One week later, most flagship Chromebooks are still waiting for Chrome OS 93

The last few updates to Chrome OS were smaller and more incremental than previous updates. Chrome OS 89 and 90 were both feature-laden and it made a bit more sense that they were delayed for lots of devices. Chrome OS 91 and 92 pushed far fewer brand-new features and because of this, they mostly rolled out on schedule. Chrome OS 93 falls in the latter camp, iterating on a handful of features without rocking the boat too much. With that being the case, we’d expected the roll-out of this version to be largely without delays. So far, that’s not the case.

While we always expect a handful of legacy devices to take weeks to get the latest updates, we don’t tend to expect this from flagship Chromebooks. At this moment, the best Chromebooks are those with 10th or 11th-gen Intel processors inside, both small and large core. Devices like the new ASUS CX5400, Acer Spin 713 (this year’s and last year’s model), the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook, Galaxy Chromebook 2, and all the latest Jasper Lake Chromebooks are all still stuck on Chrome OS 92 for now.

These devices are the ones new and existing users alike are buying. They are the Chromebooks that are regularly on sale and the devices that present the best of what Chrome OS currently has to offer and, unfortunately, they are the ones that are left out once again.

More features, more devices, more delays

As time goes on and devices become more and more varied and the processors inside them become more capable, I suppose this is bound to happen. Where we used to only have a handful of Chromebooks to consider at update time, there is an absolute mountain. Where we only had a few processors to think about, there is now a wide variety. All this choice, all this innovation, and all this expansion comes at the cost of efficiency, and I think we may see this trend only get worse once 4-week updates begin with Chrome OS 96 at the end of the year.

Ultimately, however, Chrome OS updates do end up arriving. There have been times when that arrival has been weeks behind, but they always show up. So, don’t worry too much about it if your Chromebook is still sitting on Chrome OS 92. 93 will arrive soon enough and the handful of updates will come along for the ride. With the update schedule set to skip Chrome OS 95 to get everyone on the same 4-week update schedule starting with Chrome OS 96, I’m hopeful Google will once again be able to catch their collective breath a bit and get everyone on the same page. At least for a little while. For now, if you’d like to keep an eye on the Chromebooks waiting patiently for Chrome OS 93, check out cros.tech to stay in the know.