Acer's Chromebook 14 Extends Features And Battery Life To 14 Hours

News
By Michael Justin Allen Sexton
published

Acer made a new chromebook available for pre-order today boasting exceptional battery life and an extended feature set relative to its older chromebooks.

The new Chromebook 14 uses a 14-inch IPS display. Some models will use a 1080p panel, while less expensive models rely on a more common display with a resolution of 1366x768.

Acer says this system is the first to possess several features. According to Acer, it is the first chromebook with 14 hours of battery life (unfortunately, we don't have one of these systems on hand at the moment to test this claim). Acer also says that this is the first Acer chromebook to feature a 14-inch display, two USB 3.1 Gen 1 ports and the first to have an all-aluminum chassis.

For internal processing power the chromebook uses either an unspecified Intel Celeron quad-core processor or a dual-core Intel Celeron N3060. The N3060 is a Braswell-M SoC using the updated 14 nm Airmont core architecture and it is clocked at 1.6 GHz with a burst frequency of 2.48 GHz.

The iGPU inside of the SoC contains 12 EUs clocked at 320 MHz with a burst frequency of 600 MHz. Although the Intel HD Graphics 400 is relatively weak compared to third-party graphics processors from AMD or Nvidia, it shouldn't have an issue running games on your web browser or handling video processing.

The initial model available for pre-order contains a 1080p display and the N3060 SoC, as well as 4GB of LPDDR3 and 32GB of internal storage. For Wi-Fi connectivity, it has a dual-band 802.11ac NIC that can operate at either 2.4 or 5 GHz. It retailers for $299.99. Other models will be released throughout April.

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Michael Justin Allen Sexton
Michael Justin Allen Sexton is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He covers hardware component news, specializing in CPUs and motherboards.
16 Comments Comment from the forums
  • gggplaya
    I think chromebook is dead or dying. With microsoft switching it's money making model and making windows 10 very low cost for OEM's, I'd rather spend $300 on a windows 10 laptop with less battery life.
    Reply
  • spider2k
    the linked model claims 12 hours.

    and personally i hate windows 10. its free for a reason.
    Reply
  • gggplaya
    Windows 10 is still better than chromebook, which is basically just a web browser with plugins.
    Reply
  • ohim
    I`m running a Asus Transformer T100TAF, it has an Atom BayTrail CPU and only 2 GB of RAM but Win 10 is extremely snappy on it. 32 GB storage + 64 GB micro SD and a 500 GB HDD in the detachable keyboard. I get a max of 11 -12 hours of battery and enjoy a full OS, better than the Chrome OS.

    PS: Edge is amazing on the Atom CPU, can`t say the same for Opera or Chrome that run slow.

    And the strange thing is that now i`m missing the touch ability on my desktop, there are things that i find better to do with touch that with keyboard or mouse.

    17736244 said:
    the linked model claims 12 hours.

    and personally i hate windows 10. its free for a reason.

    Yeah, it`s free because MS wants faster addoption of the OS since it boast a new Store, Universal apps, better touch integration for 2 in 1 devices, and less viruses in the future since there is highly unlikely that one will slip trough the store.

    Win devices are plagued by viruses due to people having to install stuff from all over the place. And stop with the "spy" crap, nobody sits to go trough TB of data from each user to see their porn habbits. The most paranoic stuff that i`ve heard was that MS is copying your drives to theirs ... have 200+ million users and take from each 1 TB of data .. imagine that ... some people are just nuts.
    Reply
  • dstarr3
    I think chromebook is dead or dying. With microsoft switching it's money making model and making windows 10 very low cost for OEM's, I'd rather spend $300 on a windows 10 laptop with less battery life.

    Horses for courses. If all you need is a way to get your grandmother on e-mail, then this is fine.
    Reply
  • gggplaya
    17736298 said:
    I think chromebook is dead or dying. With microsoft switching it's money making model and making windows 10 very low cost for OEM's, I'd rather spend $300 on a windows 10 laptop with less battery life.

    Horses for courses. If all you need is a way to get your grandmother on e-mail, then this is fine.

    It's just too niche of a product, which is why i think it's dying. It used to have value in that it was cheaper than a windows PC. But because microsoft is no longer charging for windows 10, any price difference between chromebook and windows is negligible. Microsoft took great strides to make windows more efficient, and now it runs well even in 10 year old computers.

    I just don't see the point of chromebook anymore. You can just take your grandmothers laptop and delete all the icons on the desktop, and just leave chrome on there. Then tell her to just double click on it.
    Reply
  • spider2k
    17736257 said:
    Windows 10 is still better than chromebook, which is basically just a web browser with plugins.

    maybe for you.
    Reply
  • ohim
    And don`t forget we also have now compute sticks that you can put to any TV and have a PC experience right on your TV, this for people that don`t need powerful PCs or laptops.
    Reply
  • LordConrad
    17736298 said:
    I think chromebook is dead or dying. With microsoft switching it's money making model and making windows 10 very low cost for OEM's, I'd rather spend $300 on a windows 10 laptop with less battery life.
    Horses for courses. If all you need is a way to get your grandmother on e-mail, then this is fine.
    It's just too niche of a product, which is why i think it's dying. It used to have value in that it was cheaper than a windows PC. But because microsoft is no longer charging for windows 10, any price difference between chromebook and windows is negligible. Microsoft took great strides to make windows more efficient, and now it runs well even in 10 year old computers.

    I just don't see the point of chromebook anymore. You can just take your grandmothers laptop and delete all the icons on the desktop, and just leave chrome on there. Then tell her to just double click on it.
    ChromeOS is much better for simple use cases because it is very light weight, works on different CPU types, and is *virtually* virus proof. I've helped a few of my customers (who get confused and annoyed by full Windows or Mac systems) buy and setup a Chromebook and they love it. Better yet, they don't have to call me to fix it all the time because they clicked the wrong thing or caught a virus. Chromebooks are not about the cost, they're about simplicity.
    Reply
  • DouglasThurman
    As an IT for education, the Chromebooks are exceedingly perfect for our purposes. Under $200, manageable from one admin account...and I mean ALL of them. We have more than 1000 Chromebooks, and all of them can be configured from the management console. They just work. No ipads...no Windows 10 machines.
    Reply