Why we think the Samsung Chromebook 5 could be coming soon

Over the past few years, Samusng has been clarifying its naming structure for Chromebooks. Where we’ve previously had the standard Samsung Chromebook 1, 2, 3, and 4, those have also been joined by the Chromebook Plus, Plus V2, Chromebook Pro and Galaxy Chromebook. It seems with the arrival of the original Galaxy Chromebook, Samsung is looking to clean up its offerings and in the last 24 months, that means we now have a few devices in the Galaxy line and a few offerings in the standard Samsung Chromebook line.

While Samsung still lists their Chromebook Plus V2 on their site, my guess is it will soon go away as well with the $549 Galaxy Chromebook 2 being an all-around better Chromebook for the same money. Once that happens, Samsung will sell their standard, enumerated Chromebook line and the differing Galaxy Chromebooks and that is all. It makes sense, really, and I’m glad to see at least one Chromebook maker move to a simplified naming structure for their Chromebooks. Acer is moving in that direction as well, but Samsung has really clarified things for potential buyers more than any other Chromebook manufacturer.

With the Galaxy Chromebook 2 launch out of the way, it would make sense that it is nearing time for Samsung to give users their latest, more-affordable option in something like the Samsung Chromebook 5 and 5+. While we don’t have 100% confirmation on the timeline for this one, we do know that a small core Intel device is in the works and Samsung’s fingerprints are all over it. For each of the last 3 affordable Chromebooks Samsung has made (3, 4 and 4+), they’ve gone with the current generation of small core Intel processors. For the Samsung Chromebook 3, it was the Braswell lineup of processors. For last year’s Chromebook 4 and 4+, we saw the updated Gemini Lake processors in play.

This time around, it would only make sense for Samsung to wash, rinse and repeat the same formula with the upcoming Jasper Lake chips we’re expecting a ton of this year, and that’s exactly what we’re seeing in the Chromium Repositories right now with a board called ‘Sasuke’. While it isn’t this way with many boards, Samsung’s development lends itself to easy identification. Being such a large company, Samsung has employees directly involved in the hardware builds more so than any other Chromebook maker, and it shows in the email addresses attached to commits in the repositories. There aren’t just a few Samsung email addresses on ‘Sasuke’: there are tons of them.

As you can see in this example (one of hundreds), the change is signed off on by Jongpil Jung, a very familiar devleoper in the Chromium Gerrit that is always tied to Samsung’s latest Chromebooks. There’s no question whatsoever that ‘Sasuke’ is a Samsung device and there’s no question that it is a Chromebook based on the upcoming Jasper Lake Intel SoC. With that in mind, it is clear that this will be the next affordable Samsung Chromebook and with all the action we’ve been seeing on Jasper Lake boards, no reason to believe it won’t be available soon.

This original commit was initiated in December of 2020, so I’d expect the new Samsung Chromebook 5 to be available sometime this summer if I was wagering a bet. Keep in mind, the board ‘Sasuke’ is being based off of (‘Waddledoo’ – a Jasper Lake reference board) was initiated in January of 2020, so work has been happening on the base parts of this Chromebook for well over a year now. There’s actually no reason that Samsung couldn’t have this one out the door in the next few weeks if it wanted.

For what it’s worth, we had an anonymous tip to at least be on the lookout for something new from Samsung soon, and they weren’t referncing the Galaxy Chromebook 2. I can’t say much else about it right now, but we feel confident that the device our tipster is referring to is the Samsung Chromebook 5 and we are even more confident that this device is internally referenced as ‘Sasuke’. As always, once we learn more about this one, we’ll keep you updated. Be sure to sign up for the newsletter below so you don’t miss news on ‘Sasuke’ and other awesome Chromebooks on the way in the coming months.