CES 2019 | The Acer Chromebook 315 is the first to sport the new AMD A-Series Chromebook CPUs

AMD announced two new Chromebook-focused CPUs — the AMD A6-9220C and the AMD A4-9120C yesterday and Acer has now released the first Chromebook powered by the new 7th generation AMD A-Series chips. The Acer Chromebook 315 is available in a choice of the above CPUs in both touch (CB315-2HT) and non-touch variants (CB315-2H). 

The Acer Chromebook 315 sports a bright 15.6-inch FHD IPS screen that is great for streaming video and offers enough real estate for running productivity apps. The screen also houses an HD webcam that has an 88-degree field of view with HDR support. The notebook is large enough to accommodate a spacious backlit keyboard (for the touchscreen model) and a large touchpad with sufficient room left for upward firing speakers. There are two USB Type-C Gen 1 ports and two USB Type-A on either side of the device along with a microSD card slot and a combo audio jack. 2x2 MIMO 802.11 AC and Bluetooth 4.2 help in wireless connectivity.

Most Chromebooks are powered either by the Intel Celeron or Intel Pentium CPUs so it is good to finally see an AMD-powered alternative. The AMD 'Stoney Ridge' A6-9220C is a 2C/2T CPU that should be enough to run Chrome OS and Android apps smoothly and is more or less equivalent to the Intel Pentium N4200 in terms of performance. Memory options include 4 or 8 GB of RAM and 32 GB of eMMC storage. The low-power CPU should also help in enhanced battery life, which Acer claims lasts up to 10 hours.

The Acer Chromebook 315 will be available in North America from February 2019 at a starting price of US$279.99 and in EMEA from April 2019 starting from €349.

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