The Acer C7 is cheapest Chromebook to date, what does $199 buy

Acer’s C7 Chromebook is now available for purchase. The C7 is the latest offering in a collaborative effort with Google. Priced at US$199, the C7 is set to be the cheapest Chromebook produced to date. The C7 features built-in Google products such as Search, Gmail and Hangouts.

As far as specs go the C7 is fitted with an 11.6-inch HD screen. It also features an Intel Celeron 847 processor clocked at 1.10 Ghz as well as 2GB of RAM. Storage for the Chromebook is a pretty substantial 320GB with a host of USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, VGA and Ethernet connections.

Another key addition is 100GB of free storage on Google Drive for two years. This is a serious bump up from the usual 5GB users receive. This promotional offer begins the moment it is redeemed by users on any Chrome enabled device.

The C7 seems to tick all the boxes for a low-end laptop. Its one downside is a rather unimpressive 3.5 hours of battery life. That’s not to mention what kind of toll heavy usage will have on that time.

Battery life is one factor that cannot be overlooked when purchasing any product, let alone a laptop. Especially considering the C7 is going up against a plethora of newly designed tablet-hybrids that continue to materialise following the release of Windows 8.

It therefore falls to the consumer to weigh up the benefits of the C7’s strong price point and weak battery life.