Acer ChromeBook 13 with NVIDIA Tegra K1 officially announced
NVIDIA and Acer have officially revealed the Acer ChromeBook 13, the first ChromeBook to come equipped with a Tegra K1 chipset. It might seem like overkill to have a graphics powerhouse inside a ChromeBook, but NVIDIA and Acer are betting on the future of graphically rich web experiences powered by standards like WebGL (which even the biggest companies such as Google use for web applications like Google Maps).
We all know about the prowess of the Tegra K1 — it has 192 GPU cores and boasts a lot of the same graphics features that you’ll see in their full-sized desktop Kepler chips. Let’s talk about how it works inside the ChromeBook 13.
For starters, the number “13” in the device’s name doesn’t only refer to its display size, but its battery life. NVIDIA says users can squeeze 13 hours of use out of this thing, whereas an average PC notebook is around 6 hours, with average Chromebooks coming in at around 8. This is thanks to NVIDIA’s Tegra K1 and its ability to sip on power instead of sucking a battery dry. Pretty insane if you ask me.
The device is about as thin as thin can get, too — 18mm, which makes it the second thinnest Chromebook on the market. Here’s a look at some of the other specs that make up the rest of this device:
- 16GB of internal storage (expandable up to 32GB)
- 2GB of RAM (expandable up to 4GB)
- 1366 x 768 or 1920 x 1080 resolution
- 2x USB 3.0, one on side one on back
- HDMI out
- SD card slot
- WiFi-only (no 3G or 4G option)
And to top all that off, this thing is pretty affordable. The 1366 x 768 option is coming in at a starting price of $279, while the full HD version costs just $20 more. Both should be available for pre-sale on Amazon and Best Buy later today, and we’ll be updating this post with links to those product pages once they go live. For now, let us know if you wouldn’t mind making this your newest backpack buddy whenever it’s scheduled to launch sometime next month.