You can now buy the HP Chromebook x360 13b with MediaTek K1200

Back in September, I mentioned a new ARM-based ChromeOS laptop was on the way. And you can now buy it. The HP Chromebook x360 13b with MediaTek processor is available for $469.99. There’s also a $30 upgrade option available that doubles your storage.

While the HP Chromebook x360 13b is powered by a MediaTek ARM chip, it’s not quite the company’s flagship silicon.

That would be the MediaTek Kompanio 1380, aka the MT8195T, which debuted a few months ago. That chip is built on a 6-nanometer process with four Arm Cortex-A78 performance cores (up to 3 GHz) and four Arm Cortex-A55 efficiency cores.

The HP Chromebook x360 13b runs on the MediaTek Kompanio 1200 chipset. It uses the same ARM architecture but with slower cores that run up to 2.6 GHz. That’s really not a huge difference and it probably helps keep costs down. Either way, this is a fanless design.

Aside from the ARM chipset inside, the HP Chromebook x360 13b looks appears like any other recent laptop in HP’s x360 ChromeOS lineup.

And it costs quite a bit less too: The slightly larger version with 11th gen Intel silicon inside retails for $699. It has been available with recent discounts that price it on par with this MediaTek version.

Since the outside looks the same, let’s focus on the inside:

Note that when I first heard about the HP Chromebook x360 13b, I thought ChromeOS updates would cease in June of 2029. However, now that this laptop appears in Google’s Automatic Update Expiration schedule, I see it will get updates through June 2030.

The only upgrade option I see on HP’s website is a $30 charge to upgrade local storage. That doubles the 128 GB on the base model to 256 GB of capacity. It’s nice to see that whichever storage option you choose, you’re getting an NVMe M.2 SSD. Happily, you won’t find slower eMMC storage here.

My review unit is in hand, so I’ll be running the HP Chromebook x360 13b through its paces over time. To me, the main interest is how the MediaTek chipset performs and how much battery life I get with this fanless ARM design.

About the author

Kevin C. Tofel has covered technology since 2004. He's used ChromeOS since Google debuted the CR-48 in 2010, reviewing dozens of Chromebooks since then. He worked for Google's Chrome Enterprise team from 2016 to 2017, supporting the launch of Android app support. In his free time, he uses Chromebooks to learn software engineering at Launch School. In 2019, Kevin joined the CS Curriculum Committee at his local community college.