CESpotlight 2015: Acer

Acer came out strong in this year’s CES with an industry first Chromebook, two smartphones, and a pair of gaming monitors and the company’s recent affordable theme still stands strong in their showing this year. Read about their biggest announcements below.

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Acer Liquid Z410

The first of Acer’s many reveals during this week’s CES 2015, the Acer Liquid Z410 is the company’s latest smartphone offering. The Liquid Z410 is a budget smartphone targeted towards territories around Europe, the Middle East, and Africa. In spite of its ‘budget’ moniker, the new smartphone features support for 4G LTE connectivity and is equipped with a 64-bit quad-core processor which is quite impressive for a device in this category. Other technical specifications include a 4.5-inch qHD display with a resolution of 540 x 960 pixels and pixel density of 245ppi, a 5-megapixel rear camera, a 2-megapixel front-facing camera, a front-facing DTS Studio Sound speaker, and Android 4.4 KitKat. While the company did not disclose the amount of RAM, storage, and battery capacity of the Liquid Z410, it mentioned that the new phone will have a battery life of 5.5 hours of talk time and up to 400 hours of standby time. The Liquid Z410 will be available in the aforementioned territories in February for an SRP of €129 (or around Php6,853).

Acer Liquid Jade S

Acer also revealed another smartphone at CES 2015, the Liquid Jade S which is the successor to last year’s original Liquid Jade. The new model now comes with 4G LTE connectivity as well as a new 64-bit octa-core processor. The new features come courtesy of the latest Mediatek MT6752M processor that combines eight 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A53 CPUs as well as a Mali T760 GPU. Other features include a 5-inch 720p resolution display, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a 13-megapixel f/1.8 rear camera, and a whopping 5-megapixel front camera. The Liquid Jase S also comes in either single or dual-hybrid nano SIM/microSD card variants; the dual-hybrid variant allows users to switch out the micro-SD card with a secondary SIM for dual network functionality. Lastly, the Liquid Jade S will come with Android 4.4 KitKat but will receive the latest Android 5.0 Lollipop update sometime late this year while the device itself will be available sometime this month in select EMEA territories for a starting price of €299.

Two New Gaming Monitors

Acer also revealed a pair of new monitors for gamers at CES 2015. The first monitor, the Acer XB270HU, features an IPS display panel as well as Nvidia’s G-SYNC technology. It’s actually the first monitor in the industry to pair the two technologies into one monitor which makes it an exciting product to watch out for those who’ve been looking for IPS colors but with the response time of a TN panel. The second monitor, the XG270HU, features the more common TN panel as well as a response time of 1ms (according to Acer). Both monitors measure 27-inches and feature display resolutions of 2560 x 1440 pixels a refresh rate of 144 Hz, and a mix of inputs including HDMI 2.0, DVI, and DisplayPort 1.2 ports. Both monitors will be available sometime in March but the company did not mention how much either monitor will be sold for.

Acer 15-inch Chromebook

Acer’s biggest reveal by far in this year’s CES 2015 is its new and first-of-its-kind 15.6-inch display Chromebook. Chromebooks are usually expected to feature smaller displays around 11 or 13 inches for the purpose of portability but we guess Acer has decided that the Chromebook is ready for a bigger spotlight and a bigger display. The new Chromebook 15 is quite hefty weighing in at around 4.85 pounds or a little over 2kg and measures almost an inch thick (0.95-inches). It’s also looks pretty rugged with its either matte white fabric-like design or black mesh design that looks somewhat like carbon fiber. The company claims the new notebook can withstand up to 60kg of force and the device’s corners can survive up o 45cm drops unscathed. We’ll have to see if these claims prove true once the device starts showing up on store shelves.

The Acer Chromebook 15 features Intel’s 5^th generation “Broadwell” Core i3 processors or the latest generation Celeron processors as well as either an HD 720p or full HD 1080p display. Other configuration options include either 16GB or 32GB of SSD storage, and 2GB or 4GB of RAM. The new notebook also comes with 802.11ac WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, a combination of USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, and an SD card slot.

Chromebooks have seen a steady but slow rise in popularity in the past few years as more and more consumers see how its limited feature set prove to be more than enough for some users. We’re excited to see how well a less portable Chromebook will do in the market as most people primarily purchase them for their portability. The company did not announce when the new Chromebook will be available saying only that availability will vary per region but when it does become available prices for the different configurations will begin at $249.99.