I’ve said it before and I’ll likely say it again: there are tons of upcoming Chromebooks for 2021. The number is already staggering, and there are more rolling in week after week. With so many development boards out there, it gets tough to keep track of them all. We’re trying our best to keep everything in front of us, and part of that is documenting when new arrivals show up in the Chromium Repositories.
We recently put out a video about all this if you need a refresher to what is going on (shown above) and how to group these upcoming Chromebooks. Please take a moment and watch that (or read the corresponding post) if you need to get caught up on what exactly is going on here. For today, however, we’re adding a few boards from the ‘Kukui’ family (MediaTek 8183) and the upcoming ‘Dedede’ family (Intel’s new small-core Jasper Lake chips).
For the new MediaTek devices, remember this is the chip that currently resides in devices like the Lenovo Chromebook Duet, so don’t expect blistering performance. Instead, low prices, great battery, and slim form factors are what mark ‘Kukui’ devices. We’re adding two boards in the form of ‘Stern’ and ‘Cerise’. While we’re not seeing much out of the ordinary for these two, they do bring the total number of MediaTek 8183 boards up to 12 with 3 of those devices already being released.
Additionally, we’re adding a new ‘Dedede’ board to the mix. ‘Storo’ is the latest Intel Jasper Lake Chromebook we’re keeping an eye on and like the others it accompanies, this board will likely find itself situated in an entry-level device that performs better than the price tag would lead on. With 2020’s Gemini Lake Chromebooks finally bringing decent performance to the low-end Chromebook spectrum, we’re excited to see Jasper Lake devices in the flesh in 2021.
For now, that’s all we have to add. The number of upcoming Chromebooks is over double what we expected in 2020, so it’s getting a bit crazy to think of what 2021 will hold as far as Chromebook releases go. From high-end to affordable, I think we’re in for quite the shift in Chromebook availability, ability, and consumer mind share. With CES 2021 virtually around the corner, it’s about time to get started, and we can’t wait.
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