Acer's Chromebook 15 Is Larger And More Affordable Than Ever

By Michael Justin Allen Sexton
published

Acer announced a new member of the Chromebook 15 product line, which the company designed to be an affordable notebook for web browsing and media streaming.

Acer's said the new CB3-532 is the largest entry in the Chromebook 15 series, and the system is slightly wider and longer than its predecessors are. The change equates to less than a half-inch increase in overall size, though. The CB3-532 also has a 15.6-inch LED-backlit display with a native resolution of 1366x768, which is identical to other Chromebook 15 systems. The system also uses two forward facing stereo speakers that should give users a reasonably enjoyable audio experience.

As a Chromebook, the system has relatively limited hardware resources. The system relies on a dual-core Intel Celeron N3060 processor clocked at 1.6GHz. Acer also included 2GB of LPDDR3 and 16GB of eMMC storage. This hardware should keep the Chromebook running without issue, but you will need additional storage to hold any videos or music files. The notebook has an SD card reader built-in, however, which will make it easy for you to add additional storage. You will also need to watch RAM usage a bit to prevent the system from slowing down during heavy multitasking.

Acer designed all of the hardware is designed to be energy efficient, so the system should have excellent battery life. Acer said that the 3-cell 3950mAh battery could last up to 12 hours during typical use.

The system is available now with a starting price of $199.

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Acer Chromebook 15 CM3-532
CPUIntel Celeron Dual-Core Processor N3060 (1.6GHz, 2MB L2 Cache)
OSGoogle Chrome
Display15.6-inch 1366x768 LED-Backlit
Memory2GB of LPDDR3 SDRAM
VideoIntegrated Intel HD Graphics
Storage16GB eMMC
SD Card ReaderUp To 128GB SDXC
Networking802.11ac 2x2 Dual-Band Wifi
Webcam1280x720 HDR
Ports2 x USB 3.0HDMIHeadphone/SpeakerDC-In
Battery3-Cell Li-Polymer Battery (3950 mAh)
Dimensions15.08 x 10.08 x 0.95 Inches (LxWxH)
Weight4.3 lbs
Starting Price$199
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.
12 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Steve Simons
    Sorry. 2 GB of RAM is a deal-breaker. In the school where I manage a very large Chromebook fleet, 4 GB is necessary. The machines have a very long lifespan, and an extra $30 for 4 GB of RAM is well worth it.

    All that keyboard space and no ten key?

    Speakers are pretty pointless. You don't store music on these. You may stream netflix or Amazon Prime, but, just plug in headphones for a much better experience. That space should have been used for a larger keyboard that included a 10-key for working out of Google sheets.
    Reply
  • negusp
    Sorry. 2 GB of RAM is a deal-breaker. In the school where I manage a very large Chromebook fleet, 4 GB is necessary. The machines have a very long lifespan, and an extra $30 for 4 GB of RAM is well worth it.

    Chromebooks don't need more than 2 GB. Students, especially, shouldn't be doing things on a Chromebook that require more. Regardless, you wouldn't want to be giving 15 inch Chromebooks to school students.
    Reply
  • IInuyasha74
    18743033 said:
    Sorry. 2 GB of RAM is a deal-breaker. In the school where I manage a very large Chromebook fleet, 4 GB is necessary. The machines have a very long lifespan, and an extra $30 for 4 GB of RAM is well worth it.

    Chromebooks don't need more than 2 GB. Students, especially, shouldn't be doing things on a Chromebook that require more. Regardless, you wouldn't want to be giving 15 inch Chromebooks to school students.

    Well, there are strong arguments to support and refute the need of 4GB of RAM in a Chromebook. Honestly, most should be able to get by with 2GB in a Chromebook, but 4GB would be helpful in some scenarios.

    As for giving 15.6-inch Chromebooks to students, why wouldn't you want to do that? They are cost effect, and useful for just about any subject of study.
    Reply
  • negusp
    18743107 said:
    18743033 said:
    Sorry. 2 GB of RAM is a deal-breaker. In the school where I manage a very large Chromebook fleet, 4 GB is necessary. The machines have a very long lifespan, and an extra $30 for 4 GB of RAM is well worth it.

    Chromebooks don't need more than 2 GB. Students, especially, shouldn't be doing things on a Chromebook that require more. Regardless, you wouldn't want to be giving 15 inch Chromebooks to school students.

    Well, there are strong arguments to support and refute the need of 4GB of RAM in a Chromebook. Honestly, most should be able to get by with 2GB in a Chromebook, but 4GB would be helpful in some scenarios.

    As for giving 15.6-inch Chromebooks to students, why wouldn't you want to do that? They are cost effect, and useful for just about any subject of study.

    Haha, 15.6 inch laptops can barely fit on desks and are easier to break due to their clumsiness/unwieldiness.

    Imagine giving 2000 school kids 15.6 inch laptops to roam the halls and use in class. Droppage rates would skyrocket.
    Reply
  • IInuyasha74
    Well, to that I'd argue that children are likely to break a large number of notebooks regardless of what size they are. I remember several years ago when I was in my last year of high school, the school decided to buy a few hundred 7-inch netbooks. This was for a relatively small school of about 500 students, and the computers were used exclusively in some class rooms. The end result was that roughly 1/3rd of the notebooks suffered fatal break downs by the end of the year (mostly cracked screens). I was in a tech class at the time, and we were in charge of maintaining them, and we h ad a whole pile of ones that were basically dead from being dropped, tossed or handled too roughly.

    I suppose that this could increase with larger systems, but I'd expect the number of failures to be fairly high regardless of the overall system size.
    Reply
  • gggplaya
    Hey guys, i'm actually interested in buying one of these for my mom. She tends to google things, and can't understand that some links are full of popups and malware. Even with norton installed, i have to go over and spend 2-3 hours getting rid of some of these, and now just make disk images and wipe her computer back to the image.

    Is the chome experience snappy?? Or will this celeron processor seem sluggish?
    Reply
  • turkey3_scratch
    In high school we had Chromebooks our last year, Acer ones. Surprisingly they were very reliable for the vast majority of students and could take a beating. We also had cases we were required to put them in which helped protect them but most people didn't use the cases anyway. They were also the perfect cheap laptops for what they were used for.
    Reply
  • Steve Simons
    18743195 said:
    18743107 said:
    18743033 said:
    Sorry. 2 GB of RAM is a deal-breaker. In the school where I manage a very large Chromebook fleet, 4 GB is necessary. The machines have a very long lifespan, and an extra $30 for 4 GB of RAM is well worth it.

    Chromebooks don't need more than 2 GB. Students, especially, shouldn't be doing things on a Chromebook that require more. Regardless, you wouldn't want to be giving 15 inch Chromebooks to school students.

    Well, there are strong arguments to support and refute the need of 4GB of RAM in a Chromebook. Honestly, most should be able to get by with 2GB in a Chromebook, but 4GB would be helpful in some scenarios.

    As for giving 15.6-inch Chromebooks to students, why wouldn't you want to do that? They are cost effect, and useful for just about any subject of study.

    Haha, 15.6 inch laptops can barely fit on desks and are easier to break due to their clumsiness/unwieldiness.

    Imagine giving 2000 school kids 15.6 inch laptops to roam the halls and use in class. Droppage rates would skyrocket.

    We have over a 1000 15" chromebooks in our school. We get less than 5 broken ones every year. And these are clumsy middle schoolers. 4 GB of RAM is necessary because of standardized testing. 2 GB is minimum spec. Sure, it'll run, but we all know what minimum spec means (or should).
    Reply
  • Steve Simons
    18743033 said:
    Sorry. 2 GB of RAM is a deal-breaker. In the school where I manage a very large Chromebook fleet, 4 GB is necessary. The machines have a very long lifespan, and an extra $30 for 4 GB of RAM is well worth it.

    Chromebooks don't need more than 2 GB. Students, especially, shouldn't be doing things on a Chromebook that require more. Regardless, you wouldn't want to be giving 15 inch Chromebooks to school students.

    Thanks for being an educational expert and know exactly what our students should or shouldn't be doing on a Chromebook! What exactly is your expertise?
    Reply
  • Steve Simons
    18745173 said:
    Hey guys, i'm actually interested in buying one of these for my mom. She tends to google things, and can't understand that some links are full of popups and malware. Even with norton installed, i have to go over and spend 2-3 hours getting rid of some of these, and now just make disk images and wipe her computer back to the image.

    Is the chome experience snappy?? Or will this celeron processor seem sluggish?

    In our fleet we have some with Intel and some with NVIDIA processors. They are both quite snappy. I almost had my mom sold on one but she went with Windows because she's still very married to Excel (retired accountant/buyer). I sense more malware cleaning in my future as well...

    The beauty of a Chromebook is the ease at which you can just reset the whole dang thing. A few keystrokes and bam, back to factory settings.

    The biggest drawbacks tend to be their screen. It just isn't particularly sharp.

    The best solution I have is HP's Chromebox. That thing is smoking fast for what it does and attaches to a monitor, so you get a nice screen resolution as well. It's more of a desktop deal though and not a mobile solution.
    Reply