Traditionally, Chromebooks have been small computers, filling the netbook-shaped hole in the consumer market. While a tablet with a keyboard attachment can admirably fill-in at a coffee shop, extended time on the small screen and cramped keyboard will wear on both patience and comfort. While a Chromebook may seem like it fills a very specific niche, that niche is much bigger than it seems, and now Acer is releasing the world’s first 15.6-inch Chromebook to coincide with the size of the platform’s market.
Continuing with the Nexus-like naming convention, Acer’s Chromebook 15 will be the first Chromebook of its size, boasting a 15.6-inch 1080p display. Like Acer’s previous C720 offering, the Chromebook 15 will come in a budget-friendly or power-focused configuration. The cheaper model’s starting price of $249 will make your bank account breathe a sigh of relief, and comes equipped with a 1360×768 display, Broadwell Celeron processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 16GB SSD. The more powerful model — price so far undisclosed, beads of sweat dripping down your bank account’s brow — boasts a 1080p display, a Core i3, 4GB of RAM, and a 32GB SSD. If you’re already familiar the Core i3 C720, the main difference between that and the Chromebook 15 is the option for the big, gorgeous screen. The Chromebook 15 also sports 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, an HDMI port and SD card reader, one USB 3.0 port, and another USB 2.0 port.
It also comes in a black.
Being a 15-inch laptop, the Chromebook 15 will be heftier than its smaller brethren, weighing 4.85 pounds and measuring 0.95 inches thick, tugging on your shoulder a little more as you carry it to a coffee shop. Its eight-hour battery life hasn’t made a leap from the C720, but the fact that a 15.6-inch 1080p display didn’t lower the battery life should be a happy outcome — and now that the laptop has more real estate available, the roomy keyboard is flanked by two stereo speakers.
Currently, only the Core i3 Chromebooks made by Acer and Dell are powerful enough to be considered as laptop replacements, but with 11-inch displays, both are too small to stare at for an entire work day. Acer’s new 15.6-inch model makes working on a Chromebook much easier on the eyes, and the Core i3 and 4GB of RAM version will help it run as smoothly as the Core i3 C720.
So far, Chromebooks are still lacking in RAM and local storage — adding more of that would forfeit Chromebooks’ price advantage over traditional laptops — but Acer has now tackled displays, and the Core i3 and 4GB of RAM Chromebook 15 could easily fill the role of your in-office or coffee shop computer. If you don’t work from an office and avoid coffee shops, Chromebooks also make decent cheap computers you don’t need to be afraid of ruining with Linux. If the Chromebook 15 isn’t powerful enough and you’re dead set on joining the Chrome OS ecosystem, you could always drop a ton of money on the Pixel.
