Acer Chromebook R11 review: Quality design in a bargain package

Acer Chromebook R11 review: Performance and battery life

The laptop runs cool and quiet thanks to its fanless design and low-power 1.6GHz Intel Celeron N3050 processor. It’s a dual-core chip paired with just 2GB of RAM, so it’s hardly a powerhouse, but it can handle opening media-heavy web pages such as Expert Reviews or The Guardian without too much fuss, although if you wait a few seconds for everything to slot into place you’ll be rewarded with reasonably smooth scrolling and a decent-looking page.

I used this laptop mainly for emails, using Spotify, document writing and a spot of YouTube and didn’t find myself too hamstrung by its speed. Even the photo editing software Polarr, which runs in your Chrome browser, worked a treat, and I was able to tweak high-resolution photos without any frustrating stalls and stutters. It was only when I began opening lots of Chrome tabs with advertising and multimedia present that it started to show its limitations. As a result, I was forced to close a few tabs, but this shouldn’t be a problem for lighter users.

Running the Sunspider web-based benchmark it scored a middling score of 636.5ms, and when tasked with the demanding WebGL 3D Cubes benchmark it managed 22fps, which is respectable for a budget laptop. In JetStream, the challenging web-based benchmark, it managed a score of 47, which is a reasonable result.

As is always the case with Chrome OS, you’ll have to commit to a life of cloud-based storage and web-based applications to get the most out of the R11. The very limited 16GB of onboard storage means you’ll be transferring photos from your camera straight into the cloud, bypassing local storage entirely, which is something else to get used to.

There’s a strong lineup of basic apps, though: Google Drive and its various productivity tools along with Gmail, Polarr, YouTube, Spotify’s web app and Netflix make working on the web almost incidental as long as you have a consistent internet connection, but Google’s offline Drive apps are always on hand if you do happen to be working in a Wi-Fi deadspot.

The R11 can also be trusted to go all day on a single charge, too. It lasted 8 hours 42 minutes in our looping video playback test, which is a great result for such a small laptop and certainly more than enough to get you through a working day without access to mains power.

Acer Chromebook R11 review: Screen and audio

Like Lenovo’s Windows-based Yoga laptops, such as the Yoga 700, the Acer Chromebook R11’s bendy hinge design may have limited appeal depending on whether you want a standard laptop or one that can double up as a tablet.

I rarely found myself tempted to switch to the tablet-style mode, but that’s largely because I simply prefer having a precise cursor and keyboard when they’re available. Folded all the way back, the entire assembly becomes rather weighty and unwieldy, too. In addition, Chrome OS isn’t really optimised for touch, though with most major websites now easily navigable with a prod of the finger you shouldn’t have any problems online, there’s an onscreen keyboard for entering passwords and the like.

Even in laptop mode it’s sometimes it’s easier to reach out and prod the screen to scroll down a web page, for instance, instead of manoeuvring the cursor over to a tiny button. The ‘tent’ mode does come in handy when space is at a premium as well, such as on a plane or train, and you fancy watching some videos with the screen front-and-centre.

The 11.6in screen itself is nice and bright at 226cd/m2, and its 1,366×768 resolution is acceptable for both its screen size and price. Everything is a comfortable size and text is easily legible, while icons are easy to tap on the touchscreen. Admittedly, it’s not capable of serving up the most vibrant, deepest colours, but it holds its own pretty well, all the same, thanks in part to its 1,210:1 contrast ratio and its IPS panel.

Even the speakers are good. Turn them up to maximum volume and they’ll certainly fill a room with reasonably crisp and bright sound. There’s no bass whatsoever, but at this size I’m happy to sacrifice bass for overall clarity. With the laptop folded over in tablet mode, music becomes slightly muddier, however, as half the speaker grills are covered by the folded screen.

Acer Chromebook R11 review: Verdict

The Acer Chromebook R11 is the most attractive and practical budget Chromebook you can buy today. It may not have the power or the screen suitable for the most hardcore multi-taskers, but it’s a seriously good piece of kit for the money.

Your alternative choice here is the Asus C201 Chromebook, which is a similar 11in device for around £40 less and can last a few more hours away from the mains. However, with that reduction in price you do lose the IPS screen and a bit of processing grunt to boot, so you certainly do get what you pay for.

If you decide that Chrome OS isn’t for you, after all, Acer’s Aspire One Cloudbook 14 is just as inexpensive as the Chromebook R11 but is a fully-fledged Windows 10 laptop. As such you likely won’t have to adapt the way you use your laptop quite as much but with 32GB of storage, and even less than that after you consider the space taken by Windows 10, you’ve still got the same reliance on cloud storage unless you add in an SD card for storage.