With everything going on in the pre-days before IFA officially starts tomorrow, all the OEMs seem to be showing off their goods to carry them through the rest of the year. HP is one of those OEMs and they apparently have a line of new more powerful Chromebooks in mind to entice the customers that may be in the market for a new, more powerful, yet lightweight laptop. HP’s past Chromebooks were nothing if not great, but these new Chromebooks apparently have some good power under the hood, and they’re not exactly slumping in the style department either. There isn’t really much of a change in the design, just some new colors to freshen the looks up a little bit. Then again, the older HP Chromebook 14 was already a sleek looking Chromebook to begin with so why mess with a good thing?
The new version of the Chromebook 11 from HP has been updated on the inside, so even if the outside looks relatively the same, the guts have been swapped out and the Chromebook 11 will now use Intel’s Celeron processors, as opposed to the previous version that was touting an Exynos 5250 CPU from Samsung on the inside. The HP Chromebook 11 comes with the same ports from previous models, USB 3.0, HDMI, ethernet etc. although you shouldn’t expect the free mobile data for life if you purchase the new 11-inch model. You do however get access to a hefty additional set of Google Drive storage, with an included 100GB.
When it comes to the updated Chromebook 14, HP has updated the processor on the inside to sport the Nvidia Tegra K1 CPU, giving it some hefty power and performance in both graphics and processing power. This model will get you the free 250MB of 4G data from T-Mobile for life, but that more powerful CPU and included data do come at a bit of an extra upfront cost. Both Chromebooks are scheduled for launches next month, with the newly updated Chromebook 11 set to hit shelves October 5th at a price of $280, and the Chromebook 14 set to release around two weeks later for $350. HP is also offering a $300 model of the Chromebook 14 that comes without the free data for life, which might be worth saving the extra cash, but that depends on how long you keep the Chromebook and whether or not you would actually have use for the data.
Taking that into account, you could weigh out the price of getting data through T-Mobile officially and see if it comes out to more than the cost of the extra $50 over the lifespan of how long you plan to keep the Chromebook. Both laptops are also coming in a selection of new colors, with the Chromebook 11 coming in Turquoise and Snow White, and the Chromebook 14 this time around will swap out full chassis colors for the color accents around the inside frame of the display bezel and on the bottom of the laptop frame. The colors for the Chromebook 14 will be Sorbet Orange, Smoke Silver, Ocean Turquoise, and Neon Green. The outside of the Chromebook 14 on each accent color will be a simple Snow White.
