Acer C720P Chromebook Review

Our friends over at Acer have sent us the C720P Chromebook for us to review. In the past few years, Chrome OS has taken off by storm and many Chrome devices are hitting the market. In fact just a few weeks ago Intel and Google Chrome held an event announcing quite a few new devices, but Intel and Acer have been good friends for quite some time. Last year Acer unleashed the very popular C720 Chromebook and then they unleashed the new C720P Chromebook. This device represents where Acer wants to go with their Chromebook line, specifically performance and usability. Will the C720P from Acer be your next Chromebook; Keep reading to see our full thoughts!

Design

The C720P follows the design footprints that we saw from Acer with the C720, a main difference would be the color. Rather then the grey color that we saw with the C720, we get a nice white with the C720P. Like most Chromebooks, Acer wanted to keep it quite portable, two key ingredients for portability are being thin and light. In my book Acer gets these two items check off the list coming in at just 2.98-pounds and only 0.78-inches thick. It would be great for use in the classroom, an area that Acer works very closely with is education, so it makes sense that the Chromebook is more than portable enough to fit in a backpack. It would be perfect for use on an aircraft, with its small design and you get another way of using it as it features a touchscreen display. It is mostly a plastic build, similar to other Chromebooks. The lid of the C720P is a smooth plastic, while the other sides including the bottom don’t feature that smoothness. This does not mean that the surface is rough through, it is similar to the other builds of competing devices. The ports for the device live on either side of the Chromebook and they are closest to the display. It gets thinner as you move away from the ports on the sides. In terms of ports you get a power port, an HDMI port, a USB 3.0 port, a USB 2.0 port, a headphone jack, and an SD card slot. You have a vent on the hinge and on the bottom of the Chromebook. Speaking of the hinge, it is built very well and doesn’t move unless you want to change the ordination. On the top you have an Acer logo and a Chrome logo, something that we find on all Chromebooks. Overall, the Acer C720P features a very clean and simple design.

Display

Prior to the C720P from Acer, the only Chromebook with a touchscreen was the Pixel. The Chromebook made directly by Google and it also features a pretty hefty package. Therefore the C720P is making a touchscreen Chromebook affordable. You get an 11.6-inch HD Widescreen  LED Touch Screen Display on the C720P and there are quite a few features that go along with it. The first being the touch feature, it can support up to 10 fingers and it performed very well in our testing. You can pinch or zoom, swipe back and forth, or even just scroll. Quality is pretty good, it has a resolution of 1366 X 768 and is in a 16:9 aspect ratio. Acer’s ComfyView technology is on board this makes for a crisper and clearer display. While the display doesn’t get super bright, it is comparable to most other laptops on the market.

Software

Chrome OS has really taken off lately, with many new devices and new features. Updates happen very quickly and are pretty much automatic. The C720P will boot up in literally a matter of seconds and this fast experience is found everywhere on the device. One thing about the Chrome OS experience is that it is very similar on all the Chrome devices. If you’re looking for new applications or extensions, simply visit the Chrome Web Store. I highly suggest some of the more touch applications like Cut The Rope or Angry Birds. When you get the C720P you get 100GB of Google Drive storage free for 2 years, Google Drive is heavily integrated into the OS. You can access all your presentations, documents, spreadsheets, and everything else on there. Google Now is built-in to Chrome now and will update you on traffic, sports scores, much more. Multiple user sign in and guest modes are here as well.

Hardware

Powering the Acer C720P is a fast a 1.4GHz Intel Celeron Processor that is paired with 2048MB  of RAM. It is a fast experience from the first boot, keep in mind that boot times are around just 6 seconds, which is super fast. After that all you have to do is sign in and you are good to go, ready to use Chrome OS. The Celeron Processor is based off the Haswell chip, this brings speed improvements to the responsiveness of the device. On several other devices content heavy web sites and multitasking could sometimes slow things down, this did not occur on the C720P. Helping the fast experience and boot time is a 32GB Solid State Drive which is built-in, you can expand this storage via the SD card slot as well. Or of course you can use a cloud storage system, like Google Drive which is fully integrated with the software.

Battery life is another Acer did a really great job on, this is also due to the new processor and solid state drive, which makes better use of battery power. You get a 3-Cell Li-Polymer Battery with 3950mAh. Acer and Google says that it achieved 7 hours of life, but I got around 8 hours out of it. This of course is paired with multiple days of standby support. Battery life is certainly not a worry on the C720P.

Bottom Line

Acer has done a great job with Chromebooks and the C720P brings new improvements and new features to an already great line. While, right now many manufactures including Acer are prepping new release of Chrome devices, most likely, the C720P is one that stands out. First of all if you are looking for a touch screen Chromebook that is affordable, look no further than this device. The C720P Chromebook comes in at $299.99 and has one price point. On top of the touch screen feature, you get a fast Intel Celeron processor that is paired with a great battery. It has a very portable design and plenty of ports. Further more, if you are looking for a Chromebook and don’t necessarily want a touchscreen, the C720P is an all around good device. Click Here To Get Your Acer C720P Chromebook! We would like to thank Acer for providing us with a copy of the “Acer C720P Chromebook”.

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