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The 14in metal Acer Chromebook I bought over a year ago might be the best sub-$300 gadget I've ever bought. Wonderfully sturdy, 10+ hour battery, and great IPS display. Complaints are minor; I wish it had a backlit keyboard and the CPU is just this side of adequate (but for a passively cooled SoC it really isn't too terrible). It is an excellent couch machine. And now I can install Play Store apps... that's so frickin cool.
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Oct 30, 2017 15:55
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The Acer Chromebook 15 is $299 at Best Buy right now, and includes a free Google Home. That's a goddamn steal.
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Dec 11, 2017 05:56
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Crossposting from the laptop thread because I forgot there was a Chromebook thread.Mental Hospitality posted:Chromebook market sure is wonky right now. I've been wanting to replace my venerable 14in Acer (Celeron N3160, 4GB) as it will be unsupported this year and it has become quite slow. So I decided to start looking for ones that would satisfy me.
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Mar 19, 2022 22:32
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FBS posted:Quick review: Solid build quality, decent screen, disappointing speakers, EXCELLENT performance. It's night and day compared to using my old chromebook, and I think web pages even open faster than on my desktop. I figure I paid $150 more than I ought to have but I got just what I wanted and I didn't have to wait to get it. I think that's lovely. A little out of my price range but I had no idea they were putting i5's in a fanless design. I wonder if they're limiting the boosts to keep the TDP down or they just went nuts with the heatsink. I have a Dell Windows laptop with a Ryzen APU and unless I throttle it like crazy (sub 10 watts) it gets stupid hot and the fan constantly runs.
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Mar 20, 2022 01:30
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Initial thoughts on the Kompanio 828 powered Acer 14: Feels more plasticky than my old CB3, but is also lighter and smaller with the same 14in screen size. Trackpad is a little funky, almost like there is the slightest delay from when you stop moving your finger and the cursor stops. I feel like I am adapting to this though. 5 levels of keyboard backlighting (more expensive laptops can't even get this right) Speakers are okay, better than the downward facing speakers on my old Chromebook, but by no means spectacular (I've been spoiled by my large Asus gaming laptop) Screen is nice. Not too reflective. Performance is much better than my old celeron kit. 8gb seems to make a world of difference. 8 tabs open, one playing youtube, CPU hasn't hit 30C. System is reporting 13 hours of battery remaining at 88%. I feel like this might be the most ridiculous battery life of any device I've ever had.
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Mar 20, 2022 19:56
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blatman posted:I had that trackpad issue on my duet out of the box and it just sort of fixed itself after I wiped it down with a little windex, I have no idea what caused it or why windex helped but my current best theory is that it had some sort of residue left on it from manufacturing. Huh, interesting about the trackpad. I feel like the more I use, the less an issue it feels like, but it's definitely there. I haven't loaded any android apps yet as most of my usage is just done in chrome tabs, but maybe I'll throw on discord and fire up some YT music sometime this week and see how it handles those. I did find out that the MT8192 can't cope with 4k60fps playback in youtube. Whether or not this is a dealbreaker is a personal matter, I just watch videos at FHD since it's a FHD screen, but either the hardware decoding isn't set up for 4k or the arm cores just can't handle it. Edit: I will say the battery life on this thing is just stupid. With light browsing, forums, typing docs...I think this thing might actually get 18+ hours a charge. 
Mental Hospitality fucked around with this message at 03:25 on Mar 24, 2022 |
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Mar 22, 2022 02:09
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Atomizer posted:The Samsung CB Plus V2 is on sale on Woot refurb'd for $220 for the next 24 hours. I looked into it a bit and it seems there's just no provision for hardware 4k acceleration in the gpu. I know the Mali-G57 isn't exactly cutting edge new but I'm pretty sure it does 4k accel in other chips. Under chrome://gpu this is what's listed for video acceleration: 
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Mar 25, 2022 00:23
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FBS posted:Fanless really is the key, both my Chromebooks have been fanless and I think it's the most underrated feature you can put in any laptop. It's definitely one of the things I look for in a Chromebook. I figure the thing is gonna get used while I'm laying in bed or on the couch; I should be able to set it down without blocking any airflow ports or worrying about heat because the chassis should be perfectly capable of absorbing whatever heat the SoC generates. I went with the Kompanio 828 Acer 14 inch specifically because it was passively cooled, had 8GB of ram, and upward firing speakers that wouldn't get muffled when I set it on a soft surface. Handles my usual dozen tabs fine and has the bonus of having ridiculous battery life (I've seen 16 hours). The CPU cores in mine are pretty old by phone standards, 4x A76, 4x A55. Would be sweet to see even more modern architecture in the ARM space.
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Sep 21, 2022 23:29
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After a few months of ownership of my Kompanio828/MT8192 Acer 514, I am still very pleased with it. It might not have the muscle of an i3, but it has 8GB of ram and is just quick enough for my usual 12 open tabs. Also, the battery life is....it is ridiculous. It's like a Terminator, it just will not stop.
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Nov 13, 2022 04:02
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Xiphas posted:How's the keyboard and trackpad? In my opinion, those are the most important things in a Chromebook and it's really not something you can find information on most of the time. I think the trackpad is actually really nice for an under $500 machine. It's made of some weird recycled material that feels more like an incredibly smooth metal finish than plastic. Very comfortable from a friction standpoint. The keyboard is perfectly fine for an inexpensive device. No glaring faults like missed keystrokes or double strikes/phantom keypresses, it's also backlit. The feel is similar to my 1500 dollar Asus gaming laptop with very little flex, if maybe just a hair louder and with a tiny amount less travel (not surprising considering it's a much thinner device). I don't think I'd have any problem doing a lot of typing on it.
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Nov 14, 2022 06:57
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How does the m3-8100y compare to the newer Jasper Lake dual/quad core processors? I'm assuming it's probably faster than the 2C N4500 found on a lot of other inexpensive chromebooks. E: 8 gigs of ram too? That is most definitely a certain buy for that price. 8GB of ram on a chromebook has been wonderful. Mental Hospitality fucked around with this message at 16:41 on Nov 25, 2022 |
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Nov 25, 2022 16:35
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Atomizer posted:"They said I was a madman. They said it couldn't be done. But I'll show them; I'll show them all!" What the what?! 
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Apr 5, 2023 23:15
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Atomizer posted:Yeah, I was gonna go to 32 GB anyway, but when a 64 GB kit dropped to a little over $100 I just said "gently caress it" and maxed it out, once and for all. I thought going from 4 to 8GB in my newest Chromebook was a game changer. I wouldn't even know what to do with that much ram. Speaking of my Chromebook. I've been ignoring my MediaTek Kompanio 828 Acer 14 for a few months because it was largely replaced with a Lenovo Windows Yoga 7i, but I've been using it a bit again lately and I kind of fell back in love with Chrome OS, it's light weight, solid browsing experience, absolutely zero heat or fan noise (it has no fan), and absolutely insane 15+ hour battery life. My only complaint about the machine is that the speakers sound worse than my drat phone, despite its "DTS" branding. I bet they could be made to sound better if ChromeOS had some sort of user adjustable equalizer settings. Ah well. Sometimes the ARM cores struggle with loading a lot of content on a page, especially when I'm running a dozen tabs, but all things considered; I think the performance is great. If they were to refresh this thing with a Snapdragon 8 gen 2 or a functionally equivalent chip; I bet it would surprise a lot of people.
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Apr 20, 2023 04:59
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The Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook Plus is on sale at Best Buy again for $150 off (from $500) which makes it a decently spec'd Chromebook for the money. If I could fault it for anything, it's probably the emmc storage instead of a PCIe drive, ah well such is life. https://www.bestbuy.com/site/lenovo...p?skuId=6550736
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Jan 13, 2024 03:12
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Maybe something like this Lenovo? Probably have to get a pen separately but Lenovo sells a bunch and I believe you can get one that works with the Flex 5.
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Mar 25, 2024 18:43
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cruft posted:
Not necessarily, no. A lot of the smaller Chromebooks are very budget oriented. Usually they'll have a Celeron or mediatek (which can be okay! But is often not), 4GB of ram, and some slow soldered emmc storage. 14inches is my personal favorite because it gets you the good stuff. Much better processors, more ram, actual SSD's.
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Mar 25, 2024 21:06
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