Acer’s new C720 Chromebook looks a lot like the older Acer C710 model, and it’s expected to sell for the same $199 price. But the new model is thinner and lighter than its predecessor, and offers twice the battery life.

Google and Acer unveiled the new Acer Chromebook recently, but didn’t provide a lot of information about the hardware. Now the folks at Notebook Italia have had a chance to spend a little time with the Acer C720, and they’ve got some of the details.

Acer C720 Chromebook

The new Acer Chromebook has an 11.6 inch, 1366 x 768 pixel display, measures 0.75 inches thick, and weighs 2.76 pounds. It’s expected to run for up to 8.5 hours at a time, and it features a 16GB solid state drive, but also comes with 100GB of free Google Drive storage for 2 years.

According to Notebook Italia, the laptop also has the same 1.4 GHz Intel Celeron 2955U Haswell processor found in HP’s Chromebook14. Despite the Celeron branding, that’s a chip based on Intel’s 4th-generation Core architecture, which means you should get better performance and much better battery life than we saw from older Celeron chips (like the one used in the original Acer C7 Chromebook).

The Acer C720 is also expected to be available with 2GB to 4GB of RAM, depending ont he configuration, and it features a spill-resistant keyboard.

There’s an SD card slot for extra storage, 2 USB ports, an HDMI port, an HD webcam, and a 45 WHr battery.

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20 replies on “Acer’s new Chromebook has a Celeron 2955U Haswell CPU”

  1. Chromebook with Citrix GoToMyPC provides a ultra-portable for access to my office PC and all apps as well as browsing, YouTube, etc.

  4. I still have the C7, and still love it. These are great little computers.

  5. Who cares about this Chromebook? Who cares about ANY Chromebook? And finally who cares about Acer (any more). What are the real advantages of Chromebooks? Any tips? I don’t get it …

    2. Tips:

      1) You can refresh your OS without issue.
      2) No viruses (or at least limited exposure)
      3) Can also run Ubuntu (no, not dual boot, but with a key click)
      4) Low Cost
      5) Long battery life

      I don’t own one, but will likely buy one for my Mother-in-law who lives in a 3rd world country, and whose Windows system attracts viruses (last time I was there, there were half a dozen!).

      Simple, can do what she needs well, other than perhaps Skype, and I don’t have to try doing remote tech support (virtually impossible anyway)

    3. Very few people need to run a full OS. If you dont need a full OS its nice to have a very mobile laptop thats quick and light.

      Also in my case its the best tool for my job. With Google’s remote access app I can access my desktop/service PC at my desk while on the field w/ a very light and easy to tote laptop.

  6. this will have also usb 3.0 and bluetooth 4.0 LE. with option for 3G and WIFI only. i was expecting 4G 🙁

    1. 4G won’t be available on low end chromebooks until it’s significantly cheaper to introduce. Putting one on google’s nexus seven tablet increases the price by over a hundred dollars. That’s half the price of a chromebook right there.

  7. I’m disappointed with the keyboard. I know it is the standard chromebook keyboard, but I use the dedicated home, end, and page up/down buttons on my C710 way too often.

  10. I know this isn’t the fastest chromebook around but why would anyone need a chromebook with a fast processor? Is it so people can run 4 HD videos simultaneously if they choose to? It just doesn’t seem like there are any applications for the chromebook that would be require a lot of performance.

    1. Dual booting Linux my friend. You can always use a faster processor with a full system.

      1. Installing a regular desktop Linux distro is pretty much the main reason to get a Chromebook.

      2. Yep, that’s just what I want, but 16 Gb is not enough and getting a decent ssd could mean expending a few more bucks.
        Still, like Michael Romano said, this is the sweet spot, but if asus pulls out a similar model with the detachable screen/tablet, that could make me thinks twice about this little guy!! even if going the hybrid way means close to a hundred bucks more

    2. Products like the Chromebook Pixel are primarily intended for Developers, to help them explore the possibilities of what could be done as performance continues to increase and get them started now rather than when the average system reaches those level of performance… After all, without apps to take advantage of the performance then most will not design systems around the OS that could provide that performance…

      More relevant to you, though, the nature of having a mostly Browser based OS is that most of the software isn’t running natively. Native apps are the only thing that can take full advantage of the hardware for maximum performance.

      While, Chrome OS does have a native client to make native apps possible on Chrome OS the majority of what you’ll be running won’t take full advantage of the hardware and that means it takes a little bit more performance to make it all run smoothly and snappy…

      So, something like a budget Celeron/Pentium hits the right performance balance to achieve this and it’s just the higher end Core processors that would be overkill…

      Though, as Claudio Dias suggest… you could always just enable the Developers Mode to support running a desktop Linux distro that can make better use of the system hardware….

  11. Any ideas on the release of this? I was very close to pulling the trigger on the current C710 Chromebook but upon discovering about C720, glad that I haven’t yet. Hopefully this comes soon!

  12. This right here is the sweet spot between size, performance, and battery life. I can’t wait to see a review of this.

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