Acer Announces Aspire One Cloudbook With Windows 10, Tiny Price Tag

News
By Kevin Carbotte
published

Acer announced the launch of its new series of affordable notebooks. The Aspire One Cloudbook will be available in two sizes, comes with Windows 10, and both models are available for $200 or less.

The name Cloudbook alludes to this being a cloud-focused device such as Google's Chromebook. However, that is not the case. Acer has stated that there are no restrictions on OS, and it comes with a full license of Windows 10. To make up the name Cloudbook, Acer has bundled a 1-year subscription to Office 365 Personal, along with 1 TB of OneDrive online storage space. The company also included a suite of cloud-ready applications to go along with the devices. "Build Your Own Cloud" apps, as Acer calls them, include abPhoto, abMusic, abDocs and abFiles. These applications will let you share files to your tablet, smartphone and other devices in a secure private cloud.

The Acer Aspire One Cloudbook is a light-weight, highly-portable notebook running Windows 10. The Cloudbook will be available in two variants, an 11-inch model that weighs 2.54 lbs., and a 14-inch model that weighs 3.5 lbs. 

Each model is only .70-inches thick, yet they still manage to include a full size HDMI port, USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 port, and a full size SD card slot. Acer has even managed to include a full-size chiclet keyboard along with a large touchpad that supports Windows 10 Gestures.

The Aspire One Cloudbook 11 and 14 are similarly equipped, with Intel Celeron N3050 dual-core processors clocked at 1.6 GHz (boost up to 2.16 GHz) and 2 GB of DDR3L memory. Cloudbooks all include a 640 x 480 webcam, dual digital microphones with enhanced digital sound processing (DSP), and regardless of size, they both include a 1366 x 768 HD LED-backlit display. Communication is handled through Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11ac Wi-Fi.

The main difference between each model is the size of the internal storage. The Cloudbook 11 is available with a 16 GB or 32 GB eMMC hard drives, and the Cloudbook 14 has options for 32 GB of 64 GB eMMC drives.

The 11-inch Cloudbooks will be available this month and can be purchased through Microsoft starting at $169.99 for the 16 GB version and $189.99 for the 32 GB version. The 14-inch model will be available this October at Walmart, and will start at $199.99. The price for the 64 GB version has not been released.

Follow Kevin Carbotte @pumcypuhoy. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.

Kevin Carbotte

 Kevin Carbotte is a contributing writer for Tom's Hardware who primarily covers VR and AR hardware. He has been writing for us for more than four years. 

9 Comments Comment from the forums
  • macer1
    looks like a good notebook for school. now if it has a decent battery that can last 7-9 hours this unit would be a great price.
    Reply
  • jaber2
    "Tiny price tag"? what do you consider tiny price tag
    Reply
  • zodiacfml
    Finally, the netbook has matured. Look at the clean, gloss free, logo sticker less front. Good thing, they didn't made the mistake of putting an old Wi-Fi adapter on a cloud/net based device.
    Reply
  • scolaner
    "Tiny price tag"? what do you consider tiny price tag


    Like 1 millimeter square. So small!

    I kid. These things start at $170. That's just nuts. It wasn't too long ago that we finally saw low-end tablets crack the sub-$200 price point. These have full Windows 10 on board.

    Now, about performance...we'll have to see. I'm not super optimistic...
    Reply
  • hydac8
    I do not like the name and I certainly do not like the concept , cloud ? - for me, no way
    Reply
  • athletics
    2 GB is not enough to properly run windows unless u just load it up and stare at the screen. put 4 gb for a computer that runs 3x smoothly. put 8 gb and u can run office while running internet tasks. putting 2 gb in a computer is absolutely insanely stupid. are engineers making these decisions or business majors?
    Reply
  • ajac09
    windows 10 can run with 2gb of memory with no real issues.
    Reply
  • alextheblue
    I do not like the name and I certainly do not like the concept , cloud ? - for me, no way

    Except you're getting all caught up on a name. They run full Windows 10. Yes there's a focus on neat cloud programs and features, but there's nothing stopping you from using it for other purposes. This isn't a Chromebook. It can still do everything any other lightweight entry-level Windows laptop can. Get one of the 32GB+ models and slap in an SD card and you'd even have decent offline storage capacity.
    Reply
  • fixxxer113
    2 GB is not enough to properly run windows unless u just load it up and stare at the screen. put 4 gb for a computer that runs 3x smoothly. put 8 gb and u can run office while running internet tasks. putting 2 gb in a computer is absolutely insanely stupid. are engineers making these decisions or business majors?

    8GB for Office and Internet tasks?? What kind of tasks? Cracking the human genome??

    I ran Windows 8.1 and now Windows 10 (tech preview) on a 2004 laptop with 2GB of DDR1 RAM. It runs fairly well and most of the performance issues come from the fact that it has a crappy GMA 915 GPU. I might be able to eat up a lot of RAM if I have too many tabs open in Chrome, but for that kind of use 4GB is more than enough considering the new Celerons, disk drives and DDR3 are way faster than what my laptop has.
    Reply