Support our independent tech coverage. Chrome Unboxed is written by real people, for real people—not search algorithms. Join Chrome Unboxed Plus for just $2 a month to get an ad-free experience, access to our private Discord, and more. Learn more about membership here.
START FREE TRIAL (MONTHLY)START FREE TRIAL (ANNUAL)
If we could pinpoint one particular feature (or lack thereof) on the HP Chromebook x2 that is the biggest gripe of consumers it has to be the mysteriously missing backlit keyboard. As I have stated on multiple occasions, I don’t find this to be a deal breaker for the world’s first detachable Chromebook (especially at $599) but the disappointment is real and understandable considering the expectation of an illuminated deck was set by HP out of the gate.
Regardless, we may or may not see a backlit variant of the HP Chromebook x2 in the future but we now have hope that another detachable device will give you the feature you missed out on with the HP. The upcoming detachable Chromebook ‘Nocturne‘ has seen the addition of a backlit keyboard function.
nocturne: Enable keyboard backlight
Add use flag for the keyboard backlight.
As with the HP, this doesn’t guarantee that this yet-to-be-announced device will ship with a backlit keyboard but whoever’s making it would be wise to take a lesson from the countless disgruntled consumers who were let down by the Chromebook x2’s lack of it.
Speaking of “who’s making it,” there’s still no real evidence pointing to a particular OEM on this device but I have a theory. I will delve a little deeper into this later this week but the ‘Nocturne’ overlay was recently given a common baseboard with another device we’ve been tracking.
Chromebook ‘Atlas’ is an upcoming Kaby Lake convertible that I strongly believe will be the next Pixelbook. With a shared baseboard and a lot of developers in common, it’s plausible that Google is, in fact, making a Pixelbook 2 and a detachable companion.
This is just a theory, of course, but my gut instincts have a pretty good track record about these things. Check back tomorrow and I’ll lay out some more details that have led me to this conclusion.
Check Out Chrome Unboxed’s Top Picks On Amazon
Source: Chromium Repository
