Anika Begay
The game is not something you’d normally associate with Chromebooks, but Google and its hardware partners have made great strides to shake things up with a handful of cloud gaming laptops in recent years. One of the most popular options is the Acer Chromebook Plus 516 GE, which was just updated for 2024 with a new processor while still keeping all the best things about the previous model. It’s a modest upgrade, but it’s still one of the best Chromebooks you can buy.
Let’s get one thing straight: If you already own the previous Chromebook 516 GE, there’s little reason to upgrade to the 2024 Chromebook Plus model. Aside from a few cosmetic updates, it’s largely the same device. The processor is now an Intel Core 5 120U instead of the previous model’s Core i5-1240P, and you probably won’t notice much difference in speed.
Photography: Daniel Thorp-Lancaster
However, performance on the Chromebook Plus 516 GE AND great, and the battery lasted me through a typical eight-hour workday. Combined with 8GB of RAM, you’ve got plenty of room and power for multitasking. The laptop often handled quick switches between multiple apps and more than a dozen tabs with ease during my testing, and the dual fans that keep things cool never got loud enough to be annoying.
Unlike Windows gaming laptops, the Chromebook Plus 516 GE is designed as a cloud gaming machine, and it fits that role well. Most of your gaming will be done through Xbox Cloud Gaming and streaming through Nvidia GeForce Now, and ChromeOS handles both well. The laptop has Wi-Fi 6E and a dedicated Ethernet port onboard to keep things running smoothly, and I didn’t experience any major hiccups or issues even with competitive games.
The only gaming area that has been a hit or miss has been Steam, which is still in beta on ChromeOS. Lightweight indie games like Vampire Survivors run like butter on the Chromebook Plus 516 GE hardware, and that’s the lane I’d go if I wanted to run games natively rather than streaming them. More demanding games can struggle a bit, which is to be expected with integrated graphics and a lightweight (by gaming standards) processor. I couldn’t get Dead in the light of dayone of my favorite pastimes, to be opened via Steam beyond the initial loading screen, for example.
Photography: Daniel Thorp-Lancaster
