I was wrong: The MediaTek Kompanio 1300T isn’t for Chrome OS tablets at all

We haven’t even hit the halfway mark of the week and I’m already sighing. Yesterday, I wrote extensively on the MediaTek Kompanio 1300T, thinking about its performance in Chrome OS tablets. It turns out, I was wrong. The MediaTek Kompanio 1300T isn’t for Chrome OS tablets at all.

It turns out, this SOC is designed for Android tablets.

How do I know? MediaTek’s PR partner reached out to clarify, which I appreciate. I wasted my time researching and writing my post (which is on me), but more importantly, I wasted yours if you read the article, which is also on me.

In my admittedly weak defense, chip rebrandings are a part of the confusion as the MT 8192 and MT 8195 are officially called the Kompanio 820 and 1200, respectively. I missed the memo on that one.

These chipsets are expected in Chrome OS devices within the next few months. That hasn’t changed.

But there is, obviously, a MediaTek Kompanio 1300T chipset. And I looked through the technical details of it before I wrote a single word of my post on the product.

Here’s the info from MediaTek’s November press release on the MT 8193 8195, … er, Kompanio 1200 SOC:

“MediaTek’s MT8195, built on the 6nm TSMC process, integrates an octa-core CPU with four Arm Cortex-A78 cores for compute intensive applications and four power-efficient Arm Cortex-A55 cores to simultaneously handle background tasks and maximize battery life.”

I compared that to the new MediaTek Kompanio 1300T and saw this in its announcement:

“The Kompanio 1300T chip is built on TSMC’s 6nm process technology and integrates an octa-core CPU with high-performance Arm Cortex-A78 cores and power-efficient Arm Cortex-A55 cores.”

Basically, the architecture is the same. Well, almost.

I did miss the fact that the new Kompanio 1300T uses a nine-core Arm Mali-G77 MC9 GPU. The Kompanio 1200 uses a slightly older Mali GPU with fewer cores. Perhaps that should have been my tipoff but I admit it: I missed the GPU difference.

All of this is to say that according to the kind email request for correction from MediaTek’s PR group, the Kompanio 1300T is designed for Android tablets, not Chrome OS tablets.

I’m going to leave my original article up (I don’t believe in covering my mistakes) but steer readers over to this post, providing an updated statement there to clarify.

Again, my apologies for inadvertently misinterpreting the information I had.

On the bright side, we still have MT8192 and MT8195 Chrome OS devices to look forward to. Just refer to them as powered by Kompanio 820 and 1200 SOCs though. I know I will!