Acer announces Haswell-powered $300 touchscreen Chromebook
After arguing for Chromebooks in this week's ZDNet Great Debate, I started looking for a new Chromebook for the holidays after the HP Chromebook 11 was pulled from shelves.
One compelling new Chromebook just announced yesterday is the Acer C720P, the second touchscreen Chromebook. Unlike the $1,300 to $1,500-priced Chromebook Pixel, the new touchscreen Acer Chromebook is priced at just $299.99.
For this price you get an 11.6 inch HD 1366x768 resolution LED backlit touchscreen display and device powered by a Haswell chip, the Intel Celeron 2955U processor.
A touchscreen display on a Chromebook allows you to pinch to zoom in apps and websites, swipe, and tap on links and other items. It seems to make more sense to have a touchscreen on a tablet, but recent data shows more people are looking to use touchscreen laptops and it is tough to not consider this device at just $300.
The Acer C720P should run for up to 7.5 hours, has a large capacity 32GB SSD, 2GB of RAM, along with HDMI, USB 2.0, and USB 3.0 ports. It weight just under three pounds and is 0.78 inches ( mm) thick.
The Acer C720P will be available in early December at Amazon.com, Best Buy, and the Acer store. Acer stated that it will be available in several configurations so there should be LTE models available at a slightly higher price.
While it is interesting to see a low-priced touchscreen Chromebook, I am still looking for that higher end display model that has no touchscreen yet is more affordable than the Pixel. 2014 will be interesting for Chromebooks and affordable Windows 8.1 devices.