Budget Windows laptops have never been the domain of feature-rich, impressive machines, but the Acer Aspire Go 14 may shake that up a bit. It’s lacking in a few areas, as you’d expect from a $300 laptop, but Acer has somehow managed to push its battery life into territory I don’t see much outside of more expensive laptops. It’s not built to compete with the best laptops out there, but it certainly puts up a good fight in a segment dominated by ultra-budget Chromebooks.
The Aspire Go 14 Acer I was sent for review is the AMD model, equipped with a surprisingly competent Ryzen 3 7320 CPU that zips easily through most of the basic tasks you’d expect a budget PC to handle. With integrated Radeon graphics, this isn’t a machine you’ll want to rely on for any gaming or serious graphical work. However, it chews through web browsing, writing, and basic apps like a breeze.
The one major bonus to such a modest processor is that it sips the battery. In my testing, I had no trouble hitting upwards of 14 hours of battery life, occasionally reaching more on light days. That’s dipping into multiday battery-life territory, making the Aspire Go 14 excellent for students and professionals who might not need the beefiest specs in their machines.
Acer also sells an Intel version of the Aspire Go 14, which uses a Core i3 N-Series CPU. I can’t speak for battery life on that model since I didn’t have it to test, but you’ll likely see similarly lengthy figures with such a low-power processor on board. The only major reason to opt for the Intel model is that it’s available in a 15-inch size in addition to the 14-inch model.
The other hardware powering the Aspire Go 14 is a mixed bag. There’s 8 GB of RAM, which is great for this segment and will mostly be fine if you stick to basic workloads. However, the real killer is the anemic 128 GB of storage, much of which is eaten up by the Windows install. There was only 64 GB of storage space left on my review unit when I got it, and you’ll easily fill that up if you start downloading photos, videos, and myriad other documents and media. You'll definitely want to rely on a good portable hard drive.