The latest Chromebooks powered by AMD’s Ryzen C-Series APUs offer alternatives for Intel-powered devices and those who do not like options. That said, our initial hands-on with some Ryzen 5 Chromebooks gives us the indication that Intel’s Comet Lake processors are still the king of the hill when it comes to raw horsepower, but that’s fine. If Chromebook manufacturers can offer the same great features and built-in quality, but swap an Intel for an AMD and save consumers a considerable amount of money, it’s a victory.
Unfortunately, I do not think we are going to see the huge price differences between AMD and Intel powered devices, and a new list of Best Buy strengthens my theory. We recently took Acer’s new Chromebook Spin 514 for a test drive, and while it may be a well-built machine with adequate power, it did me no more good than devices like the Spin 713 or even the Lenovo Flex 5. The model what we tested was the Ryzen 5 with 8GB of RAM and yes, it’s powerful enough for enterprise users, but it does not perform as well as Intel’s tenth generation Core i5, and this is a problem because I almost guarantee that the 514 that we tried, the price will be above. the Spin 713.
Anyway, back to the Best Buy list. This morning, Best Buy added an upcoming offering for the Ryzen 3 Acer Chromebook Spin 514. It has a meager 4 GB RAM and only 64 GB memory. Now I know that it’s enough for casual users just browsing the internet, checking their bank account and watching YouTube let’s look at the price. The model currently listed on Best Buy has an MSRP of $ 479.99. It’s smaller than the Spin 713, but at the same time there are a lot of compromises going on here.
Let’s talk about those processors first. Norm scores are not everything, but we give ourselves a good measure of what we can expect from a device. The Ryzen 3 from AMD is not at all and it even hangs very close to the 10th generation Core i5 when it comes to single core scores. The problem is that AMD has two core points and four wires. The Intel shakes four cores and eight wires. As a result, the Intel processor has more than doubled with multi-core speeds in Geekbench 4 tests.
Next, this particular model offered at Best Buy has only 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of eMMC storage. Now we’ve argued that most users will see no difference between eMMC and the NVMs offered by Acer’s Spin 713. However, storage of the Spin 713 is faster and offers 128 GB of storage. Just say. However, the RAM is a big issue. Premium Chromebooks must have 8 GB of RAM. I understand that this is probably the middle layer of the low side for this device, but remember that it costs almost $ 500. For the price, you can now get a Core i3 Lenovo Chromebook Flex 5 with 8 GB RAM, 128 GB storage and a few accessories on Amazon.
In addition, the Spin 713 has the 3: 2 screen which is very bright and super crisp. The 514 is not a bad show, but it’s 16: 9 and it does not have the doll you find on the Spin 713. You’ll get a backlit keyboard and USI compatibility with Chromebook, but the AMD-powered 514 sells hard in my opinion if you can charge the Spin 713 or HP x360 14c regularly for just as low at $ 529. Even at the $ 629 retail price, I have to recommend the Spin 713 over this 14 ″ AMD model from Acer. Hopefully this will be more in line with the prices we get from Lenovo’s ThinkPad C13 Yoga discount when the more expensive models arrive. For now, I’ll have to go the consumer model Acer Chromebook Spin 514 with a hard pace. The Ryzen 3 version of this Chromebook will be launched at Best Buy on March 21, and you can see the details below.
Acer Chromebook Spin 514 by Best Buy