Acer's new all-aluminum Chromebook offers up to 14 hours of battery life

Acer has been a familiar part of the Chromebook market for a while now, offering devices like the Chromebook 15 that deliver more screen real estate than we're used to in this category. Its latest addition to the market — the Chromebook 14 — follows this trend, providing a 14-inch display with the choice between HD (1366 x 768) and full HD (1920 x 1080) resolutions. The Chromebook 14 is also Acer's first to use an all-aluminum chassis, and with the HD version the company promises up to 14 hours of battery life.

Acer hasn't revealed all the pricing for the Chromebook 14, but says the full HD version will start selling from $299.99 with 32GB of flash storage (the cheaper eMMC type), a 1.6 GHz Intel Celeron processor, and 4GB of RAM. This model is available to preorder now on Amazon, and will be coming to Best Buy in April. There'll also be a version with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage, but pricing and availability for this model have yet to be announced.

Acer Chromebook 14

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As with Acer's Chromebook 15, the main attraction of the Chromebook 14 seems to be its large display. Chromebooks may be billed as computers for "everybody," but the best devices — such as Dell's Chromebook 11 — tend to have smaller screens, while customers still want bigger displays (and the bigger keyboards that go with them). Acer's previous attempts to cater to this audience have been somewhat undercut by cheap build quality. Maybe with the Chromebook 14 and its aluminum chassis, the company will get the balance right.