Just yesterday, we began our ramp-up and planning for CES 2022. It’s hard to believe, but the big tech show is only 5 weeks away and that means we’re likely going to see some new Chromebook hardware in that same time frame. While we clearly won’t see all the Chromebooks set to launch in 2022 at CES, we’ll hopefully get a peek at what the next generation of Intel, MediaTek, AMD and Qualcomm-powered Chromebooks will have to offer in the coming year.
As we edge closer to that point, it is pretty customary to continue seeing Intel’s latest chips continue development in the Chromebook space, and there is no doubt that 2022 will likely follow in the footsteps of the past couple years. We’ll probably see a few new 12th-gen Intel Alder Lake devices at CES and see new Chromebook releases throughout the year that feature these latest Core i3, i5, and i7 chips. As an example, consider ASUS at CES last year, launching some great devices in the CX5500 and CX9 only to follow those with a low-key, mid-year release of the excellent Flip CX5400.
A new Alder Lake Chromebook from Lenovo
In that vein, we have a new Chromebook just entering development that is based on the ‘Brya’ baseboard, telling us that this device will employ Intel’s new 12th-gen Alder Lake SoC. Little is known thus far about this new device – code named ‘Taniks’ – but it adds to a growing list of next-gen Intel-powered Chromebooks that have us pretty excited for what Chromebooks will be capable of in the coming months.
Alder Lake should bring some substantial performance gains to the table and even though 10th and 11th-gen Chromebooks are plenty fast, things like Steam games via ‘Borealis’ and video editing via LumaFusion will call for more performance under the hood for better experiences. Alder Lake looks more than capable of handling those types of activities and we expect some pretty sweet Chromebooks with these chips inside.
From the commit message above, you can clearly see the email address that is signing off on this already-merged change. If you look closely, you’ll see the @lcfc.corp-partner.google.com at the end of it, and that is important. As we talked about before, LCFC is the primary manufacturing arm of Lenovo and nothing comes from that factory that isn’t branded as such. With that in mind, there’s little doubt that ‘Taniks’ is a new Lenovo Chromebook with Alder Lake internals.
Apart from that, however, there’s little to glean from this device right now. Could this finally be a new, standard Yoga device? Is this a new ThinkPad? Or could this be something different from Lenovo? Time will obviously tell, but I’m excited for ‘Taniks’ either way. Lenovo builds great devices, and whether it’s a high-end Yoga or mid-range device like the Flex 5, we always look forward to what they will deliver. With this one just starting development, I’d doubt we’ll see anything about it at CES, but you never know. Stay tuned.
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