Acer Googlebook 14 review: The first wave in a revolution

So, the age of the Googlebook begins. It's been a hugely busy period in the tech world, and Google isn't making things any easier by debuting what it seems to think is the future of the laptop – a new OS hybridising the desktop experience with Android.

There are five launch Googlebook models – I tried them all out ahead of launch schedules to identify the best – and while I'll fully test and rate each of them individually (all in good time), Acer was quickest with a loan unit for this very review.

That means I've spent a little over a week using the Acer Googlebook 14, trying to get a grip on what this slick machine is like if you make it your main laptop.

To be clear, though: while I will obviously discuss the nature of Googlebook OS as it pertains to the laptop's performance, this isn't a review of the operating system – I'm seeing how Acer's laptop holds up to scrutiny, rather than Google's big new idea.

Price and Availability

The Googlebook rollout has been pretty sudden, so you should find that the Acer Googlebook 14 is available now, depending on your region. Here in the UK, the laptop starts at £999, while the US market gets it for $899, and Europe sees it from €1,199.

This does mean that, once again in 2026, the US is by far the best place to be shopping for the laptop – if you actually convert $899 to GBP right now, it comes out to about £680 at the time of writing.

Design and Features

The Acer Googlebook 14 is a lovely exemplification of what Google wants its Googlebook lineup to feel like in the hand. It made a point of this when I was briefed for T3 about these laptops: to talk about them in premium terms, not just in pricing, but in build quality and features, too – and that's how this model feels.

Acer is the only one of the launch makers to offer a two-in-one design, despite the fact that every single Googlebook has to have a touchscreen to pass Google's requirements and earn the label. This means that, in some ways, it makes the most sense out of the launch options, and being the more affordable of the lot further helps on that front.

First in the list of factors that make the laptop feel premium is the fact it has a metallic body, cool to the touch and with a matte finish – that somehow still manages to pick up skin oils like nobody's business. It's impressively lightweight despite this, though, and features a nice robust hinge that's easy to open to whatever extent you like.

The outside case features the all-important (but not very key) Glow Bar – in this case off in one corner, rather than front and centre. It's Google's way of denoting a Googlebook at a glance, but is fairly free of functional use, beyond when you're charging, where it shows your progress in bar form. It doesn't detract from anything, but isn't much more than a little design note.

Once open, the laptop reveals a nice, large keyboard with an equally generous touchpad (another Google non-negotiable is apparently haptics here, but this one seems mechanical), and its large, very bright OLED display – which is a highlight of the build.

The I/O situation is where we hit our first stumble, in my view – one side of the laptop has a Thunderbolt 4 USB-C port and a 3.5mm jack, while the other has two further 3.2 USB-C ports. I think there should be more.

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These choices do ensure that you don't need another proprietary charger clogging up your life, but it's disappointing that Google wants these laptops to be productivity monsters, yet leaves them all but guaranteed to require a dongle for most professional uses, be it for HDMI connections, SD cards or more.

Still, in terms of specs, it's back to rosier territory. The Acer Chromebook 14 can be picked up with either an Intel Core Ultra 5 325 or a Core Ultra 7 355, and while I tested the more powerful of the two, both are extremely capable. This is shored up by being paired with 16GB or 32GBof RAM, the minimum again being one that Google has mandated to make the Googlebook cut.

You also get a 512GB SSD, which makes this laptop look pretty well-equipped to handle the sort of Chrome and Chromium-heavy tasks you're likely to be doing on it. That brings us to the operating system, which is all-new and much shinier than ChromeOS. It's pretty easy to see how it'll end up being miles better, although right now it's a little rough in places.

While the AI integration is slick – and easy to access in a few different ways, as the laptop's setup guide explains – ensuring that Gemini is indeed at your fingertips at all times, there are still huge limitations here. Principally, while you can install almost literally any Android app under the sun and use it natively, that still leaves big gaps.

While the Android versions of some 'big' apps are clearly going to get more love to cater to this new OS, it still means that sometimes you'll only have access to a mobile-flavoured version of an app. In a world where Mac and Windows users both have access to a far wider range of programmes, it'll take time (and a lot of investment) for Google to catch up in this area.

That's acceptable in the world of affordable Chromebooks, but it's harder to swallow in a Googlebook that costs a grand or more depending on spec. Adobe always seems front and centre in these discussions, and Photoshop is a great example (because I use it multiple times a day); put bluntly, its Android app is a pale shadow of the full desktop experience, and that makes the Googlebook feel hamstrung right now.

Still, at least battery life is impressive, eh? Google's quoted figures didn't blow me away (up to 14 hours of streaming video playback at 50% brightness) – but in practice the laptop never let me down in getting through a whole day.

Performance and Display

If the drawbacks of Googlebook OS mean that there are plenty of hiccups to get past while trying to work on the machine, there's more good news in the form of how its actual performance bears out.

Intel's new chips are workhorses, in my experience, and that's been proven again by the Acer Googlebook 14, which basically never chugged when I threw jobs at it. Given the scope of Chrome's RAM guzzling, a multitude of tabs is the starting point there, but multitasking was always really sprightly and zippy.

Some of the hardware varied a little, though. The webcam in place here is decent but not to the level I hoped for, and the fingerprint reader (another Google requisite) was quite slow, and took an age to set up in the first instance.

The best of the Googlebook experience comes when you have an Android phone connected to it, though. This lets you sort of pair the machines, then access your phone (and its storage) as if it were just an extension of your laptop.

It's a seriously slick feature that feels great when you need it, and is an example of Google doing something better than Apple (which may doubtless now move to one-up it on macOS). This only works with Android 17, though, which may be quite a limitation for some users.

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The display that I mentioned when discussing the laptop's design is also really quite terrific. With a 120Hz refresh rate and HDR accounted for, and running at a resolution of 2880×1800, this OLED is a real looker (and a toucher, too). It's great for media viewing of all descriptions (even if gaming is limited by the OS, another sore point), and also works nicely as a touch interface.

The speakers included here are nothing more than decent, but that's a fair enough result in any type of laptop at this point, and I had no complaints about them.

Still, this all means that performance basically lives up to exactly what I expected from a new-gen Intel chip with 16GB of RAM to call on, plus a great screen to stare at. The more lasting question is really whether the software this machine is running will make sense for you.

Verdict

The first Googlebook I've been given the chance to actually live with has left me thinking just what I suspected I would after seeing the whole initial lineup earlier this year: Acer has built a really slick 2-in-1 that feels great to use, provided you're happy to stick to Chrome and some Android tabs.

If you need to go a little deeper, or your workflow relies on some particularly customised or powerful desktop apps, then it's almost certainly not going to be smart to try to move into this laptop anytime soon. It needs robust software support from not just Google but third-party app developers to adapt apps to its screen size and power, and there's no real telling how and when that might come in a given app's case.

Acer has little to do with that, of course, and I'll finish with the same clarification that I used to open this review – this isn't a review of Googlebook OS. Taken on its own merits, the Acer Googlebook 14 seems like a great introduction to Google's laptop future, but it's not quite value-driven enough to win me straight over to the new wave.

Also consider

Until I've tested more of the forthcoming Googlebooks, I can't really point you at others in the launch lineup confidently, although I'll be putting Asus' laptop through its paces very soon.

Instead, I'd say the smart money is on similar-cost laptops from the world of Windows and Mac. So, for the latter, the M5 MacBook Air is an obviously superb choice that basically demonstrates everything good about Apple's laptop decisions in recent years.

For Windows, if you have the budget, the XPS 13 might suit. It's pricey, sure, but cheaper than this Acer and is impressively tiny. While it's a tad underpowered, at least you're dealing with Windows and all the freedom that comes with it.