Acer's New Chromebook 11 Arrives With Rugged, Durable Design At Only $279

Acer has announced its new Chrome OS laptop, the Acer Chromebook 11 C771. The upcoming Acer Chromebook features a rugged design, an 11.6-inch display and a starting price of $279.

The Acer Chromebook 11 C771 primarily being aimed for business users and students. It may look like a really chunky laptop when compared to something like an Apple MacBook, but it’s got it where it counts in terms of durability.

Acer says that the Chromebook 11 C771 is compliant to the Military Standard MIL-STD 810G. The company also says the notebook features corner-shield structure and rubber bumpers around its display and keyboard to provide addition protection. It could survive drops from up to 48 inches, and while its honeycomb structure can protect it from 132 pounds of downward force when it's closed.

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This kind of rugged and durable design is especially useful for students who may have their laptops inside their backpacks alongside stacks of books. Also, the Chromebook 11 C771’s keyboard is water resistant, as well. It can withstand spills of up to 11 ounces or 330ml of water. Spilled liquid will simply be routed away from the internal components of the laptop out of the bottom of the chassis.

The C771 is still slim and portable at only 0.82 inches thick and weighing only 2.98 pounds. Of course, there are other laptops out there that are lighter and thinner, but its durability and affordable price makes the Acer C771 a real attractive laptop.

The C771’s 11.6-inch display can be configured to come with a touchscreen panel, but that will bump the price up to $329. The laptop also has a 180-degree hinge, which lets users open the laptop in multiple display options. The display features a resolution of 1,366 x 768.

In terms of performance, the Acer Chromebook 11 C771 features Intel’s 6th Generation Skylake Core i5 or Core i3 processors. There’s also an option to go for a 1.6GHz Celeron 3855U processor as well, which is the cheapest configuration at $279. Both the non-touch and touchscreen models will arrive some time later this month, according to Engadget.

No information was given on how much the Core i5 and Core i3 versions are going to cost, but they will arrive in sometime in September and will most likely cost a bit more. However, all versions of the laptop come with 4GB of RAM and 32GB of internal storage. Acer also promises a long battery life of 13 hours.

In terms of ports, the Acer Chromebook 11 C771 comes with two USB 3.0 ports, a single USB Type-C port, and HDMI port and a headphone jack. Acer is still using its proprietary AC charging port, which is a bit of a disappointment since it comes with a USB-C port. But seeing the types of chips it's using, charging the laptop through USB-C is technically impossible, as pointed out by Mashable.

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Chromebooks can be quite competitive with its pricing and has proven to be the one of the most affordable ways of getting a laptop for work or for school. Acer’s Chromebook 11 C771 appears to be yet another formidable device in Google's ever growing Chrome OS hardware ecosystem.

“Chromebooks continue to grow in popularity at schools for their range of capabilities – and now the new Acer Chromebook 11 C771 can meet even more advanced needs such as those of students who are coding or editing videos and images,” Acer America VP of product management Chris Chiang said.

“Additionally, it can handle the more demanding computing needs of administrators, teachers and business users while still being portable enough to take anywhere.”