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Acer is releasing half a dozen new Chromebook SKUs, it announced today at its [email protected] event. The company is updating its lineup with options for Intel’s latest 11th-generation “Tiger Lake” CPUs, and while the list includes some of the With the standard cheaper Chromebook options, Acer also introduced some more expensive selections with fanless designs for quieter operation.
Fanless two-in-one Chromebooks
The Acer Chromebook Spin 514 and Chromebook Spin Enterprise 514 are the very best options. They’re more expensive than the average Chromebook (Acer’s current offering is just $190), with the standard version costing $700 when it comes out in January and the business-oriented version costing $900 for a December release.
The upcoming two-in-one (laptops that convert to tablets) will shut down the fans to reduce noise, and that probably helps keep them thin, too. Each machine is 0.68 inches (17.27 mm) thick and weighs 3.02 pounds (1.37 kg).
CPU options range from a dual-core Intel Core i3-1110G4 to a quad-core i7-1180G7. The machines are spec’d for 16 GB LPDDR4X memory and 512 GB NVMe PCIe 3.0 storage.
Acer’s Spin 514 has a 14-inch display with slim bezels (for an 84 percent screen-to-body ratio), a touchpad made of Corning Gorilla Glass, DTS Audio surround sound, and Wi-Fi 6. There are only two ports, however. – both USB-C.
Acer’s business Chromebooks are aimed at cloud-dependent businesses and IT administrators who need to deploy, manage and secure cloud workforces.
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The more budget-friendly alternative, the Acer Chromebook Spin 314, drops the CPU options from a two-core, two-thread Intel Celeron N4500 to a four-core, four-thread Intel Pentium Silver N6000 (no hyper-threading here). The Spin 314 will start at $500 next month.
Acer’s new Chromebook 515
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The Chromebook 515 and its enterprise version, the Acer Chromebook Enterprise 515, are 15.6-inch clamshells with the same specifications. Both have CPUs ranging from an 11th Gen Intel Pentium Gold 7505 to a quad-core Intel Core i7 1180G7 with Iris Xe integrated graphics. You can pack each with up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage and get some of the same bonus features as the aforementioned two-in-one, such as a Gorilla Glass touchpad and DTS Audio. There is also a webcam shutter on this 3.75 pound device. You still don’t get USB Type-A ports or a headphone jack, but the Chromebook 515 has two USB-C (3.2 Gen 2) ports, HDMI and microSD.
The Acer Chromebook 514 is a cheaper option; it starts at $400 and will be released in December. However, there are some downgrades. The clamshell only has 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of eMMC storage. It runs on an octa-core MediaTek Kompanio 828 CPU and Arm Mali-G57 MCS graphics.