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Laptops · Acer Chromebook

Acer Chromebook C720

11owners with an opinion
100%of verdicts positive
1/0positive/negative since 2024
12 yrslongest happy owner
3happy after 3+ years

Praised for durability and reliability.

What owners wrote

Likes itOwned 12 yearsStill going
I have a 12 year old Acer C720 that while obviously doesn't run chromeos anymore, it's still useful as a super durable 12'' linux machine.(thankfully it's intel based) It road around in a backpack while cycling around campus, survived multiple bike spills, knocked off tables half a dozen times. Really sad we can't get something like this anymore.
Likes itOwned 5 yearsStill going
That is exactly what I do not like about systems such a Chrome OS and Windows. I want the choice about upgrading the kernel. The Linux kernel is quite good about not breaking user-space applications. I have an Acer C720 that have been running Linux for 5 years. Now it has Debian with a 5.4.0 kernel and it works just fine. In the beginning it was running Ubuntu which also worked fine. I got it because the SSD died a year ago, but I run Linux from an SD-card.
NeutralOwned 1 year
I started with an acer c720 2GBram. Everything was pretty good until you filled up the ram and it just force closed a bunch of tabs. Used that as my primary personal laptop for 1 year. It's not a little linux terminal for my daughter as it didn't get android apps, and OS support is about over. I moved to a Lenovo 13 Chromebook with 8GB ram and an i5 and 64 gb SSD, and the 1080 p screen. That's my primary laptop now. I also have a acer r11 which is pretty solid. I'd love to use that but it has a small screen. That gets used around the house by the rest of the family for various tasks and is in a stock state. I may look to move to acers next 11 in. They have been really solid but I need 1080 and usb C charging for anything else I buy. Not buying more chargers.
Likes itOwned 0.75 years
Funny, I also have an old Dell laptop, and I LOVE the keyboard on that thing. It literally makes my fingers happy to use. It was a tough decision to finally adopt another solution (below), but I finally did it. I use a de-Chromed Chrome book (acer c720) with xubuntu for personal projects these days. I do java/j2ee on a macbook pro for work, I never use it as a laptop, it's always docked. For personal projects on the chrome book, I code apache/python/django/vim, which run wonderfully on it. The smaller screen does take some getting used to, and the nonstandard keyboard takes some remapping. Otherwise, after 9 months, no complaints.
Recommends it
Acer c720 owner here - people tend to mock chromebooks all the time as glorified web browsers. To some extend, that's true. Most things I do that aren't development related are done on a web browser. It's absolutely perfect for that. Starts up extremely quickly, very light, long battery, lovely. For very occasional dev purposes, I simply used crouton, which works insanely well. I can even use sshfs and go back to ChromeOS and have the drive still mounted. Highly recommend the c720, or whatever is the more recent equivalent.
Recommends it
I've been backpacking around Asia working with an Acer C720 Chromebook. 2GB RAM, 32GB SSD, 11.6" display. It took a few days to get used to the smaller screen and keyboard, but since then it's been fantastic. Cost about £120 refurbished from eBay. Battery lasts for 5-6 hours. The laptop itself has survived intense use travelling through India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Cambodia, including having the corner of the screen melted by accident in the Himalayas. Haven't found anything lightweight that works better than Lubuntu out of the box (trialed Xubuntu, Ubuntu, Debian, ElementaryOS and some Arch flavours). Getting a dual boot up and running was easy. My work is mainly fullstack, so I sit mostly between a terminal and a browser. An effective configuration with a tiling window manager is a must with this size of screen and being a TMUX/Vim user helps cut down the number of workspaces I need. Couldn't recommend it more for travelling programmers!
Recommends it
After going through several Linux laptops over the past decade, including a couple of Thinkpads, I agree. My current Chromebook running Ubuntu is by far my favorite. The whole setup comes in under $300: buy a certified refurbished Acer C720 from Acer with 4GB RAM and 16GB SSD ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00L87JC80 ) and, separately, a 128GB MyDigitalSSD ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00EZ2E8NO ). Replace the SSD and install this custom-made Ubuntu distro that includes all of the fixes for the C720: https://www.distroshare.com/distros/get/12/ . And that's it!
Likes it
Depending on what you intend to use Linux for, a fairly recent Chromebook (I use the Acer C720) plus Crouton may be ideal. That won't be the case if your main activity is Gimp/Inkscape/etc., but it definitely could be if you spend most of your time coding in vim. While I do like Inkscape, I've personally never fallen in love with the office-type Linux desktop apps, so using google equivalents is fine.