Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE Review: A Game-Streaming Laptop Leave a comment

Gaming isn’t one thing you’d sometimes affiliate with Chromebooks, however Google and its {hardware} companions have made strides towards shaking that up with a handful of cloud gaming laptops in recent times. One of many extra fashionable choices is the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE, which simply acquired up to date for 2024 with a brand new processor whereas conserving all the things nice in regards to the earlier mannequin. It is a modest improve, however it’s nonetheless among the finest Chromebooks you should purchase.

Let’s get this out of the best way first: If you have already got the earlier Chromebook 516 GE, there’s little or no motive to improve to the 2024 Chromebook Plus mannequin. Outdoors of some small aesthetic updates, that is largely the identical gadget. The processor is now an Intel Core 5 120U as an alternative of the older mannequin’s Core i5-1240P, and also you doubtless gained’t discover a lot of a distinction in velocity.

Nonetheless, efficiency on the Chromebook Plus 516 GE is improbable, and the battery stored me chugging via common eight-hour workdays. Mixed with 8 GB of RAM, you’ve gotten loads of room and horsepower for multitasking. The laptop computer continuously dealt with fast swaps between totally different apps and greater than a dozen tabs with ease throughout my testing, and the twin followers conserving issues cool by no means acquired loud sufficient to be annoying.

In distinction to Home windows gaming laptops, the Chromebook Plus 516 GE is geared as a cloud gaming machine, and it matches that function effectively. You’ll do most of your gaming by way of Xbox Cloud Gaming and streaming via Nvidia GeForce Now, and ChromeOS handles each effectively. The laptop computer has Wi-Fi 6E and a devoted Ethernet port on board to maintain issues working easily, and I didn’t expertise any main hitches or points with even aggressive video games.

The one gaming space that was hit-or-miss was Steam, which continues to be in beta on ChromeOS. Light-weight indie video games like Vampire Survivors run like butter on the Chromebook Plus 516 GE’s {hardware}, and that’s the lane I’d stick to if I needed to run video games natively as an alternative of streaming. Heavier video games can have some hassle, which is to be anticipated with built-in graphics and a light-weight (by gaming requirements) processor. I couldn’t get Useless by Daylight, one among my favourite time killers, to open via Steam past the preliminary loading display, for instance.

{Photograph}: Daniel Thorp-Lancaster