Samsung made the original Chromeboxes, but they dodn’t generally make much of a mark. Lately however, other OEMs such as Asus and HP have begun releasing the boxes and Acer has today announced their entry to the Chromebox market with the CXI Chromebox series.
Based on the C7 line of Chromebooks, the CXI line is a fast, but affordable Chromebox which Acer is aiming squarely at both the business and education markets. Simon Hwang, president of Acer Stationary Computing and Display Business Group said :
The Acer Chromebox CXI is an excellent fit for schools or businesses where conserving costs and space are high priorities. Due to the ease of management, the Chromebox can significantly reduce the technical support and consequently lower the total cost of ownership.
Two models of Chromebox will be released, powered by the Haswell based Celeron 2957U processor with either 2GB or 4GB of RAM based on price. Both will come with Wifi 802.11a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 4.0 and Gigabit Ethernet. There will be 4x USB 3.0 ports include two with power off charging for smartphones and tablets. An SD Card reader is included which will read cards up to 32GB and HDMI and DisplayPort are available to connect monitors to. The system comes with a VESA mount kit as pictured above to connect to the rear of a monitor.
Acer intends to release the Chromebox CXI to the US and Canadian markets next month, one with 2GB RAM for $179.99 and a 4GB model with $219.99. Whether this will see a release in Australia we are still uncertain, but we’ve asked Acer Australia for comment.
