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Acer's business-focused Chromebooks arrive in September
Acer's entry into the premium Chromebook space is nearly here. The company has announced that both the conventional Chromebook 13 and convertible Chromebook Spin 13 (above) will come to North America in September at respective starting prices of $650 and $750. Splurge on these laptops and you'll get both a higher-quality aluminum chassis, a tall 3:2 ratio 2,256 x 1,504 screen (plus a Wacom stylus with the Spin) as well as the performance you don't always get with Chrome OS machines.
Dell unveils 2-in-1 Latitude and Chromebook laptops for schools
This year marks a first for Dell's education-focused computer family: 2-in-1 laptops. Like the company's other computers destined for schools, the Dell Latitude and Chromebook 11 Convertibles are built to withstand classrooms and student abuse. They both sport the same basic design -- rubberized shock protection for falls, sealed keyboards to handle spills and lots of rounded corners -- but one runs Windows 10 and the other is powered by Chrome OS (we'll let you guess which is which).
HP Chromebook 13 review: a great laptop that doesn't come cheap
Just over a year ago, you basically had two options for buying a Chromebook: Spend $999 on Google's excellent but overpriced Pixel or buy an inexpensive laptop that was inevitably compromised in one way or another. That's starting to change, however. Dell's Chromebook 13, which launched last fall, proved you could pack a sharp screen and keyboard into a device with strong performance and battery life. It was a bit pricier than the competition, but a little extra cash was well worth the upgrades. Now HP is taking the idea of a "premium" Chromebook to the next level with the new Chromebook 13. It starts at $499 and can be configured up to a whopping $1,029. That cash gets you a much thinner and lighter design than Dell's Chromebook, along with one of the best screens on the market. After spending some time with HP's latest Chromebook, there's no doubt it's an excellent machine. The question is whether it (or any Chromebook, for that matter) is worth HP's asking price.
New in our buyer's guide: The iPhone 6s, Surface Book and much more
Sorry we haven't updated the buyers's guide in a couple months -- we've been too busy pumping out reviews of all the new devices. Now that things have finally started to slow down (fingers crossed), let's take a step back and look at all the awesome stuff we've had a chance to test this fall. For starters, there's a bunch of excellent smartphones that we absolutely need to add to our guide. Namely: the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, the Nexus 6P and 5X, and the Moto X Pure. On the tablet side, we're inducting both the iPad mini 4 and the Surface Pro 4. Microsoft makes another appearance in the laptop section, where we've added the Surface Book, along with Dell's Chromebook 13. Rounding out the list, we threw in a few miscellaneous items, including the new Xbox One Elite Wireless controller, the redesigned Sonos Play:5 wireless speaker and Google's $35 Chromecast Audio.
Dell's business Chromebook is good enough that consumers will like it too
Dell's latest Chromebook, the Chromebook 13, was designed specifically for businesses. But with a high-res, high-quality screen and a durable design reminiscent of Dell's other notebooks, it actually looks like the Chrome OS laptop we lay people have always wanted. In particular, it borrows the same carbon fiber weave you know and love from the XPS 13, and it's built on a sturdy magnesium-alloy chassis. In fact, the only plastic to be found is in the bezel. Speaking of the sort, it features a 13.3-inch IPS display that comes standard with 1080p resolution and a high brightness rating of 400 nits. Other perks include a comfortable backlit keyboard, Precision trackpad (the sort normally only seen on select Windows systems), up to a Core i5 processor and 8GB of RAM, and a battery rated for 12-plus hours. It starts at $399 with a Celeron CPU and 2GB of memory, which isn't bad for a machine as well-designed as this, though you'll pay around $899 for the highest-spec configuration. (Even then, it's still less expensive than a Pixel.)
Engadget Daily: Handling the Blackberry Passport, discovering the world of Findery and more!
What's the deal with Blackberry's new square-shaped phone? Brad Molen took it for a spin and, as it turns out, the Passport's not as awkward as it seems. That's not all we have on deck, though -- read on for the rest of Engadget's news highlights from the last 24 hours.
Acer Chromebook 13 review: long battery life, sharp screen, good price
After years of getting little respect, Chromebooks are finally on the rise (at least in schools), which means every major PC maker is trying to get in on the action. That includes chip makers too, like NVIDIA. Though the company previously shied away from Chrome OS devices, it's now pledging to power a whole range of different Chromebooks with its Tegra K1 chip, each of them promising long battery life and more graphics muscle. The Acer Chromebook 13 is the first of the bunch, and while some of you might be Chromebook'd out, we were actually excited. Here was a $300 laptop boasting at least 11 hours of battery life, a 1080p display option and enough horsepower to clobber Intel at things like gaming and rich websites. As it turns out, it was all just a little too good to be true.
