Acer C720(-2800) Chromebook with Intel Haswell CPU

The new Google Chrome OS based mini laptop has arrived. It’s the 11.6-inch Acer C720 Chromebook, bringing a new processor as the main improvement over the older C710 series.

The first and only available model is the C720-2800, featuring the Intel Celeron 2955U dual-core processor at 1.4GHz from the latest “Haswell” family, 4GB of RAM memory, and a 16GB of internal flash storage plus 100 GB of free storage on Google Drive for two years.

Acer C720-2800 Chromebook

The Haswell CPUs are known for its power efficiency and the Acer C720-2800 is claimed to provide up to 8.5 hours of power autonomy with its 3-cell Li-Polymer 3950 mAh battery. It has a thermal design power of 15W, while the last models of the C710 include the 17-Watt Celeron 1007U at 1.5GHz. The older C710 had the much slower Celeron 847 at 1.1GHz. Benchmarks of the 2995U are not available yet, but judging from the specifications it has similar performance to the 1007U and significantly faster than the 847 CPU. This means the chip is not a speed demon, but it has sufficient speed for the lightweight Chrome OS and its apps, based on web technology and remote “cloud” storage. Also, it can play 1080p videos fluently. It’s not extremely low power and cool like the Intel Atom or ARM chips found in some tablets and cell phones, so the laptop does have cooling fans inside as well as fan grilles (on the back and bottom).

We like the fact that the display has anti-reflective coating, instead of glossy on the C710. The screen resolution, however, remained the same: 1,366-by-768 pixels. It’s still an acceptable resolution for 11.6″ laptops.

The C720 connects to Internet via 802.11a/b/g/n wireless LAN, while for accessories and external devices there are two USB ports (1 x 2.0 + 1 x 3.0), Bluetooth 4.0, and HDMI video output. For sound, there’s a pair of speakers. Unfortunately, they’re located on the bottom of the chassis, so you’ll have somewhat muted sound.

Speaking of the bottom of the case, it has no doors for RAM and storage upgrades, but you’ll hardly need them because of aforementioned light nature of Chrome OS and reliance on remote storage.

This mini notebook sports a full-size Acer FineTip keyboard, which is basically a chiclet-style one. It is accompanied by a single-piece multi-gesture trackpad and, as expected, has no backlight.

The C720 also delivers a refreshed design of the chassis. It’s still a gray machine made of plastics and the change of the style is not radical, but the new version is much slimmer and lighter. It measures 0.75″ in profile, down from 1.1″, and weighs 2.8 pounds, down from 3.2 pounds.

C720-2800 Closed

To summarize, the C720 brings nice improvements over the previous generation. In particular, you get a more power efficient and cooler CPU, more portable design, anti-glare screen, longer battery life, lower overall weight of the notebook, and USB 3.0 technology. On the other side, the C710 has a total of three USB ports versus two and it can be also found for $50 less than the C720.

The C720-2800 has the HP Chromebook 11 11-1101us as the main current competitor. The HP has the Exynos 5250 ARM processor and smaller RAM – only 2 GB, as well as a higher 280-dollar price tag, but it provides IPS screen technology for better viewing angles, somewhat more stylish appearance, and a half pound lower weight.

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