Google and Intel have announced the upcoming release of new Chromebooks from Acer, HP, and Toshiba — plus a Chromebox from Asus — each of which will sport Intel’s newest Haswell processors. Current Chromebooks from Google, Acer, HP and Samsung, use older Intel chips or ARM processors.
HP’s new Chromebook 14 is a 14-inch laptop juiced by an Intel Haswell 1.4Ghz Celeron 2955U processor, 2GB of RAM, and a 16GB solid state drive (SSD). As with all other Chromebooks, Google is including 100GB of free Google Drive storage for two years.
The HP Chromebook 14 weighs 4.08 lbs and 0.81-inches thick, and comes in three colors: white, turquoise, and “coral peach.” The Chromebooks sport the aluminum-and-plastic keyboards and similar styling found on HP’s high-end ENVY line of Windows Ultrabooks. With its newest Chromebook, HP promises up to 9.5 hours of battery life, double that of its first Chromebook, released earlier this year. Unfortunately, the display is a bit subpar at only 1366 x 768, and the plastic trackpad has not won over reviewers. For ports, the HP 14 has two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, full-size SD card slot, and HDMI out.
The HP Chromebook 14 will be available November 3rd first in the US and UK, for $300 or £250, which is $30 less than the earlier model. Although the HP Chromebook is Wi-Fi only, HP plans to release a 4G model soon afterwards, with a slightly higher price of $349. The company also plans a 32GB model. Laptop Magazine has posted a short hands-on video.
Acer’s newest Chromebook will be its third gen model. It’s designed for portability with an 11.6-inch display and a 2.76-lb, 0.76-inch profile. Acer’s new Chromebook also claims 8.5 hours of battery life, which is more than double the 4 hours of the previous model. The company didn’t release further specs, although we suspect they’ll be similar to HP’s new Chromebook and with two SD card slots, like on Acer’s previous Chromebook C7. The older C7 has recently dropped to as low as $139 on Groupon.
Acer hasn’t yet revealed pricing and availability for its newest Chromebook, but we suspect Acer will keep it the same $199 price as its current C7 model. You can pre-order the new model on Acer’s website, and The Verge reports that Acer will release it before the end of the year, presumably in time for holiday shopping. The Verge got some brief hands-on time with both of the new Acer and HP Chromebooks, and posted photos.
Although Toshiba didn’t announce details on its Chromebook, Google says that we will see Toshiba’s Chromebook — plus a Chromebox desktop computer from ASUS — in the coming months.
