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Dell seems to be content staying out of the consumer Chromebook market. A fact that seems very odd to me given the recent expansion of premium consumer-facing devices from nearly every major OEM out there. I say nearly because no one appears to know what’s going on with Samsung but that’s another story. That said, Dell does appear to still see the value in ChromeOS for Enterprise. Back in February, Dell quietly released a new 12th Gen Intel Chromebook and it is clearly being marketed towards businesses.
The Dell Latitude Chromebook 5430 features up to a 12th Gen Intel Core i7, 16GB of RAM, and as much as 512GB of NVMe storage. The 5430 is a convertible device with a 16:10 display and a starting price of over $1,000. You can buy it directly from Dell but most shoppers will likely find better pricing through authorized resellers that offer bulk discounts for Enterprise clients. This is definitely not a Chromebook that I’d recommend to any consumer.
This week, another Dell Latitude Chromebook has quietly popped up on Dell’s website and this one comes bearing the latest AMD Ryzen processor for Chromebook. Before you get too excited, this new Chromebook doesn’t appear to be any more exciting than its Intel counterpart and while there’s no pricing yet, I can almost guarantee that it won’t be cheap.
The Dell Latitude Chromebook 3445 looks to use a similar 14-inch 16:10 display but this model is a clamshell and will offer a non-touch and touch option for the screen. Ports are fairly standard with 2 x USB-C, 1 x USB-A, an HDMI and a MicroSD slot. Everything you need to get down to business. There will be an optional upgrade for the webcam from 720P with a single mic to a 1080P with dual mic array. This will likely be available on the higher-tier models.
Those tiers start with an AMD® Athlon™ Silver 7120C and go all the way up to the AMD® Ryzen™ 5 7520C with storage options starting at 32GB of eMMC and going up to a 256GB SSD for the more powerful SKUs. We haven’t seen any real-world benchmarks of a Chromebook with this Ryzen 5 7520 but our friend Kevin Tofel believes that the GPU on this chipset could outshine that of the Iris Xe graphics on Intel’s latest Chromebook processors. Time will tell but like the Dell 5430, this Chromebook will be pricey and you’ll likely only be able to buy it from Dell or an Enterprise partner. Certainly not the consumer-focused device that we’ve been hoping to see from Dell. You can find all the details on this new Latitude Chromebook from Dell here.
Source: About Chromebooks
