Acer 15.6" Chromebook (Refurbished)
- Dual-core Intel processor, 4GB RAM, 32GB solid-state drive, 15.6" display with a 1366x768 resolution: turns out a Chromebook can be a real computer
- An inch thick and weighs 4.8 pounds
- 9 hours on one battery charge
- If you can get used to using browser-based clients for your work stuff, you can get an otherwise kickass little machine for a crazy price
- Model: CB5-571-C5XU (that’s awfully long, but given the bewildering variety of configurations that laptops can have, we won’t judge it too harshly)
The more refurbs there are, the better the product is.
Wait, what? More refurbs mean the product is better? What kind of sense does that make? Doesn’t the prevalence of refurbs mean a product was a flop, or, worse, broken? Are we just saying this because we’ve now offered two of the most popular models of Chromebooks, both refurbished?
Nope. Not all refurbs are created equal. These aren’t the kind of repaired refurbs that can be little chancey, that dribble out a few at a time from the repair shop. We actually don’t see all that many of those.
Most of the refurbs we get - including these - are “buyer’s remorse” store returns. No matter how good a product is, some percentage of units will be returned to stores. People buy things they regret. Or give gifts that the recipient doesn’t want. Or try a few models out for a day or two, keep one, and return the others. Humans are funny. The more units that are sold in the first place, the more of these buyer’s-remorse returns there are going to be.
What’s the most common LP you see in thrift-store vinyl racks? Michael Jackson’s Thriller, the best-selling album of all time. Heard it lately? Still sounds pretty good. You can get a sealed copy of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 for less than ten bucks on eBay. Is so easily available because nobody ever wanted it? (Hint: it sold 6 million copies on its first day, and was rated 9/10 by IGN.)
Which brings us to this Acer Chromebook, which has a 4.3 rating across 367 reviews on Amazon.
And which we now have at 54% of the price at which it won all those rave reviews.
And which, unlike Thriller and CoD MW3, is less than a year old.
That doesn’t mean you should buy it. But it does mean that if you like its ample 15.6" screen, 9-hour battery life, 4GB DDR3 processor, 802.11ac WiFi, don’t let its refurb pedigree freak you out. A lot of people had to buy this for us to get our hands on a few refurbs. And they didn’t buy it because it sucks.
