Yet another oddly-named Snapdragon 7c detachable Chromebook tablet is on the way

Snapdragon 7c Chromebooks haven’t had the rosiest reception out of the gate. The few we’ve tested have been a bit laggy and though we don’t expect most users are looking for top-tier performance from the mobile-first processor, the number of readers we’ve had express frustration over their Snapdragon 7c Chromebooks is definitely a tad bit alarming. After all, we expect slowness from something like the original Lenovo Duet’s MediaTek MT8183, but the Snapdragon 7c – on paper, at least – has far more horsepower than that device. In real world use, they don’t feel all that different.

Perhaps more optimization needs to happen or the Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 with its higher clock speeds will help smooth things out a bit. Perhaps the future for these devices is brighter than the present. Maybe we’ll see a version of Chrome OS and Android that simply play a lot better with the Snapdragon chips in the future. I sure hope so, and that’s what it seems manufacturers are betting on, because they keep showing up in development.

Meet the latest Snapdragon 7c Chromebook: ‘Quackingstick’

In that spirit, I’d like to introduce you to the latest Snapdragon-powered detachable Chromebook to hit development: ‘Quackingstick.’ Like other Snapdragon Chromebooks before it, this new one gets a fun, odd name from Homestar Runner and the character is simply a duck head on a stick that was used as a prop. It’s likely too much info already, but his name is technically Lord Quackingstick and he was used by Strongbad as a prop in a photo. Seriously, I love the internet sometimes!

Being born into the ‘Strongbad’ family, there’s no doubt this one will be a detachable like the others in this group: ‘Coachz’ (HP x2 11), ‘Homestar’ (Lenovo Duet 5), ‘Wormdingler’, and ‘MrBland’. While ‘Trogdor’ is the main baseboard for the Snapdragon 7c, ‘Strongbad’ is the development board that handles all the detaching, 7c-based Chromebooks.

This board was just added today, so we don’t have a ton of info on it yet, but we should be able to learn at least the screen size, resolution and have a hint at who is making it in the coming weeks. While I’m hopeful we’ll see some improvement in the performance of the Snapdragon 7c running Chrome OS, it is simply not there yet. That’s a shame with great hardware like the HP Chromebook x2 11 going on sale pretty regularly already. If the Chrome OS team can get things smoothed out a bit with this processor and the performance is ironed out in tablet mode, the sheer number of these tablets will become very exciting as we enter Q4 of 2021. As it stands right not, however, I’m finding myself more and more ready for the arrival MediaTek MT8195 Chromebooks with each passing day.