I’m writing on a MacBook Air, with an iPhone face down beside the trackpad. Nobody at Google pictured me as a Googlebook buyer. Continue On and Cast My Apps both want an Android 17 phone, and mine will never qualify.
Related: Googlebook vs Chromebook: Is Google about to replace Chromebooks?
Oddly, I’m glad. With the phone tricks off the table, I get to judge the Acer Googlebook 14 vs. ASUS Googlebook 14 on hardware alone.
Both run Googlebook OS on Intel Core Ultra Series 3 chips. Both panels share a resolution. From there, Acer and ASUS pulled hard in opposite directions.
Acer’s pitch is a hinge that folds flat behind the keyboard and a screen you can scribble on with a pen. ASUS promises a laptop starting at 0.99 kg, with enough sockets along its edges to make plenty of desktops look underdressed. Being stuck between them is reasonable. I’d be stuck too, for about a day.
Do you care about drawing or folding the display flat to read in bed? Get the Acer Chromebook 14. Otherwise, buy the ASUS Chromebook 14—it’s lighter in a bag, and the full-sized HDMI port means you won’t need to hunt for a dongle every now and then.
At first glance, the panels are twins. Both are 14-inch OLED touch screens at 2880 x 1800 and 120 Hz. The coating is where they split, and I care about the coating more than about any figure in either press release.
ASUS put Corning Gorilla Glass Victus on top with Gorilla Matte anti-glare treatment, and matte OLED is rare enough that I’d call it the headline feature. Acer’s store listing labels its panel CineCrystal (Glare). I appreciate the honesty in that parenthesis.
Glossy OLED in a dark bedroom is gorgeous. Acer backs its panel with 100% DCI-P3 coverage and VESA DisplayHDR True Black certification, and I believe every inky pixel of it. Put the same laptop on a train at noon, and I’d spend the ride staring at my own forehead.
Calling the ASUS twice as bright would be lazy math on my part. Its 1,000 nits is an HDR peak. Acer’s 500 is a plain rating.
For anyone who works with daylight behind them, the ASUS Googlebook 14 has the better screen.
My colleagues already tease me about my foldable phone obsession. A screen that swings all the way back was always going to catch my eye.
Acer calls its model the industry’s first convertible Googlebook, and in this launch lineup it’s the only one. The hinges are rated for 20,000 open-and-close cycles.
The touch screen accepts USI 2.0 pens (sold separately), and Googlebook OS runs millions of Android apps designed for fingers. Tablet mode finally has software that expects a hand on the glass. At 1.14 kg, it’s a heavy tablet. I wouldn’t hold it one-handed through a whole comic book.
Pen work and tent-mode recipe videos point one way, to the Acer Googlebook 14. The ASUS lid only opens as far as a normal laptop lid.
The ASUS Googlebook 14 starts at 0.99 kg and 10.9 mm. Acer’s convertible comes in at 1.14 kg, about three millimeters thicker. A 150-gram gap sounds petty until the end of a training day, when I know how much a gym bag weighs on one shoulder.
I’m taking the ASUS every single time. It’s lighter, plain and simple, even if you deck it out with extra RAM and gain an extra gram or two. Both can take a beating, but the ASUS gets a grippy ceramic coating that stops keys from scuffing the lid in your bag.
A forum post called the ASUS “the anti-dongle laptop,” and the replies tore into it. I think the mockers picked the wrong fight.
The ASUS Googlebook 14 carries a full-size HDMI 2.1b port. That one socket means a hotel TV or a meeting-room projector needs nothing but the cable already plugged in. Two USB-A ports take a wireless mouse receiver or an old card reader. Two Thunderbolt 4 ports handle charging and DisplayPort 1.4 output on top of that, plus there’s a headphone jack.
Acer went all USB-C. One Thunderbolt 4 port runs at 40 Gbps with up to 100 W, and two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports at 10 Gbps also carry video and power. I’ll give Acer credit for putting sockets on both edges. Café outlets never seem to be on the correct side of the table. For somebody already living on USB-C, three of them is enough.
On ports, the ASUS Googlebook 14 wins by a wide margin, and whoever laughed at its USB-A sockets has clearly never borrowed a conference room for an afternoon.
ASUS promises up to 18 hours from a 70 Wh battery, but I couldn’t find a test method behind that figure.
Acer’s 71 Wh pack is rated for up to 16 hours of web browsing and 14 hours of local video, the same two numbers Google quotes as the baseline for its launch Googlebooks. Acer also claims 50% in 30 minutes on its fast charger. When two companies squeeze near-identical cells into near-identical 14-inch bodies and one of them names its test while the other prints an 18 in large type, I’m going to believe the company that showed its homework, and I’d expect the ASUS, with its brighter panel and six speakers, to finish closer to that lineup baseline than to its own headline once somebody runs a proper rundown.
Need serious memory for Linux? Go with the ASUS. Its 64GB RAM and 1TB storage ceiling dwarfs the Acer’s 32 GB/512 GB limit, giving power users the local storage and RAM needed for demanding local environments.
Google’s built-in Linux container isn’t light on RAM—fire up a local environment next to 30 Chrome tabs, and you’ll hit a wall in no time. The ASUS is the clear pick for developers, but based on forum chatter around the 32 GB Core Ultra 7 model, the maxed-out builds probably won’t ship on day one.
The ASUS is a rigid clamshell that sits flat on a desk. The Acer, by contrast, folds all the way back, letting you hold it like a clipboard or prop it up like a tent to watch video on a tray table.
Acer’s model also suits anyone watching shows in a dim bedroom. There, the glossy OLED and its DCI-P3 color do their best work, and reflections stop mattering. Acer adds touches ASUS never mentioned in its announcement. The 5 MP webcam gets a physical shutter, and the Glowbar on the lid shows charge level while the laptop is closed. I like the fingerprint reader in the power button too.
And the Googlebook 14 costs less, which for plenty of buyers, settles the whole matchup.
The ASUS Googlebook 14 belongs in a commuter’s bag. Picture a window seat on a sunny morning, with the matte glass keeping a spreadsheet legible and less than a kilo resting on your knees.
At the office, HDMI takes the projector and a USB-A port takes whatever ancient mouse receiver IT handed you years ago. ASUS also fitted six speakers (dual force-canceling woofers plus two tweeters) against Acer’s two upward-facing DTS units, and on calls I’d expect the extra drivers to earn their place. The keyboard has 1.5 mm of travel to Acer’s 1.3 mm. My fingers would feel the difference after an hour of typing.
Get the ASUS Googlebook 14. That glare-free screen and the full-sized HDMI port make it the better laptop for 90% of buyers.
Only skip it for the Acer if you actually intend to sketch or read in tablet mode every week. Otherwise, stick with the entry-level ASUS—spending extra to jump to 64 GB of RAM is complete overkill if all you’re doing is pushing Chrome tabs.