Sunday, October 27, 2013

Acer C720 chromebook sunspider, peacekeeper benchmark speed test 447ms review

I purchased my chromebook some days ago at digitec.ch (299 CHF, about 250 EUR). Currently the 2GB version is available in Switzerland, the 4GB version might follow later. As I needed a replacement immediatly for my lovely Nokia Booklet 3G (see a review below) which has some hardware issues recently I was happy that the new chromebooks are available now (the HP chromebook 11 was not avialable yet in Switzerland). BTW, my keyboard has a swiss layout.

I wanted to get a fast, affordable, light notebook which can be used for photography edits on the road. Of course a macbook air or mac book pro would be nicer, but I was not willing to spent the money as the Nokia was already my secondary device for traveling and my primary device is a macbook pro (17 inch).

As I am very familiar to the chrome browser (I use it all day at work and privately) the barrier to go for a chromebook was low.  I already used apps from the chrome web store.

The question for me was: Should I wait for a HP chromebook 11 and would be perhaps disappointed on its performance (I do not like to wait for computers) or should I get the ugly duckling as we say in Germany which runs fastest but is not impressive to show. I decided for the fast, ugly duckling. I found some speed judgements  on the internet in some reviews, but no real gripping data as the Acer was rarely available. Therefore I have attached a detailed report created by sunspider.com in the end of this post.

According to PC Pro UK review LaptopMag.com which measured the HP chromebook 11 to be 631ms (and detailed measurement result in the end), the Acer C720 is significantly faster with 447ms and has a longer battery lifetime (according to the supplier specs). The Peacekeeper result of the Acer C720 is skyrocking 2828 points (html 5 capabilities 7/7) and outperforms even fast devices like the ipad4 a lot. I am very satisfied with the speed during my productive work on it. There is a very fast startup, and I never experienced delays in operation.
The boot time is amazing. This machine and ChromeOS is made for quick response. Waking it up from sleep mode you can start immediately working on it. Ipad feeling...

Build quality is not as good as my Nokia booklet 3G was, but robust enough to make me confident to be able to use it over long time during my traveling times.
The forecasted charging time from empty state to full was indicated as 1:50 hours (which I have not yet verified by timing measurements).


Short summary:
+ Very powerful chromebook with good screen, long battery life, keyboard ok, best bang for the buck
- Only minus: SD-card slot is too short. SD card is not completely hidden in the device when used.


Compared to HP chromebook 11: The Acer C720 is made for power users which do not need a top-notch screen and keyboard. If you need to impress other people buy the HP chrome book 11 and live with slower performance and charge it more often. With the active cooling the Acer does not get warm at all at the bottom side.

Layout of the keyboard of my Acer C720 I received from digitec.












Sunspider results in detail

Acer C720 2GB results

============================================
RESULTS (means and 95% confidence intervals)
--------------------------------------------
Total:                  446.9ms +/- 3.6%
--------------------------------------------
  3d:                    84.1ms +/- 14.9%
    cube:                43.6ms +/- 26.5%
    morph:               17.7ms +/- 42.0%
    raytrace:            22.8ms +/- 11.2%
  access:                45.3ms +/- 9.3%
    binary-trees:         3.9ms +/- 36.1%
    fannkuch:            20.6ms +/- 13.5%
    nbody:                8.1ms +/- 63.8%
    nsieve:              12.7ms +/- 17.4%
  bitops:                27.7ms +/- 4.6%
    3bit-bits-in-byte:    2.2ms +/- 13.7%
    bits-in-byte:        10.3ms +/- 9.8%
    bitwise-and:          7.8ms +/- 8.4%
    nsieve-bits:          7.4ms +/- 6.8%
  controlflow:            4.4ms +/- 20.5%
    recursive:            4.4ms +/- 20.5%
  crypto:                33.6ms +/- 9.9%
    aes:                 15.3ms +/- 20.4%
    md5:                  8.1ms +/- 7.7%
    sha1:                10.2ms +/- 6.4%
  date:                  56.7ms +/- 17.2%
    format-tofte:        23.1ms +/- 25.6%
    format-xparb:        33.6ms +/- 26.3%
  math:                  37.4ms +/- 22.3%
    cordic:              12.0ms +/- 61.8%
    partial-sums:        19.0ms +/- 27.4%
    spectral-norm:        6.4ms +/- 19.1%
  regexp:                14.4ms +/- 3.5%
    dna:                 14.4ms +/- 3.5%
  string:               143.3ms +/- 4.7%
    base64:              10.1ms +/- 14.7%
    fasta:               27.7ms +/- 15.0%
    tagcloud:            38.5ms +/- 8.5%
    unpack-code:         42.3ms +/- 9.8%
    validate-input:      24.7ms +/- 22.2%

Peacekeeper details:
Suite
Result
Rendering
54.53
renderGrid01
119.05 fps
renderGrid02
106.93 fps
renderGrid03
11.82 fps
renderPhysics
58.77 fps
HTML5 Capabilities
7/7
webglSphere
Yes (58.64 fps)
videoPosterSupport
Yes
videoCodecH264
Yes
videoCodecTheora
Yes
videoCodecWebM
Yes
workerContrast01
Yes (4391.32 ops)
workerContrast02
Yes (4973.63 ops)
gamingSpitfire
Yes (52.49 fps)
HTML5 Canvas
29.70
experimentalRipple01
47.38 fps
experimentalRipple02
18.61 fps
Data
46310.40
arrayCombined
8709.50 ops
arrayWeighted
246243.00 ops
DOM operations
15089.75
domGetElements
1138236.00 ops
domDynamicCreationCreateElement
25997.50 ops
domDynamicCreationInnerHTML
24389.50 ops
domJQueryAttributeFilters
6301.50 ops
domJQueryBasicFilters
1484.00 ops
domJQueryBasics
5916.00 ops
domJQueryContentFilters
2113.50 ops
domJQueryHierarchy
8737.00 ops
domQueryselector
55017.50 ops
Text parsing
159769.70
stringChat
67322.00 ops
stringDetectBrowser
432720.00 ops
stringFilter
30091.00 ops
stringValidateForm
495233.00 ops
stringWeighted
239807.00 ops

7 comments:

  1. Anonymous11/01/2013

    Is the keyboard a Swiss or German one?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I got the swiss keyboard version from digitec.

      Delete
  2. Anonymous11/06/2013

    I had seen your comment on Digitec. I have two questions. Is the Google offer "two years, 100 GB for free" included? Do you can recommend an USB-LAN adapter for the Acer?

    ReplyDelete
  3. I received the 100 GB for free for my digitec Acer C720 chromebook. It is enabled on the device itself. The additionally offered 60days Google music seems not to work in Switzerland (only 30 days).
    I can not recommend any USB-LAN adapter. You need to check other chromebook forums.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Can you indicate which swiss keyboard layout your received? Was it a swiss french keyboard layout or a swiss german keyboard layout? Were you able to specify which one to choose? Can you upload a photograph of the keyboard layout? Sorry for asking so many questions but it is nearly impossible to find valuable first hand information on these important details (after all the keyboard is the main user interface). Thanks.

    ReplyDelete
  5. A photograph of my keyboard is now included to the post above.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I use a Mac USB LAN (Ethernet) adapter with my Pixel and it works just fine.

    ReplyDelete