New Acer Chromebooks boast 11th-Gen Intel CPUs for up to $900

2 Acer Chromebook Spin 514 convertibles on white background — Enlarge / Acer Chromebook Spin 514.

Acer is releasing half a dozen new Chromebook SKUs, it announced today during its Next@Acer event. The company is updating its lineup with options for Intel’s latest 11th Gen “Tiger Lake” CPUs, and although the list includes some of the standard cheaper Chromebook options, Acer also introduced some pricier selections boasting fanless designs for quieter operation.

Fanless two-in-one Chromebooks

The Acer Chromebook Spin 514 and Chromebook Spin Enterprise 514 are the highest-end options. They’re more expensive than the average Chromebook (Acer’s current offerings go as low as $190), with the standard version costing $700 when it comes out in January and the business-focused version priced at $900 for a December release.

The upcoming two-in-ones (laptops that can convert into tablets) ditch the fans to reduce noise, and that likely helps keep them thin as well. Each machine is 0.68 inches (166.9 mm) thick and weighs 3.02 pounds (1.37 kg).

CPU options range from a dual-core Intel Core i3-1110G4 to a quad-core i7-1180G7. The machines are specced for 16GB of LPDDR4X memory and 512GB of NVMe PCIe 3.0 storage.

Acer’s Spin 514 has a 14-inch screen with slim bezels (for an 84 percent screen-to-body ratio), a touchpad made of Corning Gorilla Glass, DTS Audio surround sound, and Wi-Fi 6. There are only two ports, however—both USB-C.

Acer’s enterprise Chromebooks target cloud-dependent companies and IT administrators who need to deploy, manage, and secure cloud workforces.

Enlarge / The cheaper Chromebook Spin 314 appears to have a colored Chromebook logo, unlike the Spin 514.

The more budget-friendly alternative, the Acer Chromebook Spin 314, drops the CPU options to a two-core, two-thread Intel Celeron N4500 up to an Intel Pentium Silver N6000 with four cores and four threads (no hyper-threading here). The Spin 314 will start at $500 when it comes out next month.

Acer’s new Chromebook 515

The Chromebook 515 and its enterprise version, the Acer Chromebook Enterprise 515, are 15.6-inch clamshells with the same specs. Both have CPUs ranging from an 11th-Gen Intel Pentium Gold 7505 to a quad-core Intel Core i7 1180G7 with Iris Xe integrated graphics. You can pack each with up to 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage and get some of the same bonus features found with the aforementioned two-in-ones, like a Gorilla Glass touchpad and DTS Audio. There’s also a webcam shutter on this 3.75-pound device. You still don’t get USB Type-A ports or a headphone jack, but the Chromebook 515 has two USB-C (3.2 Gen 2) ports, HDMI, and microSD.

The Acer Chromebook 514 is a less expensive option; it starts at $400 and releases in December. There are some downgrades, though. The clamshell has only 8GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC storage. It runs on an octa-core MediaTek Kompanio 828 CPU and Arm Mali-G57 MCS graphics.

https://arstechnica.com/?p=1803755