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Uh oh: Acer Chromebook Spin 513 prices are now $50 higher

Last week, I spied the first official direct listings for the Acer Chromebook Spin 513 with Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c chipset. I said at the time that the pricing looked odd since the price difference between the two models was only $20. The only differentiation between those two configurations was memory: One had 4 GB and one had 8 GB. The pricing still looks odd but now for different reasons. Both Acer Chromebook Spin 513 prices are now $50 higher.

Here’s the new pricing on Acer’s Store site, showing a cost of $529.00 or $549.99 for the Acer Chromebook Spin 513.

And here’s what the Acer Store showed last week for the exact same configurations and model numbers:

Acer Chromebook Spin 513 models

Note that you still can’t buy these; hitting the Buy Now button simply returns a “No sellers available” message.

To be honest, I feared this might happen.

Earlier in the week, I noticed that Promevo had listings for the Acer Chromebook Spin 513. The model number Promevo is offering is different from the above two, but the price shown is $799.99. That includes a boost of local storage to 128 GB and a Chrome Enterprise Upgrade license. Even if you back out the license cost that’s still higher than I expect for this Chromebook.

I also noticed just today that Promevo is showing the same 8 GB configuration as the Acer Store with the $549.99 price tag. That doesn’t mean this is officially final pricing, but it strongly suggests it to be that.

What worries me even more? I haven’t seen a single model on any site say that the LTE radio is enabled. Will that add even more of a premium? If so, how much?

Acer Chromebook Spin 513 LTE

I don’t have answers to those questions, of course. But based on the information we have now, I think the Acer Chromebook Spin 513 is going to be a tougher sell than I thought it would be.

It’s not using the latest Snapdragon Compute platform right off the bat, which could shy some folks away. We don’t yet have hands-on testing data for performance and battery life claims.

Yet even if those come in as expected: Buying a small convertible Chromebook that’s “roughly equivalent to the Pentium Silver N5030” with a $529.99 starting price isn’t as compelling a story.

About the author

Kevin C. Tofel has covered technology since 2004. He's used ChromeOS since Google debuted the CR-48 in 2010, reviewing dozens of Chromebooks since then. He worked for Google's Chrome Enterprise team from 2016 to 2017, supporting the launch of Android app support. In his free time, he uses Chromebooks to learn software engineering at Launch School. In 2019, Kevin joined the CS Curriculum Committee at his local community college.

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