New Acer Chromebook 15 laptop features 12-hour battery life, $199 price tag
Acer Chromebook 15 laptop
Acer has continuously tried to push the envelope with its Chromebooks, moving away from the absolute-basic-specs-at-the-lowest-price approach that Google originally rolled out for laptops running its Chrome OS. It super-sized the Chromebook with the first 15.6-inch model nearly two years ago, and this year it has super-sized battery life.
Now it's pulling those two features together in a new model that stays true to the budget origins of the Chromebook. The Chromebook 15 CB3-532-C47C combines a large screen with superior battery life, at a familiar price point: $199. In particular, you get a 15.6-inch display and 12 hours of run-time before you need to recharge the battery.
That's the good news. Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, the bad news is that the Chromebook's other specs are pedestrian. These include an Intel Celeron N3060 processor, just 2GB of RAM and 16GB of built-in storage, and a very ordinary 1,366x768 resolution on that bigger display.
Connectivity options are a little better, with a pair of USB 3.0 ports and 802.11ac Wi-Fi with MIMO 2x2 technology on board. Acer also provides a degree of durability to this Chromebook 15, claiming that it can withstand over 130 pounds of force applied to it and can handle drops from nearly two feet without sustaining damage.
Looking to position the Chromebook 15 CB3-532-C47C as a potential holiday purchase, Acer has already started selling it through Walmart in plenty of time for Christmas. Do a big display, good battery life, and a cheap price outweigh the otherwise ho-hum specs of this system? Let us know in the comments section below.