Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “This Chromebook thinks it’s for gamers”.
So you like gaming, but you don’t like it, which is why Asus and Acer have developed gaming Chromebooks the operating system that you’re pretty sure was designed to not let you do anything other than browse the web. Now, let’s see a game apparently and we’re not going to cover the Asus one, but just so you know, there’s more there’s multiples of these now wait. Asus has one it’s called, the Asus got one, and but the one we’re interested in looking at today is from Acer. The company that everyone confuses for Asus, including me inside the Box we got is a charger with every possible vert piece of verification and certification. You could ever want 65 Watts, which is plenty for a Chromebook Chromebooks, don’t usually come with so much power in them.
That means that they get super great battery life. This is huge. This is a big Chromebook. It’S got a little two-tone Sheen to it brushed aluminum.
The bottom is plastic, usb-a, full size, HDMI love it a USB C. I believe it’s 3.2 Gen, 2 of I2 and ethernet. Oh that’s, really nice. We got an Ethernet Jack headphone and a microphone combo Jack and a battery charge light.
That’S pretty big. Chromebooks are usually more focused on portability, it’s also quite thick, which is interesting because, while it is a gaming, Chromebook can’t really play all that many games on Chromebook. So the main thing that this does is it’s going to be really really good at game streaming? Why? You need a gaming Chromebook for game streaming. I don’t know why can’t you? Why can’t you just use a like a normal Chromebook and stream games. Build quality is a feels pretty good. It feels quite sturdy.
It’S big deck Flex. We got, I mean it’s kind of. I got ta really push on it. So far, I’m really impressed it does have a plastic frame up here screen Flex, that’s pretty good for how thin it is.
So when I open it, you see they have these little rubber feet back here. So when I pull this back far enough, it props up the laptop a little bit allowing you to get a little bit more airflow, keeping things a lot cooler. We’Ve got nice big speaker grilles, but that means nothing as to how good the speakers sounds. We’Ll take a look at that wait. What four times Force canceling speakers, what the hell is force canceling. What does force can? What do you know what I do know there’s a pair of shoes out there, that’s water canceling, and they just sponsored this video vessi. Thanks to vessi Footwear for sponsoring this, video Vesti Footwear is known for being lightweight comfortable and, most importantly, water resistant with its dimatex technology, and also it’s easy to pack, because you can just smoosh them down flat, they’re all fabric. Their everyday move line is designed with added support at the midsole and better breathability, to keep up with your active lifestyle and sweaty feet.
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So the nice part about the gaming Chromebook is that it has the wasd keys, highlighted for you, so you never forget which Keys you need to press when you’re playing games, interesting, that they didn’t that they still make. You use the search key instead of the Caps locks key because, if you’re like me, caps lock, is essential for gaming. Also, the up Keys highlighted up and down silent.
It’S weird why they highlighted some keys in another and how does it feel to type on it? It’S fine, it feels a little mushy. It’S not super clicky bottoming out feels just kind of unsatisfying. It’S almost like it’s settling into like a foam or something they’re, not advertising it as a mechanical keyboard, so it’s probably just membrane so not so bad. I also think that the font’s pretty classy, I like the lowercase font, it’s 2560 by 1600, which means it’s a 16 by 10 display.
So you get a little bit more of a vertical resolution, which typically is reserved for productivity, stuff um. That might be a little weird. Some games don’t support 16×10, it’s 120 hertz, which is great High, refresh rate. It’S gaming.
I don’t think you’ll be able to find that on any Chromebooks outside of the gaming Uber. It looks okay just from staring at it in the menus, but we’re gon na watch some videos that I’ve looked at before to uh see how it looks. And, yes, I know it’s YouTube, there’s compression! That’S not the reverse test. If it looks good enough to watch YouTube, then it’s a chrome, it’s a good Chromebook.
It looks pretty good I’ve seen better. Looking displays, nothing’s terribly blown out, colors seem relatively calibrated. This is obviously just a glance.
It’S not the darkest black, so you’ll see, but it is an IPS display that so it’s a solid white, backlight um. Now, let’s listen to crab rate. Let’S see how the speakers are playing. Okay already, it sounds really bad like just just hearing that water.
Okay, it’s louder now foreign and completely lacks any significant bass response you could, when we’re playing. All you could hear is like they do get loud, though, which is good um and they didn’t sound too distorted. They don’t get any worse when you’re playing them really loud. They just kind of sound bad across the whole volume Spectrum, at least it’s consistent and it doesn’t get super distorted um. Of course they have DTS certification, because you can just slap that on anything at some meaningless badge, uh.
Looking at the Quality, it looks about as good as I would expect from a 650 laptop, which means that the webcam quality is not great. The microphone quality, though I haven’t, heard it yet. So let me know what it sounds like so inside this we have a Intel Core i5 1240p, which is 12 cores four performance cores eight e-cores, so a maximum of 16 threads good CPU for a Chromebook. That’S a lot of uh horsepower actually max turbo 4.4 gigahertz. That’S a beefy CPU for what is considered a lightweight platform. We also got eight gigs of RAM, which is uh. I don’t want to say it’s par for the course for the for a Chromebook. It should, but it’s the new standard for Chromebooks you’ll, see Chromebooks On The Low End, having around four gigabytes a lot of the time.
We’Ve got 250 gigabytes of nvme storage, which is a lot for a Chromebook. Chromebooks are famous for having like 64 gigabytes, so 256 of nvme pcie is great for all the programs that I guess you’re going to have loaded on here, which I don’t expect to be ton, but remember just because we’re talking about game streaming doesn’t mean that you Can’T install Linux using the Linux subsystem, I actually just did it while we were talking earlier. I don’t know what the status of it is. Steam will be running natively on Chromebook soon.
It just runs all of the games through the Linux and implementation of the system, but soon you’ll be really thankful that you have 256 gigs of storage so that you can actually keep some games on here and have them running. But let’s talk about game streaming, that’s the main claim to fame! That’S why you have the 2.5 gigabit Ethernet or the 120 hits display, it’s all about the game streaming. I also appreciate that they have the full size HDMI.
A lot of laptops will forgo the full-size HDMI make you use a dongle, but if you’re going to use this as like, maybe this is your gaming laptop? Maybe this is your only computer being able to plug it into a display that you have is awesome. I don’t know if you can hear it, you can’t really, but this thing is like just not even sweating um and it is doing a screen capture. We are, we are full up on memory and I only got I mean I can close this YouTube app.
Even with game streaming, eight gigs is not a lot and especially if you’re you know, if you do decide to play games locally, you might be uh hurting. Oh, that’s kind of an interesting caveat. I never thought about. If you’re, using like a gaming, peripheral, say you have like your settings stored and it’s in the cloud, because that’s how so many stupid gaming peripherals work, you don’t have local storage on your mouse you’re not going to be able to configure it because they’re not going To have a Chrome OS app, that’s kind of something that you don’t really think about until you start using it. So you go oh wait. If my mouse requires software to be configured, then I’m not going to be able to do that on here.
I’M going to be stuck with the default settings and the default DPI settings see here’s the thing I don’t know. I don’t know if I have to change this in, like the GeForce Now settings GeForce now is only outputting at 16×9 yeah. This is not using the full refresher to the display. I don’t think this is just streaming it.
However, it is whisper quiet, projecting two hours of battery life, which is a this. Is it’s a lot more than you will get, but playing this game playing cyberpunk on your actual laptop? Oh, my God. Excuse me, I’m doing illegal stuff, the cool kind of illegal stuff. Does the gaming chromework have a graphics card? No it doesn’t. It just uses Intel, Ze, Graphics, which is or XE Graphics, which is actually a good question that we should have not just brushed over earlier, despite the fact that this is a gaming Chromebook, it has no graphics card, it is just integrated Graphics, which guess that’s the Chromebook part of it huh, but again we’re not doing this, isn’t really being pitched or sold as a local gaming Beast it’s being pitched as a Chromebook that also games because it has RGB and because it has a fast refresh rate that you can’t take advantage of, Because I don’t think, there’s any service that streams in 120 frames per.
Second, I just played a little bit of a cyberpunk and most of all it felt like I was playing a game on a game streaming surface which you can do on. Like an Apple TV. You can do it on your smart TV and your smart TV definitely has a worse processor. However, your smart TV isn’t a laptop this. You get a whole laptop and here’s the thing. The price is 650 US Dollars, which is actually pretty good for what you’re getting. But if I’m going against other gaming computers, let’s look at the MSI gf63.
That’S got an Intel. I5. 10300H, a worse processor than this. It’S got the same amount of storage, the same amount of ram, it’s smaller, but it does have a 1650 a GTX, 1650 mobile GPU.
Is that really that much better? What about this Lenovo IdeaPad it’s in line with PCS that are in the same price range? So here’s the thing at the price point of 650. is that a fair price for the specs that you’re getting things will go on sale like currently it’s Cyber Monday when we’re recording this and there’s a lot of higher spec laptops that are available at a very Similar price that are Windows laptop, my word of advice for a long time – was that if you are planning to spend a more than than 500 on the laptop go windows, don’t worry about Chromebooks if you’re spending less than that? That’S what that’s the category where the Chromebook becomes really really compelling is under 500, if you’re looking for a machine, that’s under 500, what are you really doing on it? You’Re browsing the web you’re like voice chatting with people you’re not doing heavy stuff Chrome OS has. Is really great in that budget segment when you push beyond that, that’s when you start competing with actually competent laptops. It’S gon na be better than the in than the integrated graphics on the pros, despite the fact that this comes with a great CPU and Iris XE Graphics are pretty good for built-in Graphics.
I am interested to see what Chromebooks are looking like with similar specs around this price point: core I3, 8 gigabytes and 128 gigabytes of storage for set for 800 bucks bad. Yes, this is the Asus one. It’S got a ryzen 5 in it. Eight gigabytes of RAM 64 gigabytes of storage – that’s it! That’S it! That’S all you got, it do have a little number. Panel. 650 50 is actually a pretty competitive price. If you ask me, you have to be really certain that you want to deal with a lot of the issues of Chrome OS like low game availability.
You might be missing some of your very uh, useful apps. Like think about this. Do you use Discord? You’Ll only be able to use the web app in this right now. I think you might be able to get it do use the Android version on here, but then you’re dealing with emulation. It gets a little bit wonky until Chrome OS can develop and add more of those native apps to the operating system like steam.
That’S coming up having steamed directly on the hardware, is going to make your life so much better. It’S hard to recommend this at 650.. Do I think it’s cool and I think it’s kind of a step in the right direction for Chrome, OS becoming a more versatile operating system? Is that what Chrome OS should be if, for some reason, you’re like yes, I would love to game, but I need to be on Chrome West. This is actually it’s a great price.
It’S a great product. The big question, as are with all Chromebooks, is Chrome. Os right for you, but do you know what would be right for you subscribing to Short Circuit thanks for watching if you liked this video, maybe you should Mosey on over to our Channel LTT and take a look at some of the videos I’ve done on Chromebooks Over there .