The phrase “big Chrome” no longer refers to the 1957 Chevy BelAir. It seems surprising, since Chromebooks have been around for a decade, but the Acer Chromebook 317 ($369.99) is the first Chrome OS laptop with a 17.3-inch screen. It’s an economy model, with a humble Intel Celeron CPU and eMMC flash storage instead of a solid-state drive, but the 317 is a suitable choice for consumers seeking big-screen video viewing or a movable, if not overly portable, alternative to an inexpensive all-in-one PC as a family-room browser kiosk and homework station.
That’s a Lot of Plastic
The Chromebook 317 (model CB317-1H-C994) lists for $369.99 on Acer.com, though I spotted it at Walmart for $329. It has a dual-core, 1.1GHz Celeron N4500 processor, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of eMMC storage, along with four USB 3.2 ports, a microSD card slot, and Wi-Fi 6. The non-touch screen offers full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) resolution. Don’t look for luxuries like a backlit keyboard or a fingerprint reader.
Measuring 0.89 by 15.8 by 10.5 inches and weighing 5.18 pounds, the Acer is the heftiest Chromebook you can buy, though trimmer than some low-cost 17.3-inch Windows laptops like the Dell Inspiron 17 3000 (0.98 by 16.4 by 11 inches, 6.2 pounds). It’s clad in grayish plastic that Acer calls Sparkly Silver; there’s a fair amount of flex if you grasp the screen corners or press the keyboard deck.
The wide chassis leaves plenty of room for a standard Chromebook keyboard, a numeric keypad to the right of it, and upward-firing speakers on either side. There’s a big palm rest and buttonless touchpad. The screen bezels are medium-thick, with a 720p webcam (no privacy shutter) centered in the top bezel.
Both the left and right edges hold two USB 3.2 ports, one Type-A and one Type-C, with the latter accommodating the AC adapter. The left side also provides an audio jack and a microSD card slot, while the right has a security lock slot. There is no HDMI port, so if you want to connect an external monitor you’ll need a USB-C DisplayPort adapter.
Taking Care of Business
The webcam is a generic laptop component that captures relatively well-lit and colorful images with rather a lot of static or noise. You’ll look sharp in a small Camera window but extremely fuzzy if you maximize the Camera or Duo app. Sound from the speakers bracketing the keyboard, meanwhile, doesn’t get very loud. It’s flat and tinny with no bass (drumbeats sound like static), and you can barely make out overlapping tracks.
The keyboard has a shallow, tappy typing feel. I wish it were backlit, but I was pleased to find real Home, End, Page Up, and Page Down keys above the numeric keypad. They are tiny but still more convenient than teaming the menu and Alt keys with the cursor arrows as required on most Chromebooks. The touchpad glides and taps smoothly, with a muted click.
Something else I wished for was a brighter screen backlight. The display looked dim even at its brightest setting, and in order to make white backgrounds look really white, I found myself having to tilt the display back until the heavy system almost tipped over in my lap. Colors are satisfactorily saturated but not vivid, though details are sharp and viewing angles are wide. The panel defaults to its native 1,920-by-1,080 resolution, though the Settings > Device menu lets nearsighted users choose a “looks like” or scaled resolution as low as 960 by 540 to see larger icons and screen elements.
Acer backs the 317 with a one-year warranty and sweetens it with the usual Chromebook perks, including one year of 100GB Google One cloud storage and three-month YouTube Premium, Canva Pro, and SoundCloud Go+ trials. If you haven’t used Chrome OS lately, the latest upgrade offers impressive Android smartphone control, a smarter Clipboard (it saves the last five items), and enhanced screen-capture and multiple-desktop tools.
Performance Testing: A Chromebook Variety Pack
A Celeron CPU, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of flash storage would cramp Windows 10’s style, but it is sufficient for reasonably perky Chromebook performance. Even so, this Acer isn’t meant for much more than casual web browsing, Gmail, and Google Docs productivity. Opening half a dozen browser tabs didn’t faze it, but multiple video windows or Android games bogged down.
For our benchmark-test comparison charts, I stacked up the 317 against four other Chromebooks, including a 15.6-inch convertible (the AMD Ryzen 5-powered Asus Chromebook Flip CM5), and two 15.6-inch clamshells (the Intel Core i3-based HP Chromebook 15, and the Celeron N4000-powered Samsung Chromebook 4+).
The last slot went to our current consumer Editors’ Choice award holder, the 13.5-inch Acer Chromebook Spin 713, a Core i5 convertible that’s the most expensive in the group ($629). The Acer Chromebook 317 is the lowest-priced of this bunch, apart from the Samsung.
The first objective benchmarks we use are Principled Technologies’ CrXPRT 2 (a suite of simulated Chrome OS productivity apps) and WebXPRT 3 (a browser-based test of HTML and JavaScript throughput). The HP model predates CrXPRT 2, so it doesn’t appear in that chart. (See more about how we test laptops.)
The Acer Chromebook 317 easily topped the Samsung and its older CPU in the battle of the Celerons, but both placed well behind the Ryzen 5-based Asus and the Core i5-based Acer Chromebook Spin 713.
JetStream 2 is another performance test we use; it combines 64 JavaScript and WebAssembly benchmarks to measure a browser’s (in this case, the default Chrome’s) suitability for advanced web applications.
History repeated itself. The Celeron Chromebooks are certainly capable of handling everyday tasks—they won’t exactly keep you waiting—but apps and windows don’t snap and flow as they do on machines with faster processors and more memory.
Finally, to test a laptop’s battery life, we loop a 720p video file with screen brightness set at 50%, audio volume at 100%, and Wi-Fi disabled until the system quits. If the Chromebook’s internal storage isn’t big enough to hold the video, we play it from an external SSD plugged into a USB-C port.
The Acer 317 managed to snatch the silver medal in this event, showing enough stamina to get you through a full day of work or school, if perhaps not going on to an evening of streaming entertainment or casual gaming.
Your Only Choice Is a Pretty Good Choice
It’s hard to be critical of a laptop that has no competition—if you’d like a 17-inch Chromebook, your options begin and end here. The “3” is as significant as the “17” in the Acer Chromebook 317’s model number, telling you that you’re getting a modestly equipped, entry-level system rather than one of the fancier, faster machines in Acer’s Chromebook 500 or 700 series. But it also means you’re not paying very much. The Chromebook 317 isn’t a stunner, but it should satisfy many consumers.
