Acer’s latest Chromebook Plus laptop joins Google’s AI wave
Image: Acer
Today at IFA in Berlin, Acer announced an exciting addition to its Chromebook lineup. It’s the first Acer Chromebook to showcase MediaTek’s new Kompanio Ultra 910 chip and all of ChromeOS’ newfangled AI capabilities, and it’s called the new Chromebook Plus Spin 514.
This is a big deal because Chromebooks (like the Lenovo Chromebook 14) are starting to wade into the on-device AI pool–Acer’s the latest to join. Now let’s dive right into it.
The real star of the show here is the Kompanio Ultra 910, an eight-core Arm chip paired with MediaTek’s NPU 890, which can crank out up to 50 TOPS of AI performance. As far as the CPU goes, it’s got one ultra-performance core, three performance cores, and four efficiency cores.
We reviewed the Lenovo Chromebook 14 with the new Kompanio chip a while back, and we were delighted by the performance gains. Heck, we even tried Minecraft on it and gameplay was surprisingly smooth.
Beyond the chip, the Acer Plus Spin 514 leans into Google AI features. This makes things like searches, workflow, writing, and content creation feel quick and responsive. Smart Grouping keeps tabs and docs organized, especially useful if you’re a chaotic person like me, and Gallery Image Generation lets you play around with on-device AI image editing.
Display, form factor
Acer
You get a 14-inch Gorilla Glass touchscreen, with your pick of a crisp 1920×1200 panel or an even sharper 2880×1800. Both are smooth with multi-touch and play nicely with USI 2.0 styluses. And with its convertible design, it easily flips into whatever you need–ideal for doodling or jotting down notes.
Battery, configurations, availability
Acer claims up to 17 hours of battery life, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we did in fact see that magic number (we’ve seen batteries last 24+ hours before).
The 1920×1200 touchscreen model with 12GB of RAM and 256GB of UFS storage will be available this month with a starting price of $699.99. The higher-tier configuration featuring a 14-inch 2880×1800 (60Hz) display and 16GB of RAM will also launch in September, starting at $749.99.
Author: Ashley Biancuzzo, Associate Editor, PCWorld
Ashley Biancuzzo manages all laptop and Chromebook coverage for PCWorld. She’s been covering consumer tech since 2016, and her work has appeared on USA Today, Reviewed, Polygon, Kotaku, StarWars.com, and Nerdist. In her spare time, she enjoys playing video games, reading science fiction, and hanging out with her rescue greyhound.
