Acer Unveils New Chromebook 14 with Up to 14-Hour Battery Life

Acer this week introduced its new family of Chromebooks that wed performance with portability. The new laptops feature multi-core x86 microprocessors, 14” displays as well as aluminum chassis. Even in its most advanced configuration, the Chromebook 14 costs only $299. Acer traditionally positions its Chromebooks as solutions for students as well as customers on a budget, who need basic computing and do not want to invest a lot.

Several years ago, personal computers running Google’s Chrome operating system were considered as cheap alternatives to Windows-based PCs, which is why they used affordable components and could not boast solid performance, despite the lightweight OS. Eventually, such PCs became relatively popular and manufacturers started to use more advanced ingredients, such as IPS displays or microprocessors with higher performance. Google itself introduced its Chromebook Pixel laptop in 2013 (and updated it in 2015), targeting premium buyers. The Chromebook Pixel is one the most advanced and powerful Chromebooks ever made thanks to its Core i7 “Broadwell” processor, a display with 3:2 aspect ratio as well as an aluminum body. Google’s Pixel demonstrated to other PC makers that it is possible to build premium Chrome OS-based notebooks and they followed with more advanced Chromebooks. The new Acer Chromebook 14 is not as powerful as the Pixel, but it is clearly a step into its direction with a high-resolution display as well as an all-aluminum chassis.

The Acer Chromebook 14 (CB3-431) features, as the name suggests, a 14” IPS display with 1920×1080 or 1366×768 resolution as well as 170-degree viewing angles and an anti-glare coating. Unlike the Chromebook Pixel, Acer’s new laptops have 16:9 aspect ratio with all of its advantages for video viewing and disadvantages for Internet surfing. The model with higher resolution can work on one battery charge for 12 hours, whereas the Chromebook 14 with 1366×768 resolution boasts with up to 14-hour battery life on a single charge.

The Chromebook 14 laptops are based on Intel Celeron “Braswell” processors with two (Celeron N3060) or four (Celeron N3160/N3150) cores featuring the Airmont micro-architecture and up to 1.60 GHz clock-rate, Intel’s Intel Gen 9 graphics core with 12 execution units as well as up to 6 W TDP. Unlike Google’s Chromebook Pixel as well as Acer’s Chromebook 15, the Chromebook 14 cannot integrate a high-performance CPU featuring Broadwell micro-architecture, but that was certainly a trade-off between the price and portability.

Acer equips its Chromebook 14 laptops with 2 GB or 4 GB of LPDDR3 RAM (which is a good news for battery life), 16 GB or 32 GB of eMMC solid-state storage as well as a dual-band 2×2 MIMO 802.11ac Wi-Fi module with Bluetooth 4.2. The systems also feature a 720p webcam, a 3.5-mm mini jack, a microphone, stereo speakers, two USB 3.0 ports as well as an HDMI output.

The Chromebook 14 from Acer is 17 mm thick and weighs 1.55 kilograms, which is in line with many portable laptops. Acer claims that its fanless cooling system is enough to cool-down Intel’s Celeron CPU with a 6 W TDP, which is why the Chromebook 14 has no fans at all.

Acer did not say much about the price of its Chromebook 14. The launch model will be available next month with a Full HD display, 32 GB storage and 4 GB RAM starting at $299.99 in the U.S. and $399.99 (CAD) in Canada. Other Chromebook 14 models will sport lower amount of storage and RAM as well as a lower-resolution screen, but also a longer battery life. Their prices are unknown, but will clearly be different in different countries.

Gallery: Acer Unveils New Chromebook 14 with Up to 14-Hour Battery Life

Toshiba Details Its PC Business Reorg: Set to Concentrate on Tecra and Portégé Brands for Business Users

Toshiba this month revealed its finalized PC business strategy for the future. As expected, the company intends to cease selling consumer personal computers outside of Japan and plans to focus on corporate and business PCs going forward. Toshiba will …

ASUS Unveils the VivoMini VM65N: a NUC-Like mini-PC with GT 930M

Intel’s NUC and Mini-STX form-factors are designed to build tiny PCs with decent performance with more or less standard components. However, these form-factors have traditionally not supported discrete graphics processors in any form and can integrate only one or two storage device – at present, only some of GIGABYTE’s BRIX line and Zotac’s mini-PCs are using GPUs in a larger chassis to achieve this, particularly due to the increased heat generation. ASUSTeK’s Vivo desktop personal computers are designed to fit between NUC and mini-ITX in terms of size and the company this week added two new models in to the lineup.

The new ASUS VivoMini VM65 and VM65N PCs are going to be available with either an Intel Core i3 or the Core i5-6200U, featuring the Skylake micro-architecture as well as an unnamed Intel PCH. The systems are equipped with two SO-DIMM slots for up to 16 GB of DDR4-2133 memory, space for one 3.5-inch drive (or two 2.5-inch with optional Vivo DualBay), an 802.11ac Wi-Fi module, Gigabit Ethernet, a 4-in-1 card reader, four USB 3.0 ports, two USB 3.1 type-A ports (the VM65N only), one audio output jack, an HDMI connector, one Dual-mode DisplayPort output (capable of driving DP-to-HDMI and DP-to-DVI over passive adaptors), built-in 2x2W SonicMaster speakers and a Kensington lock.

The more advanced VM65N also comes with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 930M mobile graphics processor (384 stream processors), with 1GB of onboard DDR3 memory and running under NVIDIA’s Optimus technology. ASUS claims that this gives 56% better synthetic benchmark scores over the non-GPU version of the VivoMini. While ASUS does not position the VM65N directly as a gaming machine, it claims it could serve as a photo or video editing platform thanks to its ability to connect to three displays (one using HDMI, two using dual-mode DisplayPort). While it is noteworthy that ASUS has managed to install a discrete GPU into a tiny PC, the question is whether such a graphics chip can bring much of a benefit to a standard user beyond CUDA support.

The choice of the GPU was conditioned by its TDP of around 33W. At present, the 930M is NVIDIA’s nearly most powerful mobile graphics processor at this power and is rated at 790.3 GFLOPS. The combined TDP of the CPU and the GPU of the VM65N is 48W – if we select a single Intel CPU that comes in under this limit, we get something like the Core i5-6350HQ (45W TDP), which runs with four cores and uses the Iris Pro Graphics 580 processors for $304 – $306 (up from $281 for the i5-6200U) and comes with an additional 128MB of eDRAM. The i5-6350HQ offers 1152 GFLOPS of graphics processing power, or a 46% increase in pure performance, with a combined cost lower than that of the i5-6200U plus the 930M.

The other side of the equation is CUDA support of the extra graphics chip, or a potentially better ability to drive certain display types. It has also been pointed out that splitting the power generation across two chips may be better for heat removal and heatsink/fan noise, but also makes it easier to use the same motherboard across all VivoMinis. Though it would be interesting to compare the internal designs.

VivoMini PCs from ASUS come in sub 2-liter enclosures made of brushed aluminum. The systems are larger than Intel’s NUCs, but they are still more compact that mini-ITX PCs. They can be attached to the backside of displays using standard VESA mounts (presumably 100x100mm, not confirmed), or placed on the desk.

The exact pricing of the VivoMini VM65 and VM65N is unknown. Right now Amazon sells the previous generation models, the VM62 and VM62N, starting at $458 and $1073 respectively.

Gallery: ASUS Unveils NUC-Like PC with a Discrete GPU