Earlier this week, the Pixel Slate appeared under its Nocturne codename on Geekbench, a benchmarking tool that displays test results on its site. That showed Google’s tablet to be running an Intel Core i7-8500Y processor, which was to be expected. Today I see four different ones on the same Geekbench site: The original Core i7 configuration as well as a Core i5, Core m3 and Celeron.
Also in the Geekbench results are the memory capacity used for the tested devices. So far, all of the Core i7 tests appear with 16GB of RAM. That makes sense, given the current Pixelbook tops out with a Core i7 and the same amount of memory.
The Core i5-8200Y device, as well as the Core m-8100Y and even the Celeron 3965Y, were all tested with 8GB of RAM on board. However, I wouldn’t be surprised if at least the Celeron — and maybe the m3 — model was also available with 4GB of RAM to bring down prices.
In fact, that’s what all of this leads to: A range of Chrome OS tablets at multiple price points. I won’t hazard any guesses right now based on this new information, mainly because I have one more key aspect about the Pixel Slate that I’m trying to ascertain: More to follow if and when I find it.
I’ll admit it’s possible that these tests were faked in some way. But I think that highly unlikely: A few of my sources suggested we’ll see a range of configurations for this Chrome OS tablet with detachable keyboard options. We’re also nearing the launch time, with less than a week to go before the October 9 Google event. This is precisely when I’d expect to see such tests appear.
5 Comments
Maybe I’m missing something here but why would you need that much power in a Chromebook?
Not everyone does of course. There are plenty of entry-level / mid-range options that handle Chrome OS just fine. For running multiple Android apps, the newly supported Linux apps (for development or for a few desktop apps) and/or dual booting into Windows (a coming feature), more capable hardware components is desirable.
For those crazy enough to put Windows in it, they will need all the horsepower they can get. But I have noticed the impact of Android and Linux apps on my Pixelbook… And I learned my lesson in the netbook days about under-powered devices and there useful lifespan
Note that all of the processor options are two cores. Is there going to be diminishing returns going from an i5 to i7 or even the m3 to the i5?
JP, historically most Chrome OS CPUs have been two-core. Up until Chrome OS got into the business of running Android and Linux, there wasn’t much call for more than that, since the vast majority of CPU was consumed in the foreground. That’s probably still true for the majority of users.