Acer makes some of the best Chromebooks you can buy right now, including the excellent Spin 713. The only real downside to that laptop is the price; while $630 isn't the most expensive Chrome OS device we've ever seen, it's certainly up there. The Spin 513 was announced last fall, designed as a more affordable alternative to the 713. While the laptop was supposed to be made available to North America in February, listings for this new Chromebook have only just appeared at Acer's storefront for the first time — with a higher price than anticipated.

Two different Spin 513 models have been added to the company's website, as first spotted by AboutChromebooks. Both versions feature nearly identical specs, including a Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c processor, a 13.3" 1080p display, and 64GB of storage. The only difference between the two configurations comes down to RAM: $479 gets you a laptop with 4GB of memory, while the $499 model is doubled to 8GB of RAM. It's a surprisingly small price difference between the two entries for a spec bump that can improve performance so drastically.

Neither version features 4G LTE connectivity, a selling point Acer pushed hard during its announcement last year. However, the store page still advertises "optional 4G," so additional models could be coming down the line. More intriguingly, the $399 price as announced last fall for the Spin 513 is also missing; instead, you'll need to pay nearly $100 more than expected to grab this Chromebook. It's possible a cheaper model — perhaps with 16 or 32 gigabytes of storage — could still appear in the future, but as of now, $479 is the starting price.

Both versions of the Chromebook Flip 513 have "Buy Now" buttons on Acer's store, but lack any available retailers for placing an order. Considering the North American release was planned for two months ago, it hopefully won't be much longer.