Acer today announced the availability of its first touchscreen Chromebook, the new Acer C720P, a new model in the Acer C720 Chromebook line that the vendor introduced last month.

The new C720P comes with an 11.6-inch HD LED back-lit ComfyView touch display and its release follows the launch of Acer's new "A Touch More" marketing campaign that seeks to highlight the company's growing range of products with touch capabilities.

"Our new touchscreen C720P gives customers an intuitive way to browse sites online, enjoy apps, and do more with the Chromebook," said John Miedema, director, business product unit for Acer EMEA.

"The Acer C720 Chromebook line has been praised for its performance and battery life, and this new touchscreen model allows us to address the needs of an even wider range of customers with exciting new capabilities."

The display has a 1366x768 resolution and supports standard gestures such as swipe, tap and pinch-to-zoom. Like the rest of the new C720 line, the new C720P touchscreen model is powered by an Intel Celeron 2955U processor based on the Intel Haswell micro-architecture. The architecture of the processor is said to enhance battery life, delivering up to 7.5 hours, according to Acer.

The C720P also comes with a 32GB solid-state drive (SSD) that Acer claims enables a boot time of less than seven seconds and quick resumption from sleep. Also included is 2GB of DDR3 memory and 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi.

The new Chromebook is 19mm thick and weighs 1.25kg. The model also features an integrated HD webcam and a dual-speaker design designed to deliver enhanced stereo audio during online chats, music playback and movies. Peripheral connectivity is via the Chromebook's USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 ports. Its HDMI port can be used to provide video and content to external displays and HDTVs.

Like Windows, the Chrome OS is updated automatically. Acer highlighted the "multiple layers of security features", including data encryption and verified boot, which are designed to defend against cyber threats.

Acer Chromebook customers can access up to 100GB of free Google Drive storage for the first two years after purchase. Although a price of EUR299 (just under AED1500) has been publicised for the product, Acer Middle East & Africa has yet to disclose launch dates and pricing for the region.