14 DAY TRIAL // If so far you were skittish about purchasing a Chromebook, because usually these devices don’t offer the most stellar performance compared to other laptop offerings on the market, you should know Acer has a little surprise for you.
A while ago, an unannounced Acer Chromebook running on the Intel Core i3 chip platform surfaced in a retail listing, so we argued the model shouldn't be long to appear in real life. And we were correct in claiming this.
Acer has made it official and marketed the model as the industry’s first device of its kind to arrive with an Intel Core i3 Chromebook.
Compared to the earlier versions, which come boasting Intel Celeron on the inside, the big difference lies only in the processor department.
Just like its predecessors, the new C720 Chromebook comes with an 11.6-inch screen, up 4GB of RAM and offers a decent-enough battery that should provide users with as much as 8.5 hours of life on a single charge.
Acer has brought forth two models: the C720-3871, which arrives with 2GB of RAM and costs $350 / €257, and the C720-3404 Chromebook, which is equipped with 4GB of RAM and will take you back with $380 / €279.
It would have been nice if, apart from the processor upgrade, Acer had bumped the resolution too, stepping away from the bland 1366 x 768 pixels every laptop today brings to the table.
But this would have meant that you spend even more to purchase the notebook and Acer probably wanted to keep things relatively affordable in the pricing department.
So, both mentioned models offer the above-mentioned resolution, Intel HD 4400 graphics, 32GB of solid state storage, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and stereo speakers.
The specific processor running things under the hood is a 1.7GHz Intel Core i3-4005U dual-core chip. As more and more web apps into native hardware, a Chromebook with a powerful CPU inside, might look quite attractive to many.
Consider the Google Chromebook Pixel. Sure, this laptop has a Core i5 processor inside, but it’s a 3rd-generation one. Acer’s C720, on the other hand, has a 4th-gen Core chip inside. But the most important part is the Acer Chromebooks is almost three times cheaper than the Chromebook Pixel.
Since the C720 has been launched into the wild, we suspect Acer’s upcoming models with NVIDIA Tegra K1 and Bay Trail are also bound to make an appearance soon enough. We’ll keep an eye out. Until then, you can check out this powerful new Chromebook addition.
