In early December, Acer announced a new Chromebook with touch display. Certainly interesting, but can it compete with faux-leather?

Samsung announced today the Chromebook 2 – the successor to its original Chromebook from a few years back. It comes in two variants – one with a 11.6-inch 1377×768 display while the other has a 13.3-inch 1920×1080 display. Both have a faux-leather backing that’s reminiscent of the Samsung Galaxy Note 3.

“Since we introduced our first Chromebook in 2011, Samsung has been committed to continually developing our designs and features to meet our users’ ever-changing needs, while staying true to the core Chromebook attributes of simplicity, speed and security,” said Mike Abary, senior vice president of consumer IT product marketing at Samsung Electronics America. “Samsung has been the top selling consumer Chromebook brand for the past three years and we’ll continue to grow our leadership position in this space with the launch of the Chromebook 2 Series.”

As for general specs, both models sport 4GB of RAM, a 16GB SSD, 100GB Google Drive Storage, USB 3.0, HDMI Out, 720p webcam and a microSD slot. The only difference between the two is its CPU with the 11.6-inch model sporting a 1.6GHz Exynos 5 octa-core CPU and the 13.3-inch model sporting a 2.1GHz Exynos 5 octa-core CPU.

The new Chromebook is a pretty big step up from the original which featured a Exynos 5 dual-core CPU. The original also lacked that luxurious faux-leather backing. Even better than a faster CPU or faux-leather, however, is the estimated 8.5 hours of battery life in the new Chromebook compared to the 6.5 hours in the original.

Alas, a better CPU, faux-leather and more battery life comes at a price. Whereas the original Samsung Chromebook retailed for a super affordable $249, the new Chromebook will retail for quite a bit more. The 11.6-inch model will retail at $320 while the 13.3-inch model will retail for $400. Both will be available in stores and online in April.

Image via Samsung