Review on 💻 Acer Aspire 1 A114-32-C1YA: 14-inch Full HD Laptop with Intel Celeron N4000, 4GB DDR4, 64GB eMMC, Office 365 Personal, Windows 10 Home in S mode by Kevin Pirlet

This laptop is a great purchase that strikes the perfect balance between cheap and too cheap. You're clearly not going to be playing graphics-intensive games. It's not for that. If you're looking for a reliable web/email/office laptop that's lightweight, has decent battery life, is amazingly fast, and is cheap, then this is the one for you. I personally use my laptop for programming classes and meetings. It launches Visual Studio Code with a dozen Chrome pages and LibreOffice opens with no issues. If you want to watch YouTube or Netflix, that's fine too. I never noticed any video lag or stuttering. Most applications open in about 5-7 seconds. Chrome usually opens in less than 5 seconds. I also ran Linux (Ubuntu 18) in dual boot. The only problem I had with Linux is that you have to set the touchpad to basic mode in the BIOS before using Linux as it doesn't support the touchpad in enhanced mode. Advanced mode allows the touchpad to use advanced gestures such as B. Pinch and swipe with three fingers. To be honest I don't really miss this on Linux as I don't normally use these gestures on Windows. As many have mentioned, the biggest downside of this laptop is the screen quality and the amount of storage. If 64GB is not enough for you, this problem can easily be solved with an external SD card, USB drive or cloud storage. One problem with the SD card reader is that the SD card sticks out about 5/8 inch. This means you'll probably want to remove it before you put the laptop in your bag. Another option is to purchase a micro SD card and a micro SD card trimming adapter. They are used in some MacBook and Raspberry PI models. This would only protrude the card about 1/4 inch, which would be a better permanent space solution. I haven't personally done it, but I've read that it works. As for the screen, there's not much you can do there. Obviously this is the area where Acer decided to save the most and I can't say it was a bad decision. Since graphics aren't a big deal on this machine, the screen is sufficient for most tasks. In fact, I only notice it when I try to share the screen with someone close to me. There just aren't enough vantage points for a second person to get the best view. But when I'm diving into programming or surfing the web, I don't notice the screen that much. This laptop comes with Windows 10 Home S. The "S" means it runs in what Microsoft calls "S mode". " S mode simply means that you can only use Microsoft-approved apps from the Microsoft Store. To run third-party apps like Chrome or LibreOffice, you need to disable S mode. This is a permanent change. Once you You can't go back to S mode, although I don't suspect most people will care after getting the regular version of Windows 10 Home for free It's a quick and easy switch and I think most people would be better off If you want Windows 10 Pro, you'll need to purchase an upgrade from the Microsoft Store, which costs $99 at the time of writing this review (November 9, Nov 18).