Dell has been wildly quiet on the Chromebook front of late. Since the introduction of a couple high-end, expensive enterprise-focused Chromebooks back in 2020, Dell has been absent in the general Chromebook release cycles that companies like HP, Acer, ASUS, and Lenovo have been quite active in. We’ve had eyes on a few devices that we thought were on the way, but there was no indication that these were actually available until just today.
In trying to solidify some info we’ve found on a new, upcoming Chromebox, we actually stumbled across a new set of Chromebooks not even announced from Dell, but available all the same: The Latitude 5430 clamshell and 2-in-1 variants. From what we can tell, they are only available through Dell certified resellers, so it won’t be very easy to get your hands on one even if you do want one. Instead, these new/secretive Chromebooks are spec updates to what Dell has had in the pipeline for a few years now.
A new Chromebox destined for the same fate?
While today’s find isn’t a new XPS Chromebook from Dell we’ve been clamoring for (sigh), it is yet another option in the coming wave of 12th-gen Alder Lake Chromeboxes expected here in 2023. We’ve already heard about at least one from Acer, ASUS, and Lenovo and there are signs pointing to some Chromebox/Chromebase devices from Samsung and HP with only silence from Dell’s end. But some recent commits for a new 12th-gen Chromebox come with an @wistron.corp-partner.google.com email address attached, and that generally means one company is behind it: Dell.
‘Augash’ (based on the 12th-gen Intel baseboard for Chromeboxes: ‘Brask’) is here to at least give Dell a voice in the coming Chromebox wave and, though there’s a chance this Chromebox quietly shows up in Dell’s enterprise-only channels, I’m at least hopeful that won’t be the case. I really feel Dell is missing out on a key segment (consumers) with their recent ChromeOS devices and I also feel like general consumers are missing them as well. Some of my fondest memories of early ChromeOS days came via the Dell Chromebook 13 and we still get questions about that device to this day.
Whether Dell decides to get back into the consumer Chromebook/Chromebox game is a mystery at this point, but the fact that they’ve remained plugged-in on the enterprise and education side of things makes me hopeful that both they and Samsung are poised to come back with a vengeance in the near future. The Chromebook market will only benefit from extended competition, and I really think Dell has the hardware to compete. Hopefully, we’ll know more soon about ‘Augash’ and all the other Chromeboxes and Chromebases on the horizon.
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