Chrome OS afficionados have long pined for a Haswell processor to drive one of their Chromebooks, imbuing the line with the longevity they've been missing out on. That wait has come to an end. Launched this morning, and previewed at IDF, the Acer C720 Chromebook promises 8.5 hours of battery life in a new, thinner body and with an all-new, Haswell-based Intel Celeron 2955U processor inside. The 1.4GHz dual-core CPU will boost performance over the 1.1GHz Sandy Bridge-based Celeron that preceded it, while cutting power consumption. The 11.6-inch clamshell has a matte display with a screen resolution of 1366×768, a step down from the pricier Chromebook Pixel, and unlike the just-announced HP Chromebook 11, Acer makes no mention of an IPS panel.











Acer

The refreshed chassis is 0.75 inches thick and weighs in at 2.76 pounds, slightly thicker and heavier than the 0.69-inch 2.3 pound Chromebook 11. Paired with a 16GB SSD, 4GB of RAM, and dual-band 802.11n, it'll be available for pre-order at Amazon and Best Buy today for $249. Not on offer is a touchscreen model, though Acer noted in its release that this is just the first configuration that will be available.

This update gives us the broadest collection of platforms for Google's desktop OS to be offered in, with everything from Atom to ARM to Haswell having now been sampled. Performance hasn't been as much of an issue since the Sandy Bridge-based solutions of last year, so it's battery life that'll stand to see the biggest gains. And with so many new models shuffling out, expect full reviews of them all soon.