26 NOVEMBER 2019|COMPUTER SHOPPER|ISSUE 381
IFYOU’VEEVERhappily used aChromebook
but wished forone with more screen
space,the most disappointing
thing about Acer’s Chromebook
315 might be that it stops that
ambition in its tracks. Yes, this is a15.6in
laptop forwell under £300, and there’s room
in the market forsuch cheap notebooks that
also provide plenty of room formultiple
applications. It’s just that the Chromebook
315 isn’t the one to fulfil that role.
Your £280 gets you a1,366x768 display,
with adual-core 1.6GHz AMD A4-9120C
processor backed by 4GB of RAM. This is the
spec we’ve been testing –pretty wimpyfor a
Windows laptop,but Chrome OS requires
much less brutestrength. If you can stretch
to £300, there’s also a1,920x1,080 version,
which has a1.8GHz AMD A6 processor.
KEYSINAPOD
When closed, the Chromebook 315 looks
smart. It’s made of plastic, but could pass for
metal at aglance,until you pick it up to find
that your sense of touch isn’t so easily fooled.
Open it up,and it feels like athrowback to
laptops of adecade ago,with 1.5cm bezels
either side of the screen and 2cm ones top
and tailing it. Despiteall this extra space,the
keyboard is smaller than that of a13.3in
Surface Laptop 2, with no number pad to
speak of.This means the speakers are placed
facing upwards instead of on the underside,
but they’re such low quality that more key
space would have been the better call.
Given this laptop’s large proportions, you’d
have hoped that Acer would go nuts on the
connectivity,and it isn’t toobad in this regard,
although there’s arguably room foreven more.
There are two USB Type-C ports, one of which
is used forcharging, as well as two full-size
USB3 ports, amicroSD card slot, aKensington
lock slot and a3.5mm headphone jack.
ACER Chromebook315
★★★★★
£280•From http://www.amazon.co.uk
CHROME OS LAPTOP
Unfortunately,not only is the keyboard
more cramped than it could have been, it’s
also not very nice to use in general. The keys
feel quitecheap to the touch, and forevery
10 or so presses of the spacebar,one simply
doesn’t register.There’s no rhyme or reason
to this: it just forced us intoalot of jumping
back and forth correcting typos.
Even if this is arare fault rather than a
widespread issue,itleaves abad taste, and it’s
not the only issue,either.The positioning of
the Chrome OS Search button, forinstance,
makes it easy to press by accident, which
really disrupts the flow of typing.
The touchpad fares abit better,with
smooth scrolling and plenty of space foryour
fingers to roam. It requires alittle force to
click in, so you’ll still likely be wanting to get
your hands on agood external mouse,but it
does the job well enough when required.
DESATURATION STATION
The screen isn’t as bad as the keyboard, but
it’s along wayfrom being good. While it’s nice
to have a15.6in display, amere 59.1%sRGB
colour gamut coverage means that colours are
weak, and an extremely low 341:1 contrast
ratio results in everything looking washed out.
Peak brightness only reaches 230cd/m^2 ,which
isn’t very impressive,either.
At the same time,it’s alot easier to
forgive the screen than it is the design
faults: forsuch acheap laptop,the
Chromebook 315’s displaywas
never going to be aworld-
beater.Performance is
surprisingly sprightly,too: our
usual benchmark suiteisn’t
compatible with Chrome OS, but
the Chromebook 315 scored 23fps in the
WebGL Aquarium benchmark using 5,000
fish, 9fps higher than the more expensive
Acer Chromebook 514 reviewed opposite.
Battery life, unfortunately,isahuge
letdown. Acer promises up to 10 hours of
continuous usage,but in our video loop test
the Chromebook 315 ran dry after just 5h 33m.
Long battery lifeissupposed to be adefining
feature of Chromebooks, but this one will
seriously struggle to make it through aday.
THE BIGGERTHEYARE
A15.6in laptop forthis moneywas always
going to have strings attached, but even for
£280 this is just tootrussed up.The biggest
problem is the keyboard, which feels too
cramped and unreliable forword processing
–and even if it wasn’t, stretching the ropey
screen to 15.6in doesn’t benefit it at all.
Our advice would be to save alittle more
forthe Chromebook 514. Its weaker CPU
doesn’t matter as much with the OS and, while
its own screen isn’t particularly high quality,
it’s abit bigger than many 13in laptops. The
keyboard and trackpad are farbetter,too.
AlanMartin
VERDICT
TheChromebook315maylooklikeastealfora
15.6inlaptop,butitcomeswithseriousdrawbacks
SPECIFICATIONS
Windowsoverall
Multitasking
Batterylife
0% -50 Reference + 50 + 100
Seepage94forperformancedetails
PROCESSORDual-core1.6GHzAMDA4-9120C•RAM4GB
- DIMENSIONS381x256x20mm•WEIGHT1.8kg•
SCREENSIZE15.6in•SCREENRESOLUTION1,366x768•
GRAPHICSADAPTORAMDRadeonR5•TOTALSTORAGE
64GBeMMC•OPERATINGSYSTEMChromeOS•
WARRANTYOneyearRTB•DETAILSwww.acer.com•
PARTCODECB315-2H
5h33m
N/A
N/A
Not only is the keyboardmorecramped than it could
have been, it’s also not very nicetouse
