Acer Chromebook Spin 714 (2023)

Verdict

The Acer Chromebook Spin 714 (2023) is a marvellous Chromebook. With some sleek design and a decent port selection, it offers a solid all-round package for the price. It offers some nippy performance for a Chromebook, as well as some excellent battery life, too. The only limiting factor is its high price tag, and for creatives, a Windows laptop will be better.

Introduction

The Acer Chromebook Spin 714 (2023) has a lot to live up to for a modest Chromebook.

Acer’s Spin models of Chromebooks have regularly been featured on our list of the best Chromebooks money can buy today, and for good reason, too. In the past, they’ve offered a sleek design with the benefits of tablet-style functionality, as well as good displays, solid performance and excellent battery life.

Will all this continue into the latest iteration that I’ve got here for testing? Well, let’s find out.

Design and Keyboard

• Stylish looks
• Decent port selection
• Tactile keyboard, but skittish trackpad

Right from the off, the Spin 714 (2023) doesn’t offer much in the way of changes compared to some of the older Spin models. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, though, as it offers a sleek and classy look to it that makes it look a bit more expensive than the £799 price tag would suggest. In addition, the extra thin bezels around the 14-inch display help along its modern and rather premium looks

A weight of 1.4kg makes this wonderfully light for a 14-inch laptop, and the Spin 714 is going to be a fantastic choice for those on the go, especially with its slim construction making it easy to chuck into a bag along with all the other things you need.

As much as the Spin 714 (2023)’s slender frame helps it offer modern looks, it means its port selection isn’t the best it could be. You get a pair of Thunderbolt 4-capable USB-C ports, one of which is used for charging, as well as a singular USB-A, an HDMI out and a headphone jack. It’s a nice blend of connectivity, and the Thunderbolt powers are appreciated, although having an SD card slot, or a second USB-A wouldn’t have gone amiss.

The port selection could do with a little bit of work, but the same is definitely not true with the Spin 714 (2023)’s keyboard. It provides a compact 65% layout and keys that offer some excellent tactility over a decent length of travel. Typing on it to write articles for a couple of weeks was solid, and I’ve got no qualms about it. On that note, while I’m grateful there is some white backlighting for after-dark working, it isn’t the most even. The trackpad offers some good real estate for your fingers, although feels a little skittish, being a Gorilla Glass trackpad and all.

Display and Sound

• FHD resolution provides decent detail
• Marvellous colours with solid brightness
• Responsive touchscreen

On some Chromebooks and more affordable laptops, it’s on the front of the display where things are skimped out on. Compared to last year’s smaller 13-inch model, the Spin 714 has actually skimped out on its resolution, opting for a Full HD panel, as opposed to a QHD one.

With this in mind though, the images presented such as during a session of the latest Grand Tour special and some rewatching of James May: Our Man In Italy on Prime Video, the Spin 714 provided some decent detail, with some superb colours afforded by it being an IPS display. Acer’s quoted 100% coverage of the sRGB colour space means it will display all mainstream colours for day-to-day working, too.

A quoted brightness of 300 nits hits our target for laptops and means the Spin 714 (2023) provides generally vibrant images. The addition of a 16:10 aspect ratio is a step up from some other Chromebooks, with more vertical real estate aiding in making the display of the Spin 714 display a solid pairing with more modern workloads.

As a 2-in-1 device, this panel is also a touchscreen and offers a responsive experience when in tablet mode, too. The addition of a stylus in the box is handy, and the one provided also offers an accurate experience.

As much as the display is excellent, the same isn’t entirely true for the Spin 714 (2023)’s speakers. The fact they’re upwards firing is handy for ensuring that sound isn’t muffled on softer surfaces such as a bed. However, they lack a lot in terms of their low-end, lending audio to become a little tinny and thin. This became apparent in my day-to-day testing when listening to music on Spotify.

Performance

• Powerful processor for a ChromeOS device
• Solid RAM and storage combo
• ChromeOS can be a bit limiting

The Spin 714 (2023) offered up some solid performance for the money here, too. It’s powered by a 12th gen Intel Core i5-1235U, bringing with it a total of 10 cores and 12 threads, as well as a boost clock of up to 4.4GHz. This is perhaps overkill for a Chromebook, given that the OS it’s running on is designed more for casual computing than intensive workloads.

The addition of such a powerful processor for the task at hand allowed the Spin 714 to offer some high-riding scores in the likes of Geekbench 5 where this particular Chromebook offers performance that’s comparable more to mid-range Windows-based laptops than other Chromebooks. It’s a marked improvement also over last year’s Spin 713, with its 10th gen processor.

It performed especially well in day-to-day tasks of web browsing and playing some music on Spotify, too. The 8GB of RAM does come in handy when having multiple windows open in Google Chrome, and the Spin 714 wasn’t noticeably sluggish at all during my time with it. What’s more, a 512GB SSD provides oodles of storage space and is also a major improvement over the smaller and stingier eMMC storage that I’ve experienced in Chromebooks past.

If you’re wanting to spend on a convertible laptop such as this, the Spin 714 is a great performer – but it’s also limited by the fact it runs ChromeOS. There are plenty of apps available in the Google Play Store, but a Windows laptop will offer a greater degree of flexibility when it comes to software downloads with similar performance levels.

Battery Life

• Lasted for 11 hours and 6 minutes in our battery test
• Capable of lasting for 1-2 working days

The Spin 714 also proved to offer some excellent battery life in my testing, too. In running a video loop test and dialling the brightness down to halfway, this particular Chromebook lasted for just over 11 hours.

This makes it suitable to use for a working day without needing to reach for the charger, and that was the case with my time with the Spin 714. It also continues the trend Acer has set with its Chromebooks offering solid battery life, especially these Spin models, which have, in a general sense, become some of my favourites that I’ve tested.

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