Last week Acer unveiled the first Chromebook with a number pad on the right side of the keyboard. A few days later HP joined the party by introducing the new HP Chromebook 15.
It’s a 15.6 inch laptop with a full HD display, a metal cover, a metal keyboard deck, and a backlit keyboard. The laptop measures 0.7 inches thick, weighs about 4 pounds, and it includes stereo speakers tuned by B&O, and two USB Type-C ports.
HP says the new Chromebook 15 should be available soon for $449 and up.
Here’s a roundup of recent tech news from around the web.
- HP launches Chromebook 15 Laptop [HP]
More HP launches a 15.6 inch, 4 pound Chromebook with Pentium Gold or Core i processor and up to 128GB SSD for $449 and up. - BlackBerry KEY2 RED Edition w/128GB of storage now available [Amazon]
BlackBerry KEY2 Red Edition smartphones are now available in the US for $700. Same Snapdragon 660 processor, 6GB RAM, and QWERTY keyboard as last year’s model, but 128GB of storage (twice as much). And it’s red. - New Lenovo Tab M10 HD To Launch With Android 9.0 [TabletMonkeys]
Lenovo Tab M10 HD with 1280 x 800px display, Snapdragon 429 leaked, likely to sell less than the $200 Lenovo Tab M10 (which has a 1080p screen and faster processor). - Smaller, cheaper Nintendo Switch coming this fall [The Verge]
And a more powerful model is set to launch sometime in the future. - GPD teases a new device [@softwincn]
GPD teases a new product announcement for the SVIAZ trade show in Moscow next week. Based on the silhouette, it looks like an update to the GPD Pocket line of devices.
Want to know more?
Let’s chat in Moscow SVIAZ
23-26 Apr. 2019
Booth 24D19 pic.twitter.com/kwZq62NuYR— GPD Game Consoles (@softwincn) April 19, 2019
I’m very happy with my 13.3 inch Asus C300 Chromebook without a Keypad. It’s small and light with a big enough screen, and cost less than half the price of the HP. 15.6 inches is too big for my lap and a weight of 4lbs is too heavy to travel with. If I really wanted a 15 inch laptop, I could get one with Windows for less than $449 and install Linux Mint.
Keypads on laptops are a weird thing. They’re great for data entry, accounting, and certain sorts of gaming. None of those things are a Chromebook strength. I wish big laptops came in number pad and centered (non-number pad) versions, but its almost always either one or the other.
A 15.6″ laptop can function as a computer with a near-desktop screen that you can still lug around. I treated my old Thinkpad T520 as a desktop I could stash in a drawer when I wasn’t using it.
This Chromebook has an IPS touchscreen; most new Windows machines at this size that are less expensive don’t have a good screen, and have a mediocre AMD A-series CPU. I’d never pay $450 for this Chromebook (I’d never pay $4.50 for any Chromebook), but I can see why someone else might.
For the Blackberry:
*128 GB of storage, only 6 GB of RAM.