Acer quietly updated its 14-inch Chromebooks with the new Chromebook 514, which comes in a few options. Starting at $349 (and as high as $499) these Chromebooks aren't available for sale yet, but they could wind up being shown off in Las Vegas at January's CES 2019 trade show.
Spotted by Chrome Unboxed, these Chromebooks sport small updates and differences, with the most significant update being a backlit keyboard, which the Acer Chromebook 14 we reviewed didn't offer. According to Acer, these Chromebooks last up to 12 hours on a single charge, a claim we will put to the test in our forthcoming testing.
In terms of processors, the three models are not exactly different. The intro-level model sports an Intel Celeron N3350 and the $399 mid-range model has a Celeron N3450. The higher end model packs a Pentium N4200 processor, which may be a little faster, but not by any significant amount.
The biggest reason why you'd pay more for the $499 model is that's the only model with 8GB of RAM, which the more demanding multitaskers among you might need. That goes double for those running Android apps on Chrome OS.
Both the $499 and $399 models pack 64GB of Flash storage (as opposed to the 32GB in the intro-level version), another feature that folks installing tons of Android apps may prefer.
In terms of similarities, Acer is packing the same 14-inch, Full HD, 1920 x 1080-pixel panel into each of these laptops. Each also supports an aluminum chassis, one of the major pros of the Chromebook 14.
