With all the Chromebooks released in the past year, and all the possibilities for never-before-seen devices still looming on the horizon, it’s easy to be generally excited about what the next best Chromebook could be. There are tons of upcoming devices from all kinds of manufacturers with all kinds of processor options on the horizon, but Devices with Intel’s latest processors always get my attention the most when it comes to finding a professional Chromebook for myself.

I love playing around with cool, spinning tablets, Chromeboxes, and even Chromebases, but at the end of the day, the device I’m going to place on my desk and type on will probably still have an Intel processor in it. interior. These Chromebooks tend to have the best performance, best build quality, and best feature sets of any Chromebook out there. With MediaTek’s move into the high-end Chromebook space, that may not be true for very long, but the point is, if you want a premium Chromebook right now, you have to partner with Intel.

The best Intel processors yet

It’s in that vein that I’m pretty excited for the new 12th Gen Intel Chromebooks powered by Alder Lake. More and more manufacturers are adding development boards based on “Brya” (the base development board for Alder Lake) and I’m sure we’ll see a few of these devices make their debut at CES in January. Honestly, I don’t see Alder Lake being a massive change in the Chromebook space like Comet Lake was with the introduction of Wi-Fi 6 / Bluetooth 5 or like Tiger Lake was with the arrival of a Legitimate integrated GPU in the Intel Xe graphics. But I think Alder Lake will provide a substantial performance improvement over Tiger Lake, which these Chromebooks are already blazingly fast.

One of the Alder Lake boards that we follow is “Redrix”, and it will likely be the sequel to the very impressive HP Chromebook Elite c1030. I’m typing this post on the Elite c1030 and this Chromebook has just about everything you could want in a premium Chromebook. The construction materials, screen, keyboard, trackpad, port selection, thinness and lightness are all top notch and make using this Chromebook one of the best Chrome OS experiences of all. time.

Obviously I’m excited for a successor with small improvements and an upgrade from the current 10th gen Comet Lake processors to the new 12th gen Alder Lake fast chips. We have already covered a unique key that “Redrix” gets that will mute the microphone with one touch, but There are other fun additions going on for this Chromebook that will help it go from great to amazing.

First off, it looks like HP is including the privacy screen again. For those unaware, a digital privacy screen can be triggered by the user to hide on-screen content from viewers out of the corner. This protects you from prying eyes on a bus or plane. The first time around there were production issues and we never saw the 1000 nit privacy screen hit the market. Turns out there are finally versions of the current Elite c1030 with the onboard privacy screen available for purchase, but I would bet that means they just set things up for ‘Redrix’ and can finally include them on the Elite c1030 now.

Second, we see HP step up the webcam on this Chromebook by skipping the standard 720p sensor and skipping up to 5MP this time. We are seeing more and more Chromebook makers deciding to step up the front camera on their devices, and this is a trend that I hope will continue. We all know it now, but video calling is just a part of life at this point. Having a better camera for them is one more reason to go with a Chromebook over another if the webcam is just plain better.

Finally, we see HP preparing a version of “Redrix” which will equip an option for LTE. While it’s nothing new to the Chromebook space, for a device that will clearly target professionals, LTE feels like an option that should become an obvious inclusion. We’re excited about the prospect of 5G Chromebooks in the future, but for now LTE is very fast, less battery-hungry, and much more established as a connection technology. It makes perfect sense that a thin / light Chromebook like “Redrix” includes this option.

So far, that’s all we know. ‘Redrix’ appears to be a new version of the Elite c1030 with the addition of a microphone mute switch, privacy screen option, improved webcam, and LTE variants. If they just keep the winning formula for the existing Elite c1030, add those tweaks, and give us 12th Gen Alder Lake options, HP will have a great device in their hands. Dear? Probably, but you don’t get all of these freebies for nothing.