Acer broadens market with Chrome laptops and tablets

The Taiwanese company showed off a new line of its popular Swift series, Predator and Nitro gaming laptops and PCs, Chromebook laptops, and a look at the first ChromeOS tablet.

Google recently removed the “tablets” section from the Android website, indicating it could be focusing on the Chrome operating system instead.

With the Chromebook Tab 10, Acer is taking an educational approach in South Africa after its success with schools internationally, and a recent local roadshow.

A rival to the iPad, the Tab 10 has a 9.7” screen, is powered by 4GB of Ram, has 32GB of storage and offers about nine hours of battery life. It comes with a built-in stylus that does not require a battery or recharge.

The company also introduced an “innovative school programme” that allows teachers to be a part of a social network that will focus on sharing best practices, and let teachers learn and get support from peers, learn about future educational trends, and be eligible for exchange student programmes.

Schools will be in line to receive demo units for testing and piloting activities.

The new Swift 5 is touted as the “world’s thinnest 15-inch laptop”, appealing to both lifestyle and business customers. Weighing less than 1kg, it packs a 15.6-inch full 1080p HD screen, runs on new Intel processors with up to 16GB of Ram, and holds up to 1 terabyte of storage.

Those in the market for similar products in the lifestyle and business sectors should keep an eye on the Asus range of laptops, unveiled recently at Computex in Taipei.

The new ZenBook Pro laptops offer a ScreenPad that combines a touchpad with a 5.5-inch high-resolution screen, bringing a new way to interact with Windows apps and dedicated programs. A tap on the F6 button will toggle between touchpad and touchscreen mode. The ZenBook Pro range also has built-in support for Amazon’s Alexa voice services.

A more youthful range comes in the form of the Asus VivoBook, available in 14” and 15.6” sizes in a colour-blocking design with Nvidia graphics, Intel’s eighth-gen Core i7 processors, and up to 2TB hard drives.

All hardware mentioned above will be available in the coming months, with prices announced at launch.