Chromebook Plus is Google's New Certification for Premium Chromebooks

Google has introduced Chromebook Plus, a new certification that's meant to help shoppers identify high-quality Chromebooks to buy. From a report: Much like Intel's Evo program for Windows PCs, the Chromebook Plus branding will be awarded to laptops that meet a set of minimum requirements. The idea is that even a shopper who's not familiar with PC specs can see the "Chromebook Plus" label on a product and be assured that Google thinks it's a good product. Chromebook Plus devices must have:

An Intel Core (i3 or higher) or AMD Ryzen 7000 CPU
An IPS panel with at least 1080p resolution
A 1080p webcam
8GB of RAM
128GB of storage

There's an interesting absence here: battery life. In fact, the phrase "battery life" does not appear once in Google's press release. Curious! I asked Google spokesperson Peter Du about this, and he provided the following statement: "All Chromebooks are required to meet a 10 hours battery life requirement based on internal testing standards. While not a new requirement for Chromebook Plus like the 1080p screen or 8GB of RAM, Chromebook Plus laptops must also adhere to this."

So, they just lie, right?

[bigonroad]

I'm on my third (I think) Chromebook now. Never owned one with a 10 hour battery life. I think this is like EV range, just put what you want, no one will hold you accountable...

Re:

[Pinky's Brain]

I had a Dell Chromebook 13 nearly a decade ago with a low voltage core duo and it did 10+ hours of web browsing, until I spilled cola on it :/

If they had launched the NVIDIA dGPU one I might have tried another.

This is so temporary

[SmaryJerry]

The problem with naming certain specs Chromebook Plus is that in a couple years Chromebook Plus specs will be slow again but you can't just go back and uncertify the PCs with the old specs and say now the new Chromebook Plus specs are 16GB and 256 GB storage. It will take those couple years for consumers to even learn what Chromebook Plus means and by that time the naming convention will need to be updated.

that's why the name is so bland

[Anonymous Coward]

"plus" is pretty much the bare minimum you could say about a product to imply it's better. you've still got "gold" "platinum" (which everyone thinks is better than gold, even though it's half the cost, but whatever) "diamond" "ultimate" etc. Eventually yes you run out of words you can use but by then the Chromebook marketing guy is going to have a new job so it's not his problem.

Re:

[Deal In One]

They should have the year of release stated as well. Such as Chromebook Plus 2023.

Or you may find yourself in a situation where a Chromebook released in 2027 is better then a Chromebook Plus released is 2023, and yet consumers still buying the older model thinking it's better when it may actually be worst.

After all unsupported Chromebooks from 2018 are still being sold as new.

https://arstechnica.com/gadget... [arstechnica.com]

What about Chromebook Plus in the future?

Re:

[itsme1234]

It won't be "a couple of years", they'll be good for 10 years probably for their use. Speed on mid-low (as in "usable") systems stopped going up significantly quite a while back (no thanks to Intel sitting at 14nm from like 4th to 11th generation?).

Using now a Surface Pro 5 with the minimum specs, with m3 CPU and 4GB RAM. It works, it even plays every video I fed it, that is at over full HD. I'm expecting to get quite a few more years out of it (on top of the 6+ for now), if the non-replaceable battery does

Re:

[SmaryJerry]

I'd agree with you except that the specs listed are already 5-10 years behind. 1080P resolution is something that if you didn't have would be atrocious. 128GB of storage is almost unusable, and it doesn't even specify it has to be an SSD? These specs are still only good for the things a cheaper chromebook is already good for.

Re: Unlock the bootloader and I might be intereste

[Kitkoan]

Right to repair laws don't cover DRM built into the parts (a la "parts pairing"), they won't cover bootloaders.

Devil's Advocate

[a5y]

I think Google are the beast and I'd dance on Alphabet's grave if it ever all came crashing down, but on this on here they're not without a point.

A useful metric for battery life for a consumer answers the question "over the next few years how many hours can I expect to get from this Chromebook from usual use?"

That's a pig of a problem to answer.

- forecast battery degradation from usage
- forecast what mix of low intensity and high intensity programs the user's gonna use (video playback isn't running a text

Re:

[drinkypoo]

We have metrics for appliances (i.e. Energy Star) which tell you how much more it's going to cost you to own one than the other. This information is also on automobile window stickers, regarding fuel mileage. Laptops should have information on the package about battery life, how the battery is expected to degrade over time, and what it's going to cost you to replace it based on the manufacturer's retail or equivalent replacement (e.g. in-house/on-contract).

A 1080p webcam

[kriston]

A 1080p webcam requirement is rich since Google's videoconferencing software restricts videos to 720p.

Re:

[bn-7bc]

Well maybe they ate planning a premium "full hd" payed tear for their conferencing sw, the ir would make sense to front load a premium Chromebook with a 1080p web cam right?

Focus on software?

[ctilsie242]

Having battery life is one thing, for Chromebook Plus models, but one thing Google needs to consider is working with their software to give Chromebooks a bigger market segment. For example, there is a huge market for VDI endpoints in the enterprise, which is mainly taken up by Windows laptops. If Google could throw some effort on allowing for ease of VDI usage, which means multiple monitor support, responsiveness, ability to use not just a user's preferred HID devices, but things like a CAC/PIV reader, YubiKeys, or other devices. Having ChromeBooks be able to be used as VDI endpoints with assurances of a solid software/hardware stack that is tough to compromise would go far.

Wait a minute...

[Waccoon]

"Premium" Chromebooks? Isn't this what happened to the netbook market 15 years ago?

What abut ARM?

[ras]

An Intel Core (i3 or higher) or AMD Ryzen 7000 CPU

Hmmm, no ARM CPU's. Meanwhile the Apple M1/M2/... is blitzing Intel in the compute per watt race.

Some info missing

[Puc Rotte]

The article is missing some info. From https://blog.google/products/c... [blog.google] :

It's not just a minimum of i3 or Ryzen 7000: Intel Core i3 12th Gen or above, or AMD Ryzen 3 7000 series or above
And it's also not just a 1080p webcam: 1080p+ with Temporal Noise Reduction

Those are important differences.