Though we’re over a year out from the release of the Lenovo Chromebook Duet, more devices like it are still in the pipeline. The most recent iteration would be the ASUS Chromebook Detachable CM3 that looks to be on the way any day now and is already beginning to show up in some markets outside the US. Additionally, we know that there are some pretty interesting Snapdragon 7c tablets on the way as well, so the Chromebook tablet game is getting ready to get seriously interesting in the coming months.
The latest MT8183 detachable that will arrive after the ASUS CM3 looks to be ‘Katsu’ and though we know very little about the specifics on the device, we now have the name of the keyboard that will be used for this devices and – interestingly – it will be a unique accessory versus what we currently have in the 3 other MediaTek Chromebook tablets. Though ‘Don’ is technically being developed as an accessory apart from the existing keyboards out there right now (Masterball, Magnemite, and Moonball), it’s specifications actually match the ASUS CM3 keyboard (‘Moonball’) to a T. Check it out:
With this in mind, we can glean a few details about the overall size and makeup of ‘Katsu’. We already know that this device began life as a direct replication of ‘Kakadu’ – the upcoming ASUS CM3 – and that both a 10.1-inch and 10.5-inch screen are being tested for it. While at the original time of discovery we weren’t sure which would be employed in ‘Katsu’, the physical keyboard similarities to the ASUS CM3 can tell us that the 10.5-inch screen is far more likely.
Don’t forget that ‘Katsu’ is also being tested with 8GB of RAM and could be the first MT8183 tablet with that designation. If it can deliver a bit more memory, a similar size profile to the CM3 and be put together in a nice, neat package, this tablet could be yet another decent competitor to the very-popular Lenovo Duet. With Huaqin emails all over this device, it could be coming from a variety of companies, but applying a bit of logic and existing products to the mix, it looks likely that ‘Katsu’ may end up coming from Acer. Huaqin produces laptops for Lenovo, Dell, Acer, ASUS and Huawei. Of that list, Lenovo and ASUS already have a MT8183 tablet publicly available, Huawei has never made a Chromebook, and Dell has been quite focused on high-end enterprise devices of late. That leaves only Acer as the primary designer of this device, and I’ll hold that ‘Katsu’ is being developed by Acer unless I find otherwise.
For now, that’s all we know. Acer made the first, true Chrome OS tablet in the Acer Chromebook Tab 10 (followed by a basic copy in the ASUS Chromebook Tablet CT100) and though that device was too slow to ever really recommend, an MT8183 tablet with a solid keyboard and 8GB of RAM could be a very interesting play. Early reports have the ASUS CM3 being a decent little tablet, and I’d venture that regardless of the manufacturer, ‘Katsu’ will end up being a pretty close copy of that device. Yes, the Lenovo Duet did it first, but it looks like the maturation of the low-end Chromebook tablet is coming and we’re excited to see where this goes.
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