Acer Chromebook 13: 1080p with Tegra K1
by Jarred Walton on January 23, 2015 10:00 AM ESTBattery Life
Battery life ends up being one of the highlights of the Chromebook experience, as the lightweight OS does well in both our Internet test along with our heavier 720p H.264 video looping test. If you’re looking for an inexpensive laptop that can go all day without plugging in, the Chromebook 13 is definitely an option. As with all of our battery life testing, we set the brightness of the display to ~200 nits and run until the device shuts off.
I do want to note before we get to the results that we are not using the same Internet test that we use on Windows laptops in our “Light” battery life test – that uses Internet Explorer for one, and it cycles through more complex web pages and tends to be a bit heavier in terms of processing requirements compared to our smartphone and tablet test, which is what we also run on Chromebooks. Our video test uses the same video (a 720p 4Mbit MP4 file) as our table video test, which is a lot lighter than our "Heavy" Windows laptop test where we’re loading web pages and downloading at 8Mbps in the background.
It might be interesting at some point to see how a modern Windows laptop manages with these same workloads, or to try replicating our heavier workloads on a Chromebook, but for now let’s just look at the results.
Over ten hours of battery life for web surfing is certainly nothing to scoff at, but perhaps more surprising is the nearly eight hours of video playback. Our earlier Chromebooks didn't do nearly as well, but both the C720 and the Chromebook 13 are able to hit 7+ hours of video playback. We’re still not able to match the battery life of most tablets for video playback, but compared to the old HP Chromebook 11 and the Chromebook Pixel things have obviously improved a lot.
LCD Quality
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While performance was perhaps suspect with the Tegra K1 processor, where the Chromebook 13 really lets me down is in the LCD quality. I’m used to seeing a lot of poor quality 1366x768 TN panels in budget laptops, but when Acer chose to offer a 1080p display I hoped for something better. Unfortunately, the only upgraded aspect is the resolution, and the graininess and poor viewing angles at times make the display almost worse than a lower resolution panel. As you would expect, the color quality and accuracy also leave much to be desired.
Right from the start we see problems with the display. The maximum white level of 262 nits isn’t horrible, but the corresponding black level of 0.79 nits is more of a dark grey than a black, and the resulting contrast is a rather poor 330:1 at best. And I say “at best” because at lower intensities the contrast drops further, e.g. when set for 200 nits we measured a black level of 0.67, giving us a 298:1 contrast ratio (and at 100 nits the contrast is only 65:1).
Things don’t improve as we move to other areas. The white point is crazy high at 11164K, though not at the level of the HP Stream 11 (thank goodness) and the result is that the screen – whites/greys in particular – has a clear “cool” blue tint. Delta E results across the whole set of tests are generally at or above 9.0 averages, which means the errors are very clearly visible to the naked eye. Here’s what the comparison charts look like for what you see vs. what you should see:
In this sense, it’s almost the reverse of the last Chromebook we reviewed, the HP CB11, where we found a good display (relatively speaking) but other areas needed work. The C720 display is another good point of comparison here: it has worse maximum brightness and colors are even less accurate, but the contrast ratio is slightly better at 471:1. As I said earlier, it’s like one step forward in resolution, but a step laterally or even backwards in other areas.
We can almost excuse the poor display as the Chromebook 13 is a budget laptop, and while there are plenty of Chromebooks around the $250 price point, the only current option that has a good display (other than the too-expensive Pixel) is Toshiba’s Chromebook 2 with a 1080p IPS panel. At $100 more for the Toshiba it’s unfortunately going to be a tough pill to swallow. Again, Acer seems to have learned a lesson here with upgraded displays as the forthcoming CB15 1080p uses an IPS panel. We should have both the Toshiba CB2 and the Acer CB15 in for testing shortly, so I can see how the two truly stack up in other areas, but for now if you like high quality displays just know that this particular 1080p panel falls well short of that mark. Not that my mom would likely notice the difference unless I pointed it out, of course….
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jhoff80 - Friday, January 23, 2015 - link
Personally, I really think that Windows 10 should come with a sort of "RT mode" that doesn't let a user run anything that doesn't come from the Windows Store to protect from this sort of thing. Make it a switch that only the admin can modify, and that'd help a lot. I actually was considering a Surface 2 for my parents for a while because of this very reason (and they only need Office and IE anyway).jimbo2779 - Friday, January 23, 2015 - link
That's actually a really good idea. It would be really useful for the people that have to"admin" for a computer owned by a family member or friend.nils_ - Sunday, January 25, 2015 - link
This is what apple does on OS X as well, at least the Yosemite I use for work. You can set in the security settings that things downloaded from the Internet can't be run without overriding it in the security settings.jabber - Friday, January 23, 2015 - link
You don't get viruses etc. from porn sites. That's turn of the century thinking. You get malware from legitimate download sites. I guess you haven't read the articles from HowToGeek where they found that all the main download sites are stuffing the software with junk.Thats why folks and family get infected all the while due to them downloading innocent software encrusted with malware laden installers.
http://www.howtogeek.com/207692/yes-every-freeware...
JarredWalton - Friday, January 23, 2015 - link
Okay, yes, you can get malware infections from non-porn activities, but looking for porn is also still a major source of problems. Particularly if someone looks for free stuff. But the toolbars and other addons are certainly bad as well.sonicmerlin - Sunday, January 25, 2015 - link
Maybe Microsoft should release windows RT laptops.coder543 - Friday, January 23, 2015 - link
You talk about those laptops like they're actually good. I wouldn't touch one of those 5400RPM hard drives with a 10-foot pole. The perceived performance of one of these chromebooks would absolutely crush all of those laptops you mentioned, just because of how glacially slow the hard drives would make them feel.The first laptop, where you replaced the hard drive with an SSD, is now at a total price of $400, which is roughly double the price of these Chromebooks. Of course, for more money, you can get a laptop with higher performance specs. This is how economies work. However, those are both 15.6" laptops as well, and 15 inch laptops are painfully large and bulky. 14" is as high as I could ever see myself purchasing, but 13.3" is a much more realistic "high end" for me in terms of size.
My Acer C720P also has no problems with productivity sans an active cloud connection. Google Drive / Docs can be used without an internet connection, and it most definitely has both USB 3.0 and a full HDMI port -- so I'm not sure what you're talking about there. The battery life on my C720P almost certainly stomps whatever cheap Windows laptops you bought as well.
To recap, Chromebooks are good because:
- They are significantly less expensive than any Windows laptop worth having (the Stream 11 and X205TA are the first *real* competitors to Chromebooks, because they have SSDs at Chromebook price points)
- They do have all of the connectivity you talked about, such as USB and HDMI
- You're able to do productive things without an internet connection thanks to HTML5's notion of offline web applications, plus Google's Native Client (NaCL) initiative that allows you to run near-native code on Chromebooks in a fully sandboxed environment, including some rather intense games (though not very many)
- Userproof: no malware, no crashing, no problems.
- Compact, portable form factor, with build quality that far exceeds the chintzy feel of sub $400 15.6" Windows laptops which literally feel like they're 95% air, and 5% plastic that's about to break.
I would *strongly* recommend buying a solid Chromebook (like the C720) and giving that a whirl. Your notions seem to be based on misconceptions and on the experiences gleaned from 10-seconds of clicking buttons on them at Best Buy while sneering at the Chromebooks.
JarredWalton - Friday, January 23, 2015 - link
Hey coder543, what "rather intense games" do you run on Chromebooks in a sandboxed environment? Serious question -- I'd love to have something a bit more demanding to test than WebGL portals! And if I can get something with a freaking benchmark in it, I'd be ecstatic. :-)jabber - Friday, January 23, 2015 - link
I took my little 11" Samsung Chromebook on my three week vacation to Canada a few months ago. I just charged it up and didnt take the charger with me as I reckoned it would last. Well I used it most days for checking upon stuff, was no hassle to carry around and it lasted the whole vacation...with an hour to spare on the battery. No cheap nasty $300 Windows laptop would have done that.zodiacfml - Friday, January 23, 2015 - link
Plenty laptops these days with a slow but big Intel CPU around $200. It might be pretty bad in terms of battery life but the speed will be appreciated all the time. I'm typing on an Asus with a Celeron 1000M which is snappy for web browsing.