Acer Chromebook 715

Is Acer’s premium Chromebook too pricey even for Lord Jeremy Laird?

- Jeremy Laird

Premium Chromebooks aren’t a new notion. It was Google itself that defenestrated the assumption that laptops running its Chrome

OS were automatically budget devices. The Google Pixelbook was a $1,000 system with build quality and features to match.

So what makes this Acer premium? Highlights include all-metal construction, a powerful Intel quadcore CPU, 16GB of RAM, a 15.6-inch IPS touchscreen, a fairly beefy battery and a fingerprint reader.

With UK pricing of £899 for this configuration, the Acer Chromebook 715 puts itself against a wide range of fairly premium laptops. On the Chromebook side, there’s the Google Pixelbook which kicks off at £800, albeit with a lower specification in areas like the CPU.

The Acer Chromebook 715’s chassis is indeed allalloy, for instance, and feels robust. The broad keyboard complete with a full numberpad is a nice feature, too. But it’s a pretty anonymous and has the air of a mid-market rather than truly premium device.

The Intel CPU is likewise the powerful quad-core Core i7-8650U that turbos up to fully 4.2GHz and is paired with a very healthy 16GB of DDR memory – just what you’d expect at this price. What you might not be so impressed by is a mere 128GB of local storage, and in low-performing eMMC format at that.