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While we have fantastic, new, 10th-gen Comet Lake Chromebooks showing up with decent frequency at this point in 2020 (see the just-released Acer Chromebook Spin 713 and Lenovo Flex 5 as great examples), our eyes are also still set on the future of what we’ll see from Intel-powered Chromebooks by the end of the year or early in 2021. Tiger Lake is front and center in that discussion, and these new 11th-gen chips from Intel bring along performance and battery gains, but also come equipped with a much, much more capable GPU, too. These new devices with this most-recent Intel silicon will be primed for Linux apps and Windows apps via Parallels as well.
With improved graphics comes a better ability to push around more pixels on the screen, too, and that is precisely what we’re seeing in ‘Volteer’ in this latest .yaml file from the Chromium Respositories.
As a quick reminder, ‘Volteer’ is the unibuild baseboard that many of these Tiger Lake Chromebooks will be based on. If ‘Volteer’ gets a feature, it is something that other Chromebooks in its lineage may or may not employ as well. Unibuild boards like ‘Hatch’ and ‘Nami’ spawned 4K Chromebooks like the Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630 4K, Pixelbook 4K, and the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook. While it is evident that only a few devices in the entire crop will leverage this, it is also clear that some of them definitely will.
As ‘Volteer’ devices begin to emerge, there’s likely going to be a wide spread of capabilities just like we’ve seen with ‘Hatch’ devices in 2020. From more affordable devices like the Lenovo Flex 5 to high-spec devices like the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 to high-end flagships like the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook, we can expect ‘Volteer’ Chromebooks will run the gamut. With support for 4K screens already in the works, I’d guess we’ll see a few more super-high-res screens in play as Tiger Lake Chromebooks begin hitting the market in the next 6-9 months. As always, we’re continually on the prowl for more info, so make sure and sign up for the newsletter so you don’t miss a beat.
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