Acer Chromebook Plus 516 (2025)

Introduction

The Acer Chromebook Plus 516 (2025) takes the fundamentals of one of the brand’s best budget laptops, and adds a couple of inches to the screen size.

That’s honestly the key difference between this 516 model and the Chromebook Plus 514 (2025), because why change what works? We’ve got the same zippy six-core Intel Core 3 100U processor with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of UFS storage. 

You also get the same competent port selection, good endurance and decent software to boot. Even the general composition of the display is the same – a 1920×1200 60Hz IPS screen for productivity work – but just bumped up to 16 inches for more screen real estate.

The bump up in screen size has only pushed the price up a smidgen to £399.99/$479, putting it closer to or above key rivals such as the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34.

Whether this big-screen Acer Chromebook is worth your time, is a different matter. I’ve been testing it for the last couple of weeks to find out.

Design and Keyboard

• More generic looks
• Solid ports
• Pleasant keyboard and trackpad

The Chromebook Plus 516 (2025) feels, to no one’s surprise, like a super-sized version of the 14-inch model, with a generally larger footprint owing to the larger screen size. It looks similar too, with a purposeful grey chassis that has a pleasant texture to it, although it is a tad more generic in its approach than previous models.

At 1.7kg, this is a heavier laptop, even for its 16-inch screen size, and means it can be a little unwieldy to carry against the smaller form factor 14-inch model. It is still quite slim, which is a pleasant touch.

In spite of this being the larger model, Acer hasn’t decided to give it any more ports, although it is still slender enough not to stick out too much in a bag. It’s still a good set of inputs. The left has a pair of USB-Cs, one of which is used for charging, plus a USB-A and a headphone jack, while the right has a further USB-A and an HDMI port.

Being a bigger shell has the benefit of giving the Chromebook Plus 516 (2025) a larger layout keyboard, adding more navigation keys and a number pad to proceedings for even more functionality. The actual key action is positive, with good tactility paired with decent travel. As with the 14-inch model, I enjoyed using the keyboard for writing up lots of words over the course of a couple of weeks.

The trackpad is also of a good size and provides your fingers with a good amount of real estate. It’s slick, accurate and responsive in use, too.

Display and Sound

• Larger screen for more real estate
• Decent resolution and brightness
• Speakers are just okay

As its name suggests, this Acer Chromebook has a larger screen, which is what sets it apart from other models out there. It’s a 16-inch option for more screen real estate, plus a reasonable 1920×1200 resolution for decent detail and a standard-issue 60Hz refresh rate.

The screen itself feels quite punchy and sharp, especially at peak brightness, although it can be quite reflective in some instances. Contrast and black levels seem pretty good to my eye, giving it some depth, too.

With this in mind, we have seen some other excellent big-screen options dazzle with an OLED panel, such as the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus, which provides better depth, clarity, and dynamic range.

When it comes to the speakers on the Chromebook Plus 516 (2025), these are in line with a lot of its contemporaries, producing a thin and tinny sound not suitable for anything beyond casual listening.

Performance

• Core 3 100U provides zippy performance
• Snappy and slick in real-world use
• Meagre RAM and storage config

The Chromebook Plus 516 (2025) I have here is also unchanged against its little brother with regards to its processor, with my sample coming with Intel’s Core 3 100U chip inside.

This provides it with six cores (split unevenly between two Performance Cores and four Efficiency Cores) and eight threads, plus a boost clock of up to 4.7GHz, which gives good performance in the Geekbench 6 test with solid single and multi-core scores.

In general use, I found the device to feel zippy, and it didn’t experience any real slowdowns even when I had a lot of tabs open, such as Google Docs, Slack, Spotify and Gmail. Streaming video over Plex or YouTube also wasn’t a problem.

This sample is limited to 8GB of RAM, which is fine for the productivity workloads and web browsing that you’re likely to be using this Chromebook for. 16GB would have been nice for a bit more headroom, especially as it’s become the de facto standard for most other laptops up and down the price ladder.

Likewise, the 128GB of storage is ok, considering a lot of your work is likely to be in the cloud on Google Docs, Sheets or elsewhere, but just beware that it’s slower UFS storage against the more normal NVMe storage found in other laptops. I didn’t have any issues with loading times for the benchmark software installed, or Chrome, but you might want to be mindful if you’re running any real intensive apps.

Software

• ChromeOS remains a lightweight OS
• Lots of software trickery being a Chromebook Plus model

As its name gives away, the Chromebook Plus 516 (2025) runs Google’s ChromeOS – the slick, lightweight OS that this category of laptop has been running for a long time now. There’s no bloatware to speak of, but you get convenient access to Google’s G-Suite of productivity apps by default, for instance.

What we’ve got here that is different, though, is that this Acer option is a Chromebook Plus model. This was a classification that Google introduced a couple of years ago for devices that could perform these tasks if they were equal to or above certain hardware requirements. 

For instance, they should have at least a 12th-gen Intel Core i3 or AMD Ryzen 3 7000 chip inside, as well as 8GB and 128GB of storage, Full HD IPS (or above) screen and a 1080p webcam.

Essentially, it means the Chromebook Plus 516 (2025) benefits from a range of quality-of-life features that come with each big update to the OS. For instance, the most recent one has added convenient features such as using facial movements instead of the mouse and keyboard, such as lifting your eyebrows to click or moving the cursor with your eyes. You can also use the Help Me Read feature to allow Google’s Gemini AI to help summarise the main points from any articles or documents you read.

We’re also getting Google’s new Quick Insert key, where the Caps Lock is, which opens a Spotlight Search style menu which can be used for everything from inserting a link to generating an image using AI as a convenient addition.

You get other handy AI features such as Magic Eraser, Google’s clever Photo editing trickery that could previously be found on Pixel and later on other Android phones. This automatically erases unwanted things from photos, working the same way on both devices. You select an image, and it recognises potentially unwanted items to remove by placing a white and grey outline around it. To remove it, you press done.

It’s very clever and works well, even on images where you need nothing removed. For instance, in a photo I took when I went to Scotland a few weeks ago, there were some unwanted people in the corner obstructing the view of the beach. I selected those people to be removed, and sure enough, the AI did a solid job of getting rid of them.

Other features that the Chromebook Plus software update has brought with it are more focused on a Chromebook being a useful device for productivity workloads including working with G-Suite apps and Google Meet. For instance, it offers Offline File Sync, which backs up files usually saved in the cloud to be saved on the device’s internal drive. This is hidden away in the settings menu a little, but is nonetheless useful for saving documents offline if you don’t have constant internet access.

In addition, the Chromebook Plus devices also benefit from some handy features for video conferencing, such as Live Translate which uses AI to translate any captions into a different language. It also works for YouTube videos, too. Google Meet also comes with similar convenient features as the Windows Studio effects on Copilot+ PCs, such as auto framing and rebalancing uneven lighting.

Battery Life

• Lasted for 11 hours 29 minutes in the battery test
• Capable of lasting for nearly two working days

In spite of the larger screen, the Chromebook Plus 516 (2025) has the same 53Whr battery as the smaller 14-inch model. Given the bump up in screen size, I was expecting a slight reduction against the 12 hours that managed to last.

And my expectations were met, if not exceeded. This Acer Chromebook managed to last for 11 and a half hours on a charge on a battery test with the brightness set to halfway and a 1080p video running. That’s some good endurance, and means you’ll be able to get through nearly two working days before needing to plug this laptop back in.

The Chromebook Plus 516 (2025) also benefits from the same small 65W USB-C charging brick as its little brother, providing reasonably brisk charging speeds. Getting back to 50 percent took 30 minutes, while a full charge took 82.

Should you buy it?

FAQs