Acer has announced a pair of budget-minded notebooks just in time for the back-to-school shopping season. The aptly-named Aspire Cloudbook 11 and Aspire Cloudbook 14 both offer a "true" PC experience via Windows 10 and look to be compelling challengers to the ever-popular Chromebook.
Both systems are powered by a dual-core Intel Celeron N3050 processor clocked at 1.6GHz and 2GB of DDR3 RAM. Each also includes a full-sized HDMI port, one USB 3.0 port, one USB 2.0 port, an SD card slot and a headphone jack in addition to 802.11 ac wireless and Bluetooth connectivity.
The Cloudbook 11 is offered with your choice of 16GB or 32GB of eMMC storage while the larger Cloudbook 14 can be equipped with either 32GB or 64GB of eMMC.
As you've no doubt surmised, the Cloudbook 11 features an 11-inch display while the larger system carries a 14-inch panel. Both feature a mediocre resolution of 1,366 x 768 although given their price, it's quite acceptable.
Buyers also get a 1-year subscription to Office 365 Personal and 1TB of OneDrive cloud storage (the 16GB SKU only includes 100GB of OneDrive space).
Pricing starts at $169 for the Cloudbook 11 and $199 for the Cloudbook 14. Look for the systems to arrive later this month and next month, respectively. At these prices, the systems will compete directly with other entry-level Windows-based systems like the HP Stream and the aforementioned Chromebooks.