Acer Chromebook Spin 714 Review

Acer’s Chromebook Spin line has been a favorite of ours for a while now, with the past two iterations of the Chromebook Spin 713 earning Editors’ Choice awards. Acer has updated its 2-in-1 Chromebook convertible with the Chromebook Spin 714, which maintains the line’s excellence while making a few tweaks along the way. The biggest change is the move from a 13.5-inch, 3:2 display to a 14-inch panel with a 16:10 aspect ratio. Acer also adds a garaged pen for use with the touch screen, which addresses one of the few complaints we had about the previous model.

Inside, the system gets an update to a 12th Generation Intel Core i5 processor, while also supplying an ample 8GB of memory and a spacious 256GB solid-state drive. The Spin 714 completes an Acer hat trick, earning our Editors’ Choice for premium Chromebooks a third year in a row. It’s a good deal at its $729 regular price, and it would be an absolute steal if the $499 sale price we've seen it for, at times, returns for Black Friday 2022.

New Display, Familiar Design

The display may have changed considerably, but the Chromebook Spin 714’s design remains largely the same. The Steel Gray aluminum chassis offers an understated, corporate look and feels firm and rugged. This Chromebook passed the same MIL-STD 810H tests for shock and vibration as its predecessor.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

At 3.2 pounds and 0.67 inch thick, it’s also the same weight and width as the previous Chromebook Spin 713. The new 14-inch, 16:10 screen makes the system wider and less deep than the preceding 713—the Spin 714 is 12.7 inches wide and 8.9 inches deep, versus the 11.8-by-9.3-inch Spin 713. It remains a compact and portable Chromebook, even if its heft is a bit greater than expected.

But again, the display is the biggest change in going from the Spin 713 to the 714. Gone is the closer-to-square, extra-tall 3:2 panel in favor of a 14-inch, 16:10 one. The 16:10 aspect ratio feels like it’s in the sweet spot between the productivity-minded 3:2 and the entertainment-focused 16:9.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

On the 14-inch, 16:10 display, you have enough vertical space that windows don’t feel squeezed to the point where you are constantly scrolling, and movies and TV shows fit better on it than the squarish 3:2 panel. It really bridges the gap between work and play, and it makes the Spin 714 a versatile, do-it-all machine. That’s even before you take in its 2-in-1 capability and its possible use as a tablet.

Like the name suggests, the Spin 714’s hinge can rotate 360 degrees, so you can rotate the display all the way around into tablet mode. The 14-inch panel feels natural when used as a tablet—the touch response feels fast and accurate with or without the included stylus. Also, the Spin 713 lacked a stylus, so we are excited to see one included with the Spin 714. (One, really, should come standard with any 2-in-1 model.) When not in use, it can be garaged in the front-right corner of the keyboard deck.

Along with the new display panel comes a new display resolution. Acer actually lowered the resolution on the Spin 714 to 1,920 by 1,200 pixels, from 2,256 by 1,504 on the Spin 713. While higher resolution is generally better, the drop in sharpness here is not a major negative. The resolution is more than sufficient to create a crisp image across the 14-inch panel. Further, as with most Chromebooks, the Settings/Device tab offers a choice of scaled resolutions, and the default is on the large side of the slider at 1,536 by 960 pixels. You’ve got plenty of pixels to play with.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

This Chromebook's display brightness is sufficient for indoor use, although I set it to its max whether in my sunny, south-facing breakfast nook or dimmer, north-facing home office. Colors look accurate and well-balanced in photos and videos. While the Spin 714’s display certainly won’t offend, it can’t match the OLED panel found on the cheaper, detachable-design Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook.

The Spin 714’s webcam offers a pair of improvements from its predecessors. For starters, it got a resolution bump from 720p to 1080p that results in a finer, better-balanced image that’s less grainy. Second, it features a physical privacy shutter so you can rest easy when the camera is not in use.

The speakers moved location but, alas, the sound remains the same. Instead of being mounted on the bottom, the speakers fire upward from a speaker grille above the keyboard. The improved positioning can’t hide the fact that the speakers are underpowered and produce underwhelming, tinny sound. They suffice for YouTube and Netflix, but you’ll want an external speaker or headphones when listening to music—as is the case with many Chromebooks, even at this price.

Acer Axes the microSD Card Slot 

Despite the added width, the keyboard on the Spin 714 is the same as the one on the narrower Spin 713. The keys are well-spaced and offer snappy, if shallow, feedback, which again is normal on Chromebooks. There’s also keyboard backlighting for dark environs.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

To match the 16:10 aspect ratio, the touchpad is more rectangular than the Spin 713’s nearly square one. It offers smooth gliding and a pleasing click response with the perfect amount of travel. 

A pair of USB-C ports with support for Thunderbolt 4 highlight the Spin 714’s hard connections. Unlike with the Spin 713, they are on either side of the system, so you can charge the laptop conveniently no matter which side of the system resides closest to the nearest power outlet.

(Credit: Molly Flores)

(Credit: Molly Flores)

There’s also a USB Type-A port for connecting a mouse or any of your older peripherals without needing an adapter. You also get a full-size HDMI output and a combo-style headphone/mic jack. The power button sits on the left edge, while a volume rocker is on the right.

One item is missing from the Spin 714 that was included on the Spin 713, and we are sad to see it go: a microSD card slot. It may seem like a trivial omission, but having such a slot is important to Chromebooks because internal storage is usually tight. The Spin 714 has a generous 256GB SSD, which is quite spacious for a Chromebook but still less roomy than you'll find on some Windows laptops in its price range. We miss the ability to pop in a microSD card to quickly and easily expand the internal storage capacity.

Testing the Acer Chromebook Spin 714: A Highly Competitive Performer

The Acer Chromebook Spin 714 is based on the Intel Core i5-1235U, a processor from Intel’s 12th Generation family of mobile Core processors, featuring two Performance cores and eight Efficient cores. It’s a member of the U-series of 15-watt chips that prioritizes efficiency over power.

We compared its performance with that of the Chromebook Spin 713 we looked at earlier this year; it featured the 11th Generation Core i5-1135G7. The Asus Chromebook CX9 also features the same Core i5-1135G7 part. Rounding out the charts are a pair of Chromebooks—the HP Chromebook x2 and Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook—that feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor.

Productivity Tests

We test Chromebooks with three overall performance benchmark suites: one ChromeOS, one Android, and one online. The first, Principled Technologies' CrXPRT 2, measures how quickly a system performs everyday tasks in six workloads such as applying photo effects, graphing a stock portfolio, analyzing DNA sequences, and generating 3D shapes using WebGL.

The second, UL's PCMark for Android Work 3.0, performs assorted productivity operations in a smartphone-style window. Finally, Basemark Web 3.0 runs in a browser tab to combine low-level JavaScript calculations with CSS and WebGL content. All three yield numeric scores; higher numbers are better.

The Spin 714 edges the Spin 713 and the Asus Chromebook CX9 on PCMark for Android Work 3.0 but trails both of its 11th Generation Core i5 competitors on CrXPRT 2 and Basemark Web 3.0 (though Basemark was a near-tie with the Spin 713). With only two Performance cores, the Core i5-1235U does not offer a step forward in performance over the Core i5-1135G7, but offers greater efficiency, as we’ll see in the next section with battery life. On the whole, the three Core i5-based Chromebooks offer clearly superior performance to the two Qualcomm Snapdragon-based models.

Component and Battery Tests

Two other Android benchmarks focus on the CPU and GPU respectively. Primate Labs' Geekbench uses all available CPU cores and threads to simulate real-world applications ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Meanwhile, GFXBench 5.0 stress-tests both low-level routines, like texturing, and high-level, game-like image rendering that exercises graphics and compute shaders. Geekbench delivers a numeric score, while GFXBench counts frames per second (fps). 

Finally, to test a Chromebook's battery, we loop a 720p video file with screen brightness set at 50%, volume at 100%, and Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting disabled until the system quits. Sometimes with Chromebooks we need to play the video from an external SSD plugged into a USB port (because of a lack of local storage space), but the Spin 714 had more than enough internal storage to hold the file.

The Spin 714 takes top honors on the Geekbench test but is closer to the disappointing Snapdragon-based Chromebooks on GFXBench. The Spin 714 offers little to no local-gaming capability outside of casual Android games.

The previous Spin 713 offered a long battery life, and the Spin 714 offers nearly two more hours of runtime. It ran for nearly 13 hours on our battery drain test, which is second in our test group only to the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook, which ran for a remarkable 21 hours. The Spin 714 will get you through the work day with life left over to play Android games or watch Netflix when the evening arrives.

Verdict: Acer Draws Another Ace

The Acer Chromebook Spin 714 maintains its spot as our favorite premium Chromebook, earning its immediate Spin family our Editors' Choice award for a third time. While we wish Acer could cut a few ounces from it, we wouldn’t want to part with its sturdy aluminum enclosure. With so many Chromebooks offering low-grade plastic frames, that all-metal design is appreciated for its good looks and ruggedness. And while we are sad to see Acer jettison the microSD card reader, the Spin 714 offers an ample-for-a-Chromebook 256GB SSD that helps offset the lack of easily added internal storage.

We like the new 14-inch, 16:10 display that offers a great balance between work and play, and the addition of a garaged stylus addresses one of our chief complaints about the Spin 713. Any 2-in-1 should let you carry a pen with you for those times you want to take more natural, hand-written notes or doodle a bit. The Chromebook Spin 714 is appropriately priced at $729 but would be a major steal at the $499 sale price we've already seen pop up once this year.