The Acer Chromebook 516 GE Cloud Gaming Chromebook runs on the 64-bit version of Chrome OS. There aren’t any pre-installed applications other than those that typically come with Chrome OS. However, it does come with a few trial periods, like 100GB of cloud storage for one year through Google One and three months of YouTube Premium and NVIDIA GeForce NOW.
GeForce NOW is a cloud-gaming service; NVIDIA has a few subscription tiers; the highest tier offers up to 120fps gaming at 1440p. We tried the GeForce NOW trial (running at 1080p); you can see an example of the gameplay here. The games are very playable as the latency is relatively low. However, that’ll depend entirely on your internet connection.
You can download games from the Google Play Store but know that some games might not work properly since these games are mainly designed for Android smartphones and tablets using an ARM-based processor. You can see how the Android version of Genshin Impact runs in this video. Also, some games lack keyboard, mouse, and controller support. Lastly, Steam for Chrome OS is currently in Beta testing. There’s no official launch date at the moment. It’s up to individual developers to create a Chrome OS version of their game, so it might be a while before we see anything.
Every Chromebook has an ‘expiration date’ at which it stops receiving software updates. According to Google’s official document, the Acer Chromebook 516 GE’s end-of-life is June 2030. Google may extend this date as they have for other Chromebooks; it’s best to check their official document for any changes.
