The journey of Acer's latest eco-conscious laptop begins in the brackish waters near its home base in Taiwan.
The tech company announced on Monday a next-generation Aspire Vero 16 that's made partially out of oyster shells, which have been cleaned, crushed, and mixed with a blend of more than 70 percent post-consumer recycled plastic. (You best believe it's a world's first.) Acer showcased the PC ahead of CES 2025, and it'll be available for purchase this April starting at $799.99.
Eric Ackerson, Acer's associate director of product marketing, told Mashable in a demo that the reasoning behind Acer's decision to make a laptop with oysters was twofold: They're in abundance in its headquartered country, and they were easy to incorporate with the PCR it was already using in previous generations of the Aspire Vero 16. (The last iteration was made from 60 percent recycled plastic.)
For what it's worth, you wouldn't know the Aspire Vero 16 was made from armor of dead molluscs just by looking at it. It's chassis is smooth, gray, and lightly speckled up close — pretty minimalist, aside from a pearlescent Acer logo at the top of its lid. A press release notes that it meets a military-grade durability standard for shock resistance and overall ruggedness.
Underneath all that oyster, the Aspire Vero 16 runs on hot-off-the-press Intel Core Ultra 200H (Arrow Lake) processors with up to 32GB of RAM and 2TB of storage. All things considered, we're jonesing to test it: Its predecessor's battery and performance kind of shucked.
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