Future 15th-gen Intel ‘Arrow Lake’ Chromebooks begin development

While we’re a solid year and a half into the current 12th and 13th-gen Intel-powered Chromebook story, the future is always looming. We’ve only had eyes on a single 14th-gen Intel Core Ultra Chromebook up to this point, and that device – the upcoming ASUS ExpertBook Chromebook Elite CX54 – is still awaiting an official launch after being unveiled right at the beginning of 2024. To say we have plenty of those Core Ultra devices on the way would be a massive overstatement, so seeing 15th-gen Chromebooks already being planned is pretty sweet.

What is 15th-gen Intel Arrow Lake?

For the time being, I’ve yet to find a single development board attached to this latest effort. This usually happens in the early stages of a new processor being added, and things are the same with Arrow Lake. So, all we can talk about at this point is what Arrow Lake is set to bring to the table and hope that ChromeOS is in a place down the road to take full advantage of it all.

First up, the expectation is that Arrow Lake processors won’t be in any devices until the end of 2024. Most things being discussed around Arrow Lake are rumor at this point, so take it all with a grain of salt. Like other main line Intel chips, there will be mobile and desktop versions, large and small cores, onboard GPU and enhanced AI capabilities.

One interesting change is in the pin configuration, making Intel’s 15th-gen processors incompatible with the existing boards out there that house 12th, 13th, and 14th-gen chips. This definitely means a bit more work than we’ve seen over the past few years in getting new Chromebooks up to speed since entirely new motherboards will be needed to leverage Arrow Lake silicon.

Other rumors include a mandatory update to DDR5 RAM (no more DDR4 devices with these processors) and a possible upgrade to Thunderbolt 5 capabilities. Whether we’ll see the latter in Chromebooks is unclear at this point as Thunderbolt 4 has only recently become a standard for more-powerful ChromeOS devices. With what looks to be a 2nm process for these chips, Intel is also ditching Hyperthreading across the board if rumors are to be believed, making this a pretty big departure from what we’ve seen the past few years.

When might we see some Arrow Lake Chromebooks?

With Intel likely not debuting Arrow Lake until late 2024, I’m not expecting Chromebooks to be joining that party right away. ChromeOS runs very, very well on 12th and 13th-gen Intel silicon at the moment, and I can’t see that formula changing up much more than a bump to 14th-gen Core Ultra chips in 2024. With changes to the underlying motherboards and likely concessions needing to be made for the drop of Intel’s long-standing Hyperthreading feature, the ChromeOS team will have its work cut out to support these emerging processors.

If I were to guess, I’d peg spring 2025 as the time we actually see production devices with this silicon inside. And to be honest, that’s completely fine with me. Chromebook Plus has found a nice groove with the 12th and 13th-gen processors, and with the lightweight nature of ChromeOS, there’s no real reason to push into uncharted waters simply to have the latest, greatest internals when the processing power we have right now is far more than enough.

Once Arrow Lake is proven and provides some needed upgrades to the Chromebook experience, we’ll of course see hardware with it inside. Until then, however, I’d rather manufacturers spend that extra time and money on building excellent Chromebook experiences across the board. We have a lot of performance headroom on Chromebooks right now, and I can’t imagine too many people desperate for more of it. Better screens, keyboards, trackpad and build quality will go way further over the next year or so, and when the time is right, we’ll see what Arrow Lake is all about.