-power U-Series processor, so it's best suited for everyday productivity tasks. You can expect all other processors to be better for multitasking workloads, as they have four more cores and threads. The highest-end CPU, the Intel Core Ultra 7 165U, is still a low-power processor, but it has a significant 700MHz bump to its clock speed; you can expect better performance for intensive multitasking. As for the GPU, although the compute test doesn't work on Chrome OS, we know it performs poorly and isn't suitable for demanding tasks like intensive gaming.

Cinebench R23 doesn't support Chrome OS.

While the Intel Core Ultra 7 165U configuration will perform better than our Core Ultra 5 115U, these are all low-power CPUs with minimal performance cores. They're best suited to everyday productivity tasks. If you need to render 3D images often, it's best to get a Windows laptop with a discrete GPU or a MacBook Pro with an M-series Pro or Max SoC. Even an aging entry-level discrete GPU, like the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650, will render images much faster than this laptop.

Regardless of the configuration you choose, the Intel Graphics iGPU isn't suitable for demanding AAA games; however, it can handle Android-based games from the Google Play Store. Just know that even among Android-based games, compatibility may still be an issue, as they're primarily designed for Android devices rather than Chromebooks.

Borderlands 3 isn't compatible with ChromeOS.

Civilization VI isn't compatible with ChromeOS.

Counter-Strike 2 isn't compatible with ChromeOS.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider isn't compatible with ChromeOS.

The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 is virtually silent when idle. Under load, the fans are audible, but not loud or distracting. Similarly, the keyboard is cool when idle and warms up under load. However, it's not uncomfortably warm, even though the hotspot is in the middle of the keyboard.

While the benchmarks we use to test performance over time aren't compatible with ChromeOS, there's likely some CPU and GPU throttling on the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 (2024) due to the design of this laptop. The performance loss won't impact everyday productivity tasks, only more intensive ones like gaming.

Every Chromebook is guaranteed to receive software and security updates for a 10-year period. According to Google's official document, the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714's end-of-life is June 2034. Google may extend this date as they have in the past for other Chromebooks; it's best to check their official document for any changes.

The Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 supports USI pen input, but depending on your region, it may or may not come with a stylus.