The Chromebook Experience: A Mixed Bag of Surprises and Challenges

As I sat in front of the Acer Chromebook, I couldn't help but feel a sense of excitement and curiosity about what this device had to offer. With its sleek design and affordable price point, it seemed like an attractive option for those looking for a lightweight and portable computing solution. But as I began to explore the device's features and capabilities, I quickly realized that there was more to it than meets the eye.

The Chrome OS, while not as feature-rich as Windows or macOS, has come a long way in terms of usability and performance. The interface is clean and intuitive, with a focus on simplicity and ease of use. However, there were some instances where I felt like I was navigating through a familiar yet awkwardly implemented workflow. For example, when multiple instances of the same application popped up in a list at the bottom of the screen, it was reminiscent of Windows 7's taskbar. While this feature is convenient, it can also be jarring and disorienting.

On the other hand, Google Hangouts on Chromebook is one of the best implementations I've seen so far. The conversations spread out from the right across the taskbar, creating a seamless and distraction-free experience. Video calls are super seamless, making this device an excellent choice for those who need to stay connected with colleagues or friends remotely. And when it comes to audio quality, Acer went all-out on the microphone and speakers, providing a surprisingly good listening experience.

However, as I continued to use the Chromebook, I couldn't help but notice some limitations. The biggest challenge for me was figuring out where this device fit into my digital life. Is it a tablet with a low price and a keyboard, or is it a Netbook with solid battery life? An usable screen size and an OS that doesn't drag it down like a boat anchor? The answer, unfortunately, is not clear-cut.

As someone who's always on the move, I found myself torn between using this device as my go-to laptop replacement and sticking with my trusty tablet. While the Chromebook has its strengths, such as its portability and affordability, I'm still unsure if it's worth sacrificing some productivity features for.

The video chat experience was another area where the Chromebook truly shone. With its decent webcam and impressive microphone quality, I was blown away by how loud and clear my voice came through. It's clear that Acer invested significant resources into making this device a top-notch communication tool.

However, when it comes to offline capabilities, things get more complicated. While Google provides some useful offline-ready apps, such as Gmail, Google Docs, and calendar, there are still plenty of basic features that don't work offline. I discovered this the hard way when I disconnected temporarily from the internet, only to find that certain apps refused to function properly.

The Help menu was particularly unhelpful in this situation, failing to acknowledge my offline status or provide any useful assistance. This lack of clarity and support can be frustrating, especially for those who need to access their files or work on projects while disconnected from the internet.

In conclusion, the Chromebook experience is a mixed bag of surprises and challenges. While it has its strengths, such as its portability and affordability, there are still areas where it falls short. With some tweaks and refinements, this device could truly shine as a viable alternative to traditional laptops. As it stands, I'm left with more questions than answers about where this device fits into my digital life.

That being said, if you're considering purchasing a Chromebook, I would recommend giving it a try. With its affordable price point and impressive features, it's definitely worth exploring. And who knows? You might just find that it becomes your new favorite device for working on the go.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwith its Factory tuning and data center DNA an Intel 730 series SSD is an amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts now I've never reviewed a Chromebook for a couple of reasons number one is that no one ever offered me a sample and number two was that I didn't care about them enough to even bother to ask for one well Acer managed to address Point number one for me by offering to send over their P 720p touchscreen Chromebook and while I still didn't really care the spec on this $300 device surprised me it's got a 1.7 GHz dual core haswell-based processor and 4 gigs of DDR3 RAM on top of that I guess I kind of owed them one for being super late on returning some other samples so I was like sure what the hey I'll check it out now this won't be a review per se since I don't have any other Chromebooks to compare with so it'll be more of a disjointed of my thoughts as I fumbled my way through Chrome OS for the first time with some specific comments about this exact model but mostly focus on the general stuff so first up the build quality of this unit is better than I expected it's quite solid but very plasticky and not nearly as sexy and slim as Acer's premium offerings booting up is lightning fast the 16 gigs of solid state storage takes care of that and the setup process only takes a couple of minutes if you already have a Google account I'd say it's even faster than Android it logs you into your junk Imports your profile picture and all that which is great and yes I know Windows has similar functionality if you use Sky Drive and Hotmail I mean uh Outlook but who does so that's great speaking of Windows though some stuff feels a touch borrowed there's a status tray down here instead of the system tray there's a handy Chrome apps launcher in place of the traditional start menu um I wish the launch could be moved back and forth on the taskbar like it can on Windows but it's stuck in the traditional start menu spot um but other than that it's pretty familiar to use the launcher contains all of your apps but not your extensions the distinction between which is a little confusing to the user because the list of extensions in the browser contains both and the search within the launcher at the top actually finds everything too but a really cool thing about the search is that it finds stuff that you've installed both both apps and extensions and it also finds available stuff and suggests Things based on what's available in the store but that you don't have yet all right so navigation time let's start with the mouse double click and drag like tap tap tap hold drag is not available and the touchpad is generally not super configurable some gestures are supported like swiping back and swiping forth in a browser but really not much I mean that didn't bother me that much but the absence of a hardware rightclick is a big problem for me I use it for everything from uh you know right click copy rightclick paste to correcting spelling errors within emails and a two-finger soft touch is just not as fast as being able to use two hands to operate the touchpad at the same time so left hand for tracking right hand for right and left click and that's pretty ridiculous to me for the keyboard This Arrow key layout is a pet peeve of mine but the keyboard is otherwise actually a very strong point of this notebook it ain't satisfying to type on and it sounds really thin and kind of crappy but I'm really fast and accurate on it even though I can't quite put my finger on why get it put my finger on it because it's a keyboard I put all my finger anyway I'm sorry uh anyway the F keys are gone and that weirded me out a little bit but if they don't have any functionality in chrom OS Beyond being media keys and shortcuts then good riddance to the function mod modifier I suppose um immersive mode and overview mode are both quite cool and allow you to basically Go full screen or um expose style have everything sort of pop up on the screen and allow you to select it something that I ended up using the touchcreen for a fair bit and there's a couple other interesting things that are gone so uh caps lock the scourge of the internet is gone replaced by a dedicated search key but don't worry you can rebind search and not only that but control and ALT to other stuff if you want so you can bring back caps lock if it's really important to you and finally there is no delete key but you can use alt backspace if you want I would have personally preferred a hardware delete key instead of power up here um and then like a non-keyboard based power button but I guess there's always trade-offs and no one's going to be happy with everything so we'll close the usability with the killer app of this Chromebook the 1366 X 768 touchcreen yes it's a TN panel so there's nothing really special about it in terms of colors or viewing angles and touch screens with plastic fronts always feel a little bit janky to me but at this price the plastic front is more solid than some of the ones I felt and it's a miracle that we're getting a touchscreen at all let alone a glass covered one the main stuff like accuracy is fine and I honestly did find myself using it I have a touchscreen Windows 8 notebook and I'd say the experience is probably pretty similar unlike Android and iOS it's not like can do everything with the touchcreen but for stuff like you know um casually scrolling through a list or you know zooming in and out or selecting which app you want with the multitasking button it offers um finer control than touchpad gestures and it's faster than just using the touchpad to point at things so two thumbs up for having that functionality two thumbs up so now let's move into some of the general observations I made about Chrome OS minimize maximize and then dock left and dock right control control could be better you can snap to the sides like in Windows Vista onward but pulling something up to the top doesn't automatically maximize the window and when a window is maximized you have to actually click the little button in the top right corner in order to un maximize it you can't just grab it and then drag it around and have it resize itself the folder structure is simplistic to the point of being absolutely infuriating the only file storage on the thing is called downloads I mean seriously I get you want me to use the included 100 gigs of Google drive storage that I have for 2 years and get hooked so I can start paying but if unlike iOS I'm going to actually have storage that's local and you're going to let me make my own folder structure and stuff within it you might as well at least let me change the name not everything is a download um apps in the store don't filter according to what is compatible so that was a little bit frustrating I mean a great example would be the IE tab app that gives you better compatibility with some websites on Windows so you can have an ie tab within Chrome is only available on Windows where IE is separately installed but it still shows up in the store even when you're searching for it on here I mean most people will know for that one but this is just a general problem um speaking of compatibility playing back video files is pretty hit or miss not much can be done to update codec support other than just wait for Google I mean what you could do I guess if I was going to give you a solution Google might like is just upload the files to YouTube then watch them on the Chromebook from there but that that's not a great solution sometimes it's nice to play Things locally like if you're on a plane uh multiple instances of the same application pop up in a list down at the bottom when you hover over them just like in Windows 7 I don't think the implementation is that great though for example the integrated video player nests with your file explorer equivalent so that's not that intuitive to me um Google Hangouts on the other hand this is the best implementation I've seen of Google Hangouts the conversations uh spread out from the right across the taskbar and it's like it's all like it doesn't feel like it's just like bolted to your browser you don't have to use a third party app video calls are super seamless and uh I love I love Hangouts on this device I need an app like that work that works exactly this way on Windows um video calls speaking of Hangouts are also seamless and I guess this is a good time to comment on the video chat experience I was just randomly listening to some music on the unit getting getting a feel for it and I was blown away by how loud and clear it gets for what is a very inexpensive notebook then I figured it out this is a communication device Acer went balls to the wall on the microphone and speakers because video hangouts is going to be a huge selling point for a device like this uh the webcam is actually decent as well so here's a sample clip of me just sitting in front of it so my intention is to use this video clip to give you guys some idea of what a voice chat from this Chromebook would look like and sound like so overall the experience of the Chromebook was surprisingly good I wasn't expecting it to be this good but it would really take some workflow changes to make a Chromebook seamless for me and the biggest issue would be when I'm without internet and Google knows this I mean they want you online in the tutorial the work offline tutorial bit is at the very end and includes the words got to kick out of this for the rare times when you are disconnected from the internet here are some offline ready apps for the rare times right okay I guess I never leave the house um the list includes offline Gmail Google Docs and calendar as well as some cool thirdparty ones and that's fine but there's plenty of basic stuff that just doesn't work offline I disconnected temporarily on purpose to diagnose something and The Help menu just started behaving strangely like clicking on things just didn't really do anything it didn't say hey you're offline we can't bring anything up it just didn't do anything and it took me a while to figure out that I was offline and it's a live document I mean there's something to be said for live documents that are constantly updated but there's also something to be said for locally stored ones that update periodically because then you can get at them if you're having a problem and you actually need the help I mean neither solution is perfect but the biggest challenge for me wasn't what's the experience but rather where does this device fit into my digital life it's not a replacement for your desktop or your notebook so what is it I don't know like is it a tablet with a low price and a keyboard or is it a Netbook with solid battery life a usable screen size and an OS that doesn't drag it down like a boat anchor maybe it's both and as crazy as this might sound while I won't junk my tablet if I'm a very on the Move person I would probably go c720p over something like a Microsoft Surface if productivity is a priority for me they're both kind of immature platforms but at least if I'm going to bet on this one it's only a $300 investment in a device that might not be cutting edge but does what it says it's going to do and in a competent matter and Google has Chrome's ever growing market share to continue to drive innovation in the Chrome app and extension developer Community Windows RT and Windows 8 Touch we'll see I forgot to do an outro guys like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment under the video let us know you thought about it I do read the comments at least I do my best to most of the time if you liked the video and just pressing the like button wasn't enough for you you can also support us if you check out the support link you can buy T-shirts and give us a monthly contribution to help us make great videos for you and you can even there's another thing that I completely forget right now that I always mention in the Contra all right you can change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code so we get a small Kickback whenever you buy random Jung thank you for watching guys and as always don't forget to subscribe for more more unboxings reviews and other computer videos that hopefully never end as awkwardly as this one did ever againwith its Factory tuning and data center DNA an Intel 730 series SSD is an amazing choice for gamers and performance enthusiasts now I've never reviewed a Chromebook for a couple of reasons number one is that no one ever offered me a sample and number two was that I didn't care about them enough to even bother to ask for one well Acer managed to address Point number one for me by offering to send over their P 720p touchscreen Chromebook and while I still didn't really care the spec on this $300 device surprised me it's got a 1.7 GHz dual core haswell-based processor and 4 gigs of DDR3 RAM on top of that I guess I kind of owed them one for being super late on returning some other samples so I was like sure what the hey I'll check it out now this won't be a review per se since I don't have any other Chromebooks to compare with so it'll be more of a disjointed of my thoughts as I fumbled my way through Chrome OS for the first time with some specific comments about this exact model but mostly focus on the general stuff so first up the build quality of this unit is better than I expected it's quite solid but very plasticky and not nearly as sexy and slim as Acer's premium offerings booting up is lightning fast the 16 gigs of solid state storage takes care of that and the setup process only takes a couple of minutes if you already have a Google account I'd say it's even faster than Android it logs you into your junk Imports your profile picture and all that which is great and yes I know Windows has similar functionality if you use Sky Drive and Hotmail I mean uh Outlook but who does so that's great speaking of Windows though some stuff feels a touch borrowed there's a status tray down here instead of the system tray there's a handy Chrome apps launcher in place of the traditional start menu um I wish the launch could be moved back and forth on the taskbar like it can on Windows but it's stuck in the traditional start menu spot um but other than that it's pretty familiar to use the launcher contains all of your apps but not your extensions the distinction between which is a little confusing to the user because the list of extensions in the browser contains both and the search within the launcher at the top actually finds everything too but a really cool thing about the search is that it finds stuff that you've installed both both apps and extensions and it also finds available stuff and suggests Things based on what's available in the store but that you don't have yet all right so navigation time let's start with the mouse double click and drag like tap tap tap hold drag is not available and the touchpad is generally not super configurable some gestures are supported like swiping back and swiping forth in a browser but really not much I mean that didn't bother me that much but the absence of a hardware rightclick is a big problem for me I use it for everything from uh you know right click copy rightclick paste to correcting spelling errors within emails and a two-finger soft touch is just not as fast as being able to use two hands to operate the touchpad at the same time so left hand for tracking right hand for right and left click and that's pretty ridiculous to me for the keyboard This Arrow key layout is a pet peeve of mine but the keyboard is otherwise actually a very strong point of this notebook it ain't satisfying to type on and it sounds really thin and kind of crappy but I'm really fast and accurate on it even though I can't quite put my finger on why get it put my finger on it because it's a keyboard I put all my finger anyway I'm sorry uh anyway the F keys are gone and that weirded me out a little bit but if they don't have any functionality in chrom OS Beyond being media keys and shortcuts then good riddance to the function mod modifier I suppose um immersive mode and overview mode are both quite cool and allow you to basically Go full screen or um expose style have everything sort of pop up on the screen and allow you to select it something that I ended up using the touchcreen for a fair bit and there's a couple other interesting things that are gone so uh caps lock the scourge of the internet is gone replaced by a dedicated search key but don't worry you can rebind search and not only that but control and ALT to other stuff if you want so you can bring back caps lock if it's really important to you and finally there is no delete key but you can use alt backspace if you want I would have personally preferred a hardware delete key instead of power up here um and then like a non-keyboard based power button but I guess there's always trade-offs and no one's going to be happy with everything so we'll close the usability with the killer app of this Chromebook the 1366 X 768 touchcreen yes it's a TN panel so there's nothing really special about it in terms of colors or viewing angles and touch screens with plastic fronts always feel a little bit janky to me but at this price the plastic front is more solid than some of the ones I felt and it's a miracle that we're getting a touchscreen at all let alone a glass covered one the main stuff like accuracy is fine and I honestly did find myself using it I have a touchscreen Windows 8 notebook and I'd say the experience is probably pretty similar unlike Android and iOS it's not like can do everything with the touchcreen but for stuff like you know um casually scrolling through a list or you know zooming in and out or selecting which app you want with the multitasking button it offers um finer control than touchpad gestures and it's faster than just using the touchpad to point at things so two thumbs up for having that functionality two thumbs up so now let's move into some of the general observations I made about Chrome OS minimize maximize and then dock left and dock right control control could be better you can snap to the sides like in Windows Vista onward but pulling something up to the top doesn't automatically maximize the window and when a window is maximized you have to actually click the little button in the top right corner in order to un maximize it you can't just grab it and then drag it around and have it resize itself the folder structure is simplistic to the point of being absolutely infuriating the only file storage on the thing is called downloads I mean seriously I get you want me to use the included 100 gigs of Google drive storage that I have for 2 years and get hooked so I can start paying but if unlike iOS I'm going to actually have storage that's local and you're going to let me make my own folder structure and stuff within it you might as well at least let me change the name not everything is a download um apps in the store don't filter according to what is compatible so that was a little bit frustrating I mean a great example would be the IE tab app that gives you better compatibility with some websites on Windows so you can have an ie tab within Chrome is only available on Windows where IE is separately installed but it still shows up in the store even when you're searching for it on here I mean most people will know for that one but this is just a general problem um speaking of compatibility playing back video files is pretty hit or miss not much can be done to update codec support other than just wait for Google I mean what you could do I guess if I was going to give you a solution Google might like is just upload the files to YouTube then watch them on the Chromebook from there but that that's not a great solution sometimes it's nice to play Things locally like if you're on a plane uh multiple instances of the same application pop up in a list down at the bottom when you hover over them just like in Windows 7 I don't think the implementation is that great though for example the integrated video player nests with your file explorer equivalent so that's not that intuitive to me um Google Hangouts on the other hand this is the best implementation I've seen of Google Hangouts the conversations uh spread out from the right across the taskbar and it's like it's all like it doesn't feel like it's just like bolted to your browser you don't have to use a third party app video calls are super seamless and uh I love I love Hangouts on this device I need an app like that work that works exactly this way on Windows um video calls speaking of Hangouts are also seamless and I guess this is a good time to comment on the video chat experience I was just randomly listening to some music on the unit getting getting a feel for it and I was blown away by how loud and clear it gets for what is a very inexpensive notebook then I figured it out this is a communication device Acer went balls to the wall on the microphone and speakers because video hangouts is going to be a huge selling point for a device like this uh the webcam is actually decent as well so here's a sample clip of me just sitting in front of it so my intention is to use this video clip to give you guys some idea of what a voice chat from this Chromebook would look like and sound like so overall the experience of the Chromebook was surprisingly good I wasn't expecting it to be this good but it would really take some workflow changes to make a Chromebook seamless for me and the biggest issue would be when I'm without internet and Google knows this I mean they want you online in the tutorial the work offline tutorial bit is at the very end and includes the words got to kick out of this for the rare times when you are disconnected from the internet here are some offline ready apps for the rare times right okay I guess I never leave the house um the list includes offline Gmail Google Docs and calendar as well as some cool thirdparty ones and that's fine but there's plenty of basic stuff that just doesn't work offline I disconnected temporarily on purpose to diagnose something and The Help menu just started behaving strangely like clicking on things just didn't really do anything it didn't say hey you're offline we can't bring anything up it just didn't do anything and it took me a while to figure out that I was offline and it's a live document I mean there's something to be said for live documents that are constantly updated but there's also something to be said for locally stored ones that update periodically because then you can get at them if you're having a problem and you actually need the help I mean neither solution is perfect but the biggest challenge for me wasn't what's the experience but rather where does this device fit into my digital life it's not a replacement for your desktop or your notebook so what is it I don't know like is it a tablet with a low price and a keyboard or is it a Netbook with solid battery life a usable screen size and an OS that doesn't drag it down like a boat anchor maybe it's both and as crazy as this might sound while I won't junk my tablet if I'm a very on the Move person I would probably go c720p over something like a Microsoft Surface if productivity is a priority for me they're both kind of immature platforms but at least if I'm going to bet on this one it's only a $300 investment in a device that might not be cutting edge but does what it says it's going to do and in a competent matter and Google has Chrome's ever growing market share to continue to drive innovation in the Chrome app and extension developer Community Windows RT and Windows 8 Touch we'll see I forgot to do an outro guys like this video if you liked it dislike it if you disliked it leave a comment under the video let us know you thought about it I do read the comments at least I do my best to most of the time if you liked the video and just pressing the like button wasn't enough for you you can also support us if you check out the support link you can buy T-shirts and give us a monthly contribution to help us make great videos for you and you can even there's another thing that I completely forget right now that I always mention in the Contra all right you can change your Amazon bookmark to one with our affiliate code so we get a small Kickback whenever you buy random Jung thank you for watching guys and as always don't forget to subscribe for more more unboxings reviews and other computer videos that hopefully never end as awkwardly as this one did ever again\n"