13th-gen Intel Raptor Lake Chromebook spotted in development

As is always the case, development and progress for Chromebooks continues moving forward. We aren’t even yet to the point where you can head over to Best Buy and pick up a 12th-gen Intel Alder Lake Chromebook and here we are talking about 13th-gen devices in development. Where once we got excited about seeing last-gen hardware inside Chromebooks, we are now to the point where Intel’s latest, greatest SoCs are getting included in Chromebooks right from the jump.

We’ve talked about 14th-gen Meteor Lake Chromebooks already in the earliest of development phases, but as most of you likely noted, that skipped a full generation from where we are right now. Rest assured, 13th-gen Intel chips are clearly in the works, they’re named Meteor Lake, and there is already a reference device for Chromebook development to lean on in ‘Skolas’.

For now, this is the only Raptor Lake Chromebook we’ve come across, but it is still exciting to know that work has already begun for the next generation of Intel-powered Chromebooks nearly a year out from when we’d expect any of them to actually ship. Being in this sort of tight development cycle means Chromebooks will continue to move in lock-step with their Windows PC counterparts when it comes to bringing new features to the ecosystem.

It is worth noting that Raptor Lake should be the final SoC from Intel to leverage the existing Intel 7 10nm process we have in Alder Lake chips. With the upcoming 14th-gen Meteor Lake, the company is set to move to a more-efficient 4nm process that will deliver even better speed and battery life. That doesn’t mean we won’t still see some nice performance and battery gains over Alder Lake when Raptor Lake does launch, but that won’t be for some time.

Since Alder Lake Chromebooks aren’t yet available out in the market, we all need to view this new Raptor Lake emergence with patience. Alder Lake Chromebooks are going to be crazy-fast from what we can already tell, and the devices with this SoC on board are going to make for a great set of Chromebooks here in 2022. While we’re very excited to see the ball continue rolling, we’re still very encouraged by the Alder Lake-powered Chromebooks coming in this calendar year, for sure.