Acer brings two new Chromebooks to the education market

The Taiwanese PC maker has been offering an expanding line of notebooks loaded with Google's Chrome OS, which have been gaining popularity as a lower-cost alternative to Windows devices.

Acer's two new products, announced Wednesday, are built with "extra durability features" for the education market. They include strong outer coverings and hinges that can endure stress, such as drops to the floor, or being crammed in a backpack.

The larger, 15.6-inch model, the Acer C910, can come in two screen resolutions: 1920 by 1080 pixels, or a 1366 by 768 pixels. It weighs 2.2 kg (4.85 pounds), and comes just after Acer announced a 15-inch Chromebook model earlier this month, sporting similar specs.

The smaller, 11.6-inch model, is called the Acer C740 and weighs 1.3 kg.

Both laptops are being offered with Intel's new fifth-generation Core i3-5005U chip, a 2GHz dual-core processor, or an Intel Celeron 3205U chip, a 1.5 GHz dual-core processor.

Acer claims the C910 will have up to 8 hours of battery life, while the C740 can have up to 9 hours. Both also have Bluetooth 4.0 and USB 3.0 and HDMI ports.

The two models will be available in February. The C910, which will come with 4GB of RAM and either a 16GB or 32GB SSD drive, will start at US$299.99.

The C740 model will start at $259.99, and be built with 16GB SSD Drive, and either have 2GB or 4GB of RAM.