Acer’s first Chromebook with an Intel Core i3 processor is coming this summer, and according to listings at a few retail websites, it’ll likely sell for around $350 to $375.
The Acer C720-3605 Chromebook could be one of the most powerful Chrome OS laptops when it launches, thanks to its Core i3-4005U Haswell processor and Intel HD 4400 graphics.
Acer’s new Chromebook will likely have an 11.6 inch display, 4GB of RAM, and 32GB of solid state storage. It’s expected to offer up to 8.5 hours of battery life thanks to a 3950mAh battery.
What really makes it stand out from other members of the Acer C720 series though, is the processor. While Acer’s other Chromebooks feature 1.4 GHz Intel Celeron 2955 dual-core Haswell chips, the new model has a 1.7 GHz dual-core chip with Intel HD 4400 graphics.
The Core i3 chip has the same 15W TDP as the Celeron processor, which means that while you can expect better performance, you should see similarly long battery life from this model.
That helps explain why the new Acer C720-3605 Chromebook looks almost exactly like its less powerful siblings, but will likely sell for over $100 more.
You can find more details at Provantage, PCMall, and eCost, but note that none of these stores actually has Acer’s new Core i3 Chromebook in stock yet.
via Notebook Italia
Is the screen the same as the Celeron version?
Probably
While this is nicer then previous Chromebooks what can Chrome OS do with the extra horsepower besides have a few more browser tabs open? You could install linux for sure but unless you can easily upgrade the storage option then I couldn’t see myself buying this model.
I’m in the market for a Chromebook and will probably be holding out for this i3 model with 4GB of RAM. First as HTML5 become more complex, the additional horsepower will be appreciated. Second, With Google announcing Android apps running as Native Clients on a runtime layer within Chrome – well the extra processing power and memory will come in handy. Third, with Google releasing Chrome Dev Editor for Chrome – a Chromebook can now be a true developer machine. The extra processing power and memory will come in handy reducing compilation times. Chrome OS is evolving and becoming much more useful than ‘just a web browser’.
It’s the exact same product, with more processing power that can’t even be properly utilized. Oh, and additional storage. What a shame.
I fully agree. The majority of the extra horsepower is in the GPU too. Chromebook is not a graphics intensive platform. I see this as a way for Acer to differentiate their Chromebook from the many others. Remember the Chromebook Pixel… I would be surprised if they are 1% of all Chromebook sales.
$150 extra for 4gb RAM, 32GB SSD, i3 sounds like a pretty good deal to me.
1) Give this a 13.3″ FHD IPS panel
2) Keep the price under $399
3) Take my $399
No matter how high the price, how powerful the processor, how high the screen resolution, or how much memory…
ALL Chromebooks are nothing more than cheap
computersfixed-web-browser bricks.Unless you put Crubuntu on there, and dual boot…unless you are one of those people who thinks a computer has to run Windows or Mac OS X, or its not a computer…
Chromebooks are fine. I had the chance to play with one recently, and I must say, I was impressed and a bit shocked at how well it performed. The screen resolution was as one should expect from most laptops. The only gripe I have left is that their prices are somewhat high considering what little you’re getting. If their prices is ever brought down to say around $150, they’d fly off the store shelves. People would have a reason to get excited again about purchasing a laptop!
Will it be able to handle RAW files