The New Acer 720 at $200 Is Practically a Stocking Stuffer
When Google began Chrome OS for laptops, the top priority was this: Chromebooks are supposed to be cheap. Acer got the message loud and clear, announcing a $200 Chromebook with the latest Intel "Haswell" processor.
Of course Acer has made previous Chromebooks, but the new Acer Chromebook C270-2848 - quite a catchy name - is doubling down on the cheap laptop strategy at the heart of Google Chrome OS (even though Google hasn't exactly always followed that code, itself).
The New Acer Chromebook C720 (let's call it that for short) is a pared-down version of the previous C720 Chromebook, but it comes with a Haswell generation Intel Celeron processor. Like the Chrome OS philosophy, it's light - both physically, with hardware-specs, and on the wallet.
Light Specs
The New Chromebook C720 weighs 2.76 pounds, offers a new 1.4GHz 2MB L3 Cache Intel Celeron processor, and Google Chrome OS on a solid-state 16GB drive that boots up in seconds. Most of the storage you'd use for this laptop (with portability and price as a top priority) would be in Google's 100GB of free cloud space.
Most of the C720's hardware specs are the same as the previous generation, except it only comes with 2GB of RAM. The older model, which sells for $250, has twice that amount. Still, there's the pretty decent 11.6-inch 1366 x 768p resolution anti-glare display, a front webcam with 720p capability, WiFi, a USB 3.0 slot, a USB 2.0 slot, a full-sized HDMI port, an SD card slot, and a 3,950 mAh battery that provides up to 8.5 hours of use. All of this is packed into a laptop that is just 0.75 inches thick.
And did I mention that it costs less than a lot of contract-subsidized smartphones?
Acer C720: The Exemplar of Chrome OS Hardware
Part of Acer's $199 sticker price is a holiday sale, meant to drive business in the next month or so due to the ridiculously low entry price. The C720-2848, otherwise, would be priced closer to other Acer Chromebooks, at $249.99.
But the other part of Acer's low price is exactly why Google created Chrome OS, and it's something that the company is finally getting back to with the newest Android 4.4 KitKat mobile operating system: a high-functionality operating system with a smooth user experience run on lower-priced, lower-spec'd hardware.
Google got away from this philosophy with its own hardware, Google Chromebook Pixel, which featured a high-definition Retina-competitive 12.85-inch touchscreen display capable of 239 pixels per inch. That laptop, which featured a total of 4.3 million pixels (enough to be invisible to the naked eye), also came with a $1,300 minimum price tag.
Other Chromebooks, like the previous incarnation of the Acer 720, Samsung's Chromebook, and HP's Chromebook 14 and Chromebook 11 offer the kind of basic functionality of Google Chrome OS at low prices - but none of them offer the combination of battery life, portability, and price that the new Acer 720 has.