AcerC720
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Acer C720 review (Core i3): a more powerful Chromebook
Whether rightly or wrongly, Chromebooks have earned a reputation for being the new netbooks. Slowly, though, things are starting to change. The designs are starting to feel less cheap -- at least if you're Samsung. Battery life is getting longer, sometimes even better than on full-fledged laptops. And now, performance is getting stronger, too: Acer just became the first company to release a Chromebook with a Core i3 processor, one that can better withstand multitasking, gaming and whatever rich websites you're likely to visit. The C720, as it's called, is actually the same 11-inch Chromebook Acer's already been selling, just with a beefier CPU inside, and theoretically longer battery life -- 8.5 hours, up from 7.5. As ever, though, Acer kept the price down: This guy starts at just $350, just a little more than what you'd pay for a much lower-powered system from some other brands. The question is: Does processing power trump everything else? And if it does, are you better off waiting for other Core i3 models to come out?
Acer upgrades its C720 Chromebook with more power... and a higher price
Looking for a more powerful Acer Chromebook? It'll cost you -- the company announced today that its C720 Chromebook is getting a processor bump and a new price tag. $350 buys a notebook with a 4th generation Intel Core i3-4005U CPU clocked at 1.7GHz with a 32GB SSD, a modest bump from the 1.4GHz Celeron CPU, 16GB SSD and $200 starting price of the current model. Acer says the new CPU will give the machine a noticeable performance boost without affecting the 8.5 hour runtime consumers have come to expect from the laptop. Little else about the Chromeboook seems to have changed; its still available with 2GB or 4GB (in a $380 model) of RAM. Still, if you want to save some money with Acer's cheaper, slower laptop, buy now: the new models hit store shelves later this month.
