My girlfriend purchased this little laptop for me off the Treasure Truck for a steal, for me to cart around to classes and home for grad school. I wanted something very light and fast enough that I could have multiple tabs of scholarly articles open while also taking notes and maybe playing music in the background, so nothing too major. This laptop is very light, seems very sturdy (I don't have a case for it and just throw it into my bag every day) and fast! I was extremely hesitant at first about Drive and very attached to Word (who knows why), but I switched over to saving EVERYTHING on Google Drive for school, and this laptop has been perfect. I use my NYU email address (which is handled by Google) to sign in (note that some institutions require a separate password to use Chromebooks - NYU does this, it's called a "Google Apps for Education" password). This is not my main laptop - I have a 2015 MacBook Pro at home that stays there, but the Acer Chromebook is perfect for keeping at school or for traveling (no issues with playing YouTube, Netflix, etc).
I was worried I wouldn't like the "pared-down" nature of the laptop, but I actually love it (I did have to get my more tech-savvy girlfriend to explain how everything worked, but after I understood, using the machine seems much more intuitive). The ONLY things I don't like are that I cannot take a partial screenshot without it saving to a folder - I often screenshot and paste on my MacBook, and there doesn't seem to be any function that copies partial screenshots to a clipboard temporarily without saving it (I use this sometimes when taking notes on articles in Drive). Maybe there is a way to do this and I'm just unaware. The other thing I don't like is that I'm weird and like reverse scroll (dragging your fingers down on the trackpad causes a webpage to scroll UP) and there's no reverse scroll on this laptop. Very, very, very minor points that I'm happy to work around.
In conclusion - if you need a secondary laptop for school, or if lightness is your primary concern, BUY THIS! You won't regret it (probably).
*EDITED TO ADD:* After several months of working perfectly, this laptop stopped being able to connect to wifi (the wifi toggle refused to switch to "on"). After some googling, I unscrewed the back cover with an eyeglass screwdriver and removed and re-inserted the wifi card (and did the same with the wires connected to it). Good as new. If you're having a similar problem (which I gather from my googling is fairly common with this laptop), it's definitely worth a try. I bought a case to try to prevent something similar happening in the future.
| Standing screen display size | 11.6 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1366 x 768 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1366 x 768 Pixels |
| Processor | 1.6 GHz celeron |
| RAM | 4 GB DDR3 |
| Memory Speed | 2.48 GHz |
| Hard Drive | SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Intel HD Graphics 400 |
| Chipset Brand | Intel |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 2 MB |
| Wireless Type | 802.11ac |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 1 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 1 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 10 Hours |
