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I’ve been spending many days over the past few months dreaming about how awesome the upcoming Snapdragon-powered Chromebook tablet ‘Coachz’ will be. After all, with an 11-inch 3:2 screen, Snapdragon 7c processor, kickstand and wirelessly-charging USI stylus, what’s not to like, right? It seems like every single thing I uncover about ‘Coachz’ impresses and I just continue getting more and more excited with each find.
Well, until this detail, anyway. As it turns out, not everything is going to be perfect with this upcoming Chrome OS tablet after all. According to a commit over in the Chromium Repositories, it seems the manufacturers of this coming device have made the oddball choice of omitting the headphone jack. On an 11-inch tablet. One that should clearly have plenty of room for a very-standard, very useful port.
I’ll be honest, this same omission is one of my chief aggravations with the Lenovo Chromebook Duet on a very-regular basis. My kids both use a Duet for school and hunting down the USB-C headphone adapter is a regular headache around our house. While I understand the move to take out the headphone jack on phones to “save space” or even to push consumers towards wireless earbuds (I don’t agree, but I get it), I don’t understand why a Chromebook should jettison this very useful port and I don’t see any upside, here. Just like the handy HDMI port that is making a comeback on Chromebooks, not having to dig up an adapter or dongle or dock to plug in some headphones just makes sense on the trusty, function-over-form Chromebook.
While this isn’t a deal-breaker in any way, it is definitely a bummer and something I know I’ll be irritated by when this otherwise-amazing tablet launches in 2021. And, when the time comes for me to finally get my hands on this device, I’m sure I’ll look back at this article and simply nod my head as I search my overloaded backpack for that easy-to-lose USB-C-to-3.5mm dongle that, hopefully, comes in the box.
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