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:
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?
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.
