For months, we’ve pondered as to why Samsung seems to have stalled on producing a new premium Chromebook. While the answer remains unclear, there’s another big-name PC maker that has been very quiet in the ChromeOS space and we’ve begun to wonder if the company has abandoned Chromebooks entirely.
Dell has never really been a leader in the ChromeOS market but the PC giant has, until recent years, produced a decent variety of EDU and enterprise devices. Outside of a little-known Gemini Lake EDU Chromebook, Dell hasn’t released a new ChromeOS device since the hefty Latitude 7400 series that came out way back in 2020. For a Chromebook maker, that’s an eternity. The only device we’ve been tracking that had any chance of being a Dell ended up being the Framework Chromebook which happens to be manufactured by the same company that makes most of Dell’s laptops.
It certainly looked as if Dell has quietly bowed out of the ChromeOS arena. That is, until Robby stumbled upon a new device in Chromium Repository. More on that device later. While we hashed out this new device and why it could be from Dell, we took a look at some existing boards we’ve been tracking only to discover that one – in particular – already had a recovery image available to the public and it is a Dell Chromebook.
Dell Latitude 5430 Chromebook
To the best of my knowledge, these new Chromebooks were never announced and I can’t find any coverage about them from the usual outlets. The new Dell Latitude 5430 Chromebooks appear to be refreshed of the enterprise-focused 7400 series with a few upgrades. Like their predecessors, the 5430 comes in either a clamshell or convertible configuration and are equipped with up to an Intel Core i7 processor.
The 14-inch Chromebooks move to a 16:10 aspect ratio but sadly, the standard display is only 250 nits. You can upgrade to a 300 nit panel on the clamshell but the convertible Dell has but one, 250-nit anti-glare screen option. The clamshell model also has an LTE option which adds a SIM slot. The processor options start on the low end with a Celeron 7305 and go all the way up to a Core i7-1255U. You can opt for 8GB or 16GB of RAM and storage options range from 64GB eMMC up to 512GB NVMe.
Around the outside, the new Dell Enterprise Chromebooks come bearing two USB-C/Thunderbolt 4 ports, a single USB-C, a full-sized SD card slot, audio jack and an HDMI port. There’s a fingerprint sensor on the keyboard deck and the webcam comes in the 720p or 1080p variety which will depend on the model you purchase. Apart from that, these look like typical Latitude laptops. I’m sure that they’ll be well-built and perfectly designed enterprise customers. At this time, there’s not pricing available but I’d wager that they’ll be on the expensive side. I doubt we’ll see these Chromebooks in consumer channels and buying one directly from Dell will likely be a very expensive undertaking. Regardless, it’s great to see that Dell is still in the game. Now, we just need them to launch a consumer XPS model or something like it that can compete with the HP Dragonfly and hopefully, future halo device from other OEMs. You can find the full spces for the new Dell Latitude 5430 Chromebook at the link below.
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