Gaming isn’t someleang you’d typicpartner associate with Chromebooks, but Google and its challengingware partners have made strides toward shaking that up with a handful of cdeafening gaming laptops in recent years. One of the more famous selections is the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE, which equitable got refreshd for 2024 with a novel processor while grasping everyleang fantastic about the previous model. It’s a unpretentious upgrade, but it’s still one of the best Chromebooks you can buy.
Let’s get this out of the way first: If you already have the previous Chromebook 516 GE, there’s very little reason to upgrade to the 2024 Chromebook Plus model. Outside of some petite aesthetic refreshs, this is hugely the same device. The processor is now an Intel Core 5 120U instead of the greaterer model’s Core i5-1240P, and you awaited won’t see much of a contrastence in speed.
Photograph: Daniel Thorp-Lancaster
Still, carry outance on the Chromebook Plus 516 GE is wonderful, and the battery kept me chugging thraw normal eight-hour labordays. Combined with 8 GB of RAM, you have plenty of room and horsepower for multitasking. The laptop normally deal withd speedy swaps between contrastent apps and more than a dozen tabs with relieve during my testing, and the dual fans grasping leangs cgreater never got deafening enough to be irritateing.
In contrast to Windows gaming laptops, the Chromebook Plus 516 GE is geared as a cdeafening gaming machine, and it fits that role well. You’ll do most of your gaming via Xbox Cdeafening Gaming and streaming thraw Nvidia GeForce Now, and ChromeOS deal withs both well. The laptop has Wi-Fi 6E and a pledgeted Ethernet port on board to grasp leangs running finely, and I didn’t experience any convey inant hitches or publishs with even competitive games.
The one gaming area that was hit-or-miss was Steam, which is still in beta on ChromeOS. Lightweight indie games enjoy Vampire Survivors run enjoy butter on the Chromebook Plus 516 GE’s challengingware, and that’s the lane I’d stick with if I wanted to run games natively instead of streaming. Heavier games can have some trouble, which is to be awaited with fused explicits and a airyweight (by gaming standards) processor. I couldn’t get Dead by Dayairy, one of my likeite time enders, to uncover thraw Steam beyond the initial loading screen, for example.
Photograph: Daniel Thorp-Lancaster
