Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (2024) Review: The Gaming Chromebook That Made Me A Believer

The Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE is the company’s second crack at a gaming Chromebook, a phrase that’s so oxymoronic it makes me chuckle. But just because this is the second 516 GE, the laptop still has a first to its name. Namely, it’s one of the first laptops in Google’s new Chromebook Plus-series notebooks that brings new hardware requirements as well as access to Google Gemini Advanced, the next stage in Google’s AI platform, which comes with a host of helpful utilities to enhance how you work and play. And yeah, I’ll admit it, I had fun gaming on this thing.

But aside from the AI goodness, the Acer 516 GE is a great laptop in its own right. It’s got a slick design, great display and potent audio, and powerful specs. Honestly, I’d like to see a Windows PC version of this laptop. But as it stands, the Chromebook 516 GE (2024) is a strong contender for one of the best Chromebooks of the year despite its somewhat mushy keyboard and weak backlighting.

Either way, the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (2024) is a great ambassador for Google’s Chromebook Plus laptops.

About this review: Acer supplied XDA with a review unit of its Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (2024). It had no input on the content of this article.

Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (2024)

Editor’s choice

The king of gaming Chromebooks

The Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (2024), one of the first new Chromebook Plus laptops, combines a powerful, mid-tier gaming laptop with a vibrant display and great audio in an eye-catching design accentuated by Gemini Advanced features designed to enhance how you work and play.

Pros

• Sleek, eye-catching design
• Powerful performance
• Compelling AI features
• Great battery life
• Excellent audio

Cons

• Mushy keyboard with weak backlighting

Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (2024): Price and availability

I reviewed the base model of the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE. It costs $650 at Best Buy ($700 Acer.com) and has an Intel Core i5 processor 120U with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM, a 25GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD, Intel Graphics, and a 16-inch, 2560×1600 display with a 120Hz refresh rate.

And while I’m loath to suggest that anyone pay over $1,000 for a Chromebook, Acer does have another SKU of the 516 GE. For $1,099, at Best Buy Canada and doubles the storage. The 516 GE goes up to Core i7 processor with up to a 2TB SSD, but pricing and availability have yet to be disclosed.

Design and ports

Interesting aesthetic

It’s not the Fire Engine Red of the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2, but that doesn’t make the Chromebook 516 GE any less visually interesting. The first thing you’ll notice is the notebook’s two-tone, aluminum lid. The majority of the lid is black brushed aluminum, while the top of the lid is black anodized aluminum. The right corner designates the system as one of the new Chromebook Plus laptops with a glossy Acer emblem embedded in the top-left corner.

But hands down, my favorite aspect of the Chromebook 516 GE’s design is the hinges, or more accurately, the color. It shifts from purple to blue depending on how the light hits it. And now I demand a laptop made entirely from this effect (pretty please, Acer). The hinges are pretty and functional, allowing the lid to lay flat in case you want to share your screen.

The Acer’s interior takes a more subtle aesthetic –– you get a solid black anodized aluminum keyboard deck. But take a closer look, and you’ll see tiny pearlescent flecks throughout the palm rest. The touchpad has a thin silver strip lining with a holographic effect. The keyboard sits in a recess nestled between a pair of large speaker grilles and just below a grayish-white Acer logo with a DTS emblem stamped on.

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The laptop’s undercarriage is made of more black aluminum with a pair of vents towards the back, a pair of speaker grills along the sides in the middle, two black rubber feet and 11 black screws.

You get a fair number of ports, including a USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port, a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, a HDMI 2.1 port, and a Kensington lock slot on the right. On the left, there’s another USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, a collapsible RJ-45 port and a headset jack.

The 3.8-pound Chromebook 516 GE has a 14 x 9.8 x 0.84-inch frame that is bigger and thicker than the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 Chromebook (2.9 pounds) and the HP Chromebook Plus x360 (3.3 pounds). But keep in mind, both of these are 14-inch systems compared to the Acer, which is a 16-inch laptop.

Display, webcam, and audio

An excellent audio/visual experience

There’s nothing worse than a gaming laptop with a bad display and when you’re talking about a sub-$1,000 system, it’s a very real possibility. Thankfully, you’re not making that sacrifice with the Chromebook 516 GE. Unfortunately, I couldn’t measure color gamut with my colorimeter, but I have to say, Ori and the Will of the Wisps and Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy looked great. Both titles served up vibrant color with sharp detail, which is really important during the first section of Ori as the initial stages are rather dark with only the light spirit’s luminescence and then a small torch available to light the way. Guardians of the Galaxy was a burst of color from the start with bright pink goo holding together an old space battle.

I was pleasantly surprised by the 516 GE’s integrated 1080p webcam. Capable of capturing video at 60 frames per second, it also takes a great photo. In my test shots, it did an excellent job of capturing the exact color of my orange dress as well as the purple, turquoise and green in my locs. My cheeks and forehead looked like they had the mosaic filter on, but my skin looked great otherwise. And the details were so sharp you can see a white hair among my dark new growth, reminding me that a trip to the salon is imminent.

Thick thighs save lives, and typically smother bottom-mounted speakers. But Acer found a cheat code as the Chromebook 516 GE’s speakers suffered no ill effects when I listened to Hiatus Kaiyote’s “Atari” with the laptop in my lap. Instead, I got loud volume with strong highs and good mids. The lows could have been better, but still a great result for bottom-mounted speakers. Let this be a lesson to other laptop OEMs. If your speakers have to be on the bottom, place them in the middle of the undercarriage.

Keyboard and touchpad

Needs some work

A couple of tweaks here and there, and the 516 GE’s keyboard will be perfect. As it stands, the keys on the Chiclet keyboard are fine, but just a little mushy. Not so much that I couldn’t type the entirety of the review on the keyboard, but just enough to notice that it didn’t have the bounce back that I’ve experienced on other laptops.

For its target audience, Acer put a thick white border around the W,A,S,D keys. Which if you’re in a darkened room, you might need as the keyboard’s RGB backlighting doesn’t really shine that bright. Although I saw the light beneath the key caps, it didn’t illuminate the white lettering on the keys.

The only thing smoother than OceanGlass (recycled plastics found in the ocean) touchpad is its lickety-split response to my movements. Whether I was scrolling through Nvidia’s ever-growing library in GeForce Now or zooming in on an image, the touchpad had no problem keeping pace with my movements.

Software

The power of Gemini Advanced

Since the 516 GE is a Chromebook, it’s a foregone conclusion that it runs on ChromeOS. But Google’s introducing a new wrinkle to the equation with a new category of Chromebooks designated Chromebook Plus. This new line addresses both hardware and software requirements, and it first appeared last year.

As far as hardware, a notebook needs to have at least Intel Core i3 or AMD Ryzen 7000 series CPU with 8GB or more of RAM, a minimum 128GB SSD, and at least a 1080p display to be considered Chromebook Plus. The software part of this is all AI as Chromebook Plus notebooks will feature a Google Gemini shortcut in the ChromeOS launcher as well as the Shelf.

For the purposes of this review, Google provided a free trial of Gemini Advanced, a more advanced version running on Gemini Ultra of the company’s basic Gemini AI model. A monthly subscription-based service ($20/month), Gemini Advanced goes beyond the basic chatbot, allowing you to generate HTML code, generate content ideas, analyze trends, and many other tasks. And of course, it works best within the confines of Google.

I took Gemini Advanced for a spin and while it definitely has room to grow, I’m impressed with what it can do so far. As a rabid lover of GIFs and memes, the first thing I did was create my own with the Gif Creator. It’s a fun, goofy thing to do, and I look forward to making a couple more. But I also enjoyed some of the more practical uses. For instance, I used the Optical Character Recognition feature to help me track down a specific receipt in my images. And with Task Integration, I added specific tasks that corresponded to existing events in my Google Calendar.

And on the creative side, I enjoyed creating my own wallpaper, even though Google is keeping a tight rein on the current choices. I managed to create a cute wallpaper of “a painting of a vast ocean in the art nouveau style.” With the advanced Magic Eraser features in Gemini Advanced, removing the photo in the back of my camera test shot was relatively easy, although it left a weird artifact in its wake.

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Performance

Introducing Chromebook Plus

When people think of Chromebooks, they tend to think of lower-tier systems with specs to match. Google’s turning that notion on its head with the Chromebook Plus designation. Plus, the 516 GE is a gaming laptop, so it has to step it up. To that end, Acer outfitted the Chromebook 516 GE with an Intel Core i5 processor 120U, a mid-tier chip. Using Raptor Lake Refresh U-series architecture, the CPU has 10 cores and 12 threads and is paired with 8GB of LPDDR4X RAM, a 25GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD and Intel Graphics.

This configuration was more than enough to handle my usual workload, which entails a minimum 50 Google Chrome tabs with a mix of G-Suite apps, videos, social media and Adobe Photoshop. Of course, due to application restraints on Chromebooks, some of my more taxing apps had to be traded out for alternatives (i.e. Photoshop for Web instead of full Photoshop).

The 516 GE also did well on synthetic benchmarks. The laptop gave strong results on Geekbench 6 with 1,959 on the single-thread test and 7,217 on the multi-thread benchmark. On Speedometer 2.0, which tests web browser speed, the 516 GE reached 239, which is a great score. The laptop also performed well on both the Kraken Javascript and Octane 2.0 benchmarks, scoring 408.8 milliseconds and 95,895, respectively.

As far as graphics, the 516 GE scored 2,326 on 3DMark Wild Life Extreme. I wish there was a ChromeOS version of 3DMark Fire Strike as the integrated Intel Graphics could definitely handle it. Either way, that’s more than enough to play any games in the Google Play Store. Of course, games like Guardians of the Galaxy ran very smoothly, but that’s because they run in the cloud.

Acer estimates the Chromebook 516 GE can last 10 hours on a charge. That, of course, depends on what you’re doing. The laptop lasted 9 hours and 41 minutes, which represented more than six hours of writing the review, taking video calls, perusing social media, and answering emails. The rest of the time was spent streaming music, watching episodes of Hazbin Hotel and playing Ori and the Will of the Wisps.

Should you buy the Acer Chromebook 516 GE?

You should buy the Acer Chromebook 516 GE if:

• You want a powerful Chromebook that can play games
• You want a laptop with good battery life
• You want a laptop with Google’s Advanced AI features
• You want a laptop with a great display and audio

You should buy the Acer Chromebook 516 GE if:

• You want a laptop with a firmer, brighter keyboard

I came into this laptop as a full hater. I typically run away screaming at the mention of a Chromebook and outright derisive laughter at any mention of a gaming Chromebook. But I’m not afraid to admit when I’m wrong, and I was definitely wrong with my preconceived notions. The Acer Chromebook 516 GE served me a heaping helping of humble pie thanks to its slick design, vivid display, loud, warm audio, and impressive performance. Again, I’d love to see this SKU brought over to the Windows PC side.

And speaking of ChromeOS, I definitely like it a lot more with Gemini Advanced enhancing the experience. Paired with my Google account, the AI gave me a glimpse into how the future of AI can look, and I can confidently say that it’s more Wall-E than Skynet (for now). I’m looking forward to spending the next few weeks doing a deep dive into Google Gemini and just what it can do for me going forward. Plus, I’m never going to say no to a gaming laptop that can deliver high frame rates.

My only complaint lies with the keyboard, as it could have better feedback and brighter backlighting. But overall, the 2nd-gen Acer Chromebook 516 SE is an absolute revelation. It’s a powerful laptop in its own right, with or without AI. But with the technology, the Acer Chromebook 516 GE (2024) is a great example of what we can expect from AI in the future and has my vote for one of the best laptops of 2024.

Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE (2024)

Editor’s choice

The king of gaming Chromebooks