Chromebooks are everywhere these days. If you have yet to use one or think about buying one, then that is likely to change over the coming months and years. Although, support for Chromebooks was a little slow coming at first, manufacturers seem keen to jump on board now. Which is not too surprising as they offer decent specs and abilities at a very reasonable price. In fact, the trend at the moment is for Chromebooks to become cheaper with manufacturers wanting to be the one who offers the ‘cheapest’ option out there. That said, while they seem to be lowering in price on average, they are also getting better with bigger screens and faster processors.
Back in January, Acer, who have long been on the Chromebook train, announced the launch of a new Chromebook dubbed the Acer C740. This particular Chromebook caught attention for two main reasons. One it was considered to be rather rugged and two it is coming with a Broadwell processor inside. This is the latest processor from Intel and a step up from their previous Haswell processors. Well, if there was any doubt about the performance of the Broadwell chip inside then you might want to take a quick look at the image below. This was provided to OMG Chrome (source link below) by Chris Elkendier who ran the new Acer C740 against ten other Chromebooks to test the performance and see how they stack up and the Acer C740 seemed to do very well indeed.
Elkendier, controlled the conditions of the testing (as much as possible) and scores were recorded over three benchmarks. For clarity, each of the three bars in the graph below highlight a different test. The important part to note is that to score well, the orange bar should be high while the grey and blue bars should be low. You can check out the key in the graph for a more detailed explanation. As you can see from the image, the Acer C740 (first set of results) scored higher on all three tests then all other Chromebooks tested. In fact, it did not only score well but seemed to significantly score better in all three tests, suggesting the Broadwell chip inside really does push the capabilities of the device.
If you are thinking about picking one up, then the Acer C740 will come with an 11.6 inch screen with a 1366 x 768 resolution. Inside, the C740 will be available in either a 2GB or 4GB RAM option as well as a 16GB and 32GB internal storage option. As we know, the C740 will come powered by a Intel Broadwell Celeron 3205U processor. Additionally, the C740 will offer standards like WiFi 802.11 ac, Bluetooth 4.0 LE, USB 3.0 port, HDMI port and an expected 9 hours of battery life. The base price for the 2GB model (16GB internal storage) will come in at $259 while the 4GB model (16GB internal storage) will come in at $279.
