Crushed dreams: a Lenovo Chrombook Duet 5 sequel is no longer certain

Go ahead and call me officially bummed out. While the evidence I found today doesn’t specifically state that we won’t see a follow-up sequel to the very popular Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5, the one clue I had that alluded to that device being in the mix is now demolished; and along with it go my sincere hopes for a Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5 sequel.

A quick explanation of earlier findings

Earlier in 2023, I came across quite a few new commits around a development board in the Chromium Repositories called ‘Geralt’. You can read more about it here, but this new board will house the yet-to-be-announced MediaTek MT8188 SoC and is clearly a detachable device that other Chromebooks will eventually spawn from. For multiple reasons, this is exciting.

For one, the MT8188 should be a very solid performer both in terms of task management and in terms of battery life. And having a chip like that in some new, detachable Chromebooks sounds quite amazing. While I like the Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 just fine, I could use a tad bit more horsepower under the hood and the MT8188 looks like it will deliver just that. With what is close to 10th-gen Intel Core i3 multi-core benchmark scores that drastically improve on what we see from the existing Duet 5, there’s a chance that ‘Geralt’ devices will finally be capable enough to replace your desktop setup if you so choose.

Add to this excitement the fact that I found evidence of a screen being tested for ‘Geralt’ that matched the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5’s screen exactly (the Samsung ATANA33XC20) and you can see where my brain was headed. At least one of the ‘Geralt’ devices was looking like it would be the successor to the Duet 5; and that would be absolutely amazing.

Hopes slashed – for now

But today I found the following commit that spells out a completely different story. Where we once saw this Samsung display being tested for ‘Geralt’ and pointing to a clear Duet 5 successor, we’ve now lost that hope and are back to basically not knowing exactly what devices will spawn from this MediaTek-powered baseboard.

With the removal of the Samsung ATANA33XC20 panel, my one clue pointing to Lenovo and the Duet 5 sequel is now gone, and to be frank, I now have no idea what is coming from this board. Don’t get me wrong: development is continuing at a rapid pace for ‘Geralt’ and I fully expect some news around this at MediaTek’s annual summit in November. But for now, I’m just a little sad.

While it is totally in play for Lenovo to still be making a ‘Geralt’ device and it is still possible that it may be a new Duet 5, I simply don’t have any concrete evidence of this any longer. For now, the possibility of a Duet 3 sequel is still alive, but you can bet I’ll be keeping an eye on that as well moving forward.

What ‘Geralt’ inevitably ends up becoming is still clearly up in the air, and I’m left wondering all over again which manufacturers are on board to build devices from this reference board moving forward. Details have been sparse for months that give us direct clues to specific OEMs and device models, but I’ll keep looking until we know something more solid. For today, it’s a setback, but it doesn’t change the fact that more Chromebook detachables are coming. And it also doesn’t change the fact that I absolutely cannot wait.