Acer announces durable and powerful new Comet Lake Chromebook for education

We’ve been waiting for today to get to talk a bit about the new Acer Chromebook C712 that we had the opportunity to spend some time with out at CES 2020. We have a video being prepared featuring some of the crazy stuff we saw this Chromebook do out in Vegas, but for now, we just want to introduce you to Acer’s latest durable, classroom-ready Chromebook.

We’ll get to the full specs in just a second, but one of the biggest standouts in this device is the 10th-gen Intel Comet Lake chip inside. It starts with a Celeron or Pentium processor but can be scaled up to an i3 as well. With a smattering of Chromebooks for classrooms all rocking the Gemini Lake Celerons, it is a pretty big leap forward for Acer to be including this much more powerful lineup of chips in its new education Chromebook.

We’ll feature more on this in our video later this week, but the other standout part of this Chromebook is its durability. It can handle up to 132 pounds of downward force (we had Joe stand on it and it survived just fine), it can be picked up and held by the screen surround, it has keys that cannot be picked off, it can withstand up to 11 ounces of water poured on it, and can withstand plenty of drops from any angle at a height of 4 feet. In a word, this thing is a flat-out tank.

Fortunately, it doesn’t look like a Chromebook that’s made to be destroyed and keeps a relatively thin form factor while sporting a large, spacious trackpad and a 3:2 12-inch screen. Don’t get me wrong, this thing isn’t made for consumers and isn’t trying to compete with the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook or ASUS Flip C436 in the looks department, but if you are interested in a Chromebook that can withstand your kids and probably all of their friends, this might be the one for you at its pretty-attractive $329.99 starting price. Check out the specs below and be sure to subscibe to the newsletter if you’d like to know when our hands-on video goes out in the next couple days.