20201029 Acer CB3-431 Chromebook Review and battery swap By smplfyi

Derry, hello from the study it's the end of October 2020, and what you're looking at is the Acer cb3-421 guest Chromebook, so this device would be pretty useful, but it suffers from one terrible disability, which is that it doesn't work unless it's plugged into the mains, because the battery is confused. So what have I done? Well, let's turn the little baby over. I have ordered a new battery so for the price of 18 pounds, including postage. A new battery has just arrived this morning, so the plan is, for the first time to open up the back of this Chromebook and replace the battery, assuming it's the right one and see if it all works. So, let's get on to it, diary, okay, so that was easy, simply a question of removing these screws, which I've put in the right order, corresponding to where they have come from, because they are of slightly different lengths from these holes. Here now a message to some engineering people, perhaps a company called apple, could pay attention.

This case took me about hmm about 120 seconds to open, and it used something called a Phillips screwdriver. Nothing weird, nothing fancy just a screwdriver some screws, and we open the back. So there you are apple. It is possible to design an easy to open case. Take no engineering department anyway, on with the battery uh.

So this is the replacement battery. As you can see, it looks like it's going to fit. It's got the same connector here. I would say that it is tempting to think about upgrading this Chromebook, and potentially I can see this could be the SSD here um there may be one or two upgradeable components, but the thing is: why bother because I think at this price point we'll come on to this later uh, it's probably not going to be economic, so I think I'm going to resist the temptation to even consult the parts list and go for any upgrades and just replace the battery terry, okay, we're down to part three of the assessment, and you'll be glad to hear that the battery is now replaced, and we have a fully working Acer, cb3431 Chromebook, as you can see it resumes from its sleep sleeping operation in just seconds, and I've been using the restored laptop. Now, for some time and what's my thoughts? Well, it's a decent enough machine.

I've not used. I had a Chromebook for at least two years as my only laptop device before going to macOS briefly, and I have to say that this 2020 experience of a Chromebook is far superior. Why do I say that? Well, uh, the chrome experience is now a fully fledged operating system with a few hiccups, but basically this laptop will do everything I needed to do so. What do I mean by that? Well, I've got the Chrome browser. Obviously I've got Gmail.

I've got um. Very importantly, I've got the Google Play Store, which I can install apps. I've got google photos, I've got the Zoom temperature conferencing, client, I've got YouTube uh, and I've got the uh chromes effectively control panel. Now this is in fact the very weedy version of the uh of the laptop. This is the two gigabyte version uh, and we can do that by going to chrome here and just to do a flag, so it's called system and scroll down to memory.

Now I found that and unfortunately, I've only got two gigabytes of memory, but still we'll just go to a video and just give it a good old play. My name is Jose Hakka and I compete in the Portugal cup GB series, and we are here today at the good wood speed week come on baby. So it's a bit sluggish there to go full screen, but uh it is a Chromebook, and it's not gonna, be as fast as uh and such an adrenaline rush. So the main benefit to this laptop would be that the keyboard is excellent. Um, I'm going to show you another laptop in a minute which retails secondhand for less than 200 pounds, which I've already mentioned, is the microsuper porter j and, whilst that's a much faster laptop, it doesn't compare with this laptop in terms of its usability because of the keyboard.

Keyboard is truly excellent. Obviously chrome works has got a dedicated, chrome keys. It's got this dedicated search key here and the letter combination to get the uh specific uh shortcuts, like lock the screen, etc. Um. Let's select the system and have a look at the side.

We've got a tension lock, we've got two USB 3s and a full size HDMI on this side and a power socket and a headphone jack on this side. So there's no there's no SD card reader, but to be honest on this kind of device. I wouldn't really expect that to be so my use case for this device and what I'd recommend it for is taking an uh a laptop effectively with a keyboard out of the house. So if I take a Chromebook out of the house, it's something where there's no personal information stored on that Chromebook. I'd reconfigure this to have a wake-on, password, etc.

I've just taken it off because I'm at home um, and it's a totally secure browsing platform in which none of my personal data will be stored. Um. The second use case I would give it would be to have it as a guest internet laptop. So if someone comes to stay um or just visit, and they need a laptop to borrow for a few hours, I can say here: here's one, and we can log you in as a guest user and in that guest use. You'll have all of these apps.

You can do what you want you can. Furthermore, you can run a Zoom call, you can go to the play store, you can install your own apps, etc. Furthermore, you can run your Gmail that can be done quite easily and that's my second use case so as a data free laptop outside the home tick as a guest laptop coming to the house tick. But the caveat is that I wouldn't pay more than about 200 pounds for this device second hand, it's at least two or three-year-old design. Now I'll.

Just at the last moment then compare this with the Toshiba which I've made another video of which is the Toshiba uh prot?g?. That's got all sorts of bells and whistles. This is actually running Ubuntu and Windows 10, and it's got a fingerprint reader, but the keyboard is pretty enough and that's because it's a five-year-old laptop, but this laptop can be purchased from. If you know where for less than 200 pounds- and it's actually got an i5 generation- 4 CPU in it, so it's substantially more powerful and you this has got 8 gigabytes, but it could have up to 16, whereas this has got two gigabytes and just struggles along okay, day. I hope you found this useful uh again.

I would recommend it and, of course the battery replacement is a piece of cake thanks for watching.

Source : smplfyi