While we are awaiting the arrival of the first 11th-gen Tiger Lake Intel Chromebooks and expect them to come in fast and furious throughout 2021, there’s yet another Intel update on the way for both laptops and desktops in the form of the 12th-gen Alder Lake chips. We’ve talked about this before and it is becoming increasingly clear that Intel’s new chips are going to be a big step forward for the company.
In that vein, we only have one Alder Lake board we’ve been tracking thus far in ‘Brya’ and there’s little we know about it to this point. Today, however, we get our second addition to the 12th-gen Intel Chromebook lineup in the form of a device code named ‘Shadowkeep’.
Again, little is known about this board right now and the commits surrounding it are few and far between. We would expect that to change in the coming months as manufacturers begin the process of sorting out what their 2022 Chromebook lineups will look like. Honestly, until we begin actually seeing what 11th-gen Tiger Lake Chromebooks can do, it’s hard to even imagine what the next generation will bring to the table to improve what is on the way this year.
After all, I think there’s reason to wonder a bit about the actual benefits of choosing a Tiger Lake device (when they hit the market) over a 10th-gen Comet Lake Chromebook at a cheaper price right now. Samsung is clearly betting that users are more interested in lower prices and reasonable trade-offs with their upcoming Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2, so it will be interesting to watch as these current-gen Intel Chromebooks begin showing up on the shelves. By next year, we may have 3 generations of Intel-powered Chromebooks worth buying, and that is simply a win for consumers. We’ll update as we learn more.
