Chromebooks have many advantages for someone who wants a cheap, utilitarian laptop to take with them on the go, but power has scarcely been one of them, until now. A new Chromebook has been announced by Acer, and it utilizes the Tegra K1 SoC; complete with 192 Kepler GPU cores. That’s the same architecture used in their desktop GPU’s, and nVidia claims that the Tegra K1 manages to outperform last gen consoles like the Xbox 360.
Moving further along the spec list shows that the 13 inch notebook also offers an option for a 1080P display, sadly it’s a TN panel rather than an IPS one, but considering the starting price of £219 it’s a lot to ask for. Other noteworthy specifications range from 2GB of RAM with 16GB of flash storage, all the way up to 4GB of RAM with 32GB of flash storage.
Around the outside, the Chromebook features 2 USB 3.0 ports, and an HDMI port, all housed in a newly designed glossy plastic body that weighs in at around 1.5KG. The thickness of the Tegra K1 Chromebook is 17mm.
Battery life is said to last at 13 hours for the lower resolution model, with 11 hours for the unit with the 1080P screen, an admirable feat.
The notebook runs Google’s ChromeOS. The philosophy behind the OS is that the the work is done online, so that the machine itself doesn’t require much power to run, thus, it can be very cheap. The downside of this is that, without an internet connection, the Chromebook doesn’t do much.
If you’re a power user, you might want to install another OS in order to take full advantage of the hardware on offer, which is great considering what you get for £219. All in all, it seems that the Acer Chromebook 13 is another solid entry in the company’s expanding lineup of machines.
