What you need to know
- A new leak gives us a look at the "world's first 'Gaming' Chromebook."
- The Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Gaming Chromebook has been leaked, showing off its full design and specs.
- This will be the first Chromebook designed with gaming in mind, complete with an RGB keyboard and a 120Hz refresh rate.
We sympathize with those of you who have enjoyed using Google's Stadia cloud gaming service, as this is just the latest product to be shut down. Thankfully, there are plenty of great alternatives out there, such as Xbox Game Pass, Sony's PlayStation, and others. But there's nothing quite like being able to play your favorite games locally on your device, even if it's a Chromebook.
Thanks to the eagle eyes over at ChromeUnboxed, it appears as though Lenovo is gearing up to launch the "world's first gaming Chromebook." The Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Gaming Chromebook will be the name, and it's equipped with plenty of power and features to entice potential gamers to make the move to ChromeOS.
We know that Google has been diligently working on its Steam Alpha program, bringing native Steam support to ChromeOS. And now that more of the best Chromebooks are available with Intel's 11th and 12th Gen chips, complete with Iris Xe graphics, now seems like the perfect time for a gaming-focused Chromebook to be announced.
The only catch is that Lenovo hasn't actually announced its latest Chromebook just yet, and all of the information was discovered by Gabriel at ChromeUnboxed. It seems that pretty much everything about the IdeaPad 5 Gaming Chromebook appeared "on the company's product specification reference website."
But what is it about this new Chromebook that makes it worthy of the "gaming" moniker? Starting off, Lenovo is using a 16-inch QHD (2560 x 1600) display, complete with a 120Hz refresh rate. Providing the power will be either Intel's Core i3-1215U or the Core i5-1235U, with the latter including Iris Xe graphics, which is a current requirement for the Steam Alpha program. Paired with either of these processors will be 8GB of RAM, and up to 512GB of storage thanks to an NVMe drive.
You can't spell gamer without RGB and the IdeaPad 5 Gaming Chromebook delivers with a full-size keyboard sporting customizable backlighting. You can even see from the images that you can adjust the colors for entire sections on the keyboard. Over the past year, we've seen reports that Google is working to bring the ability to customize RGB keyboards right from within the ChromeOS settings, so we expect this to arrive ahead of Lenovo's official announcement.
Other features of the Gaming Chromebook include an FHD webcam, dual USB-C ports, dual USB-A ports, a microSD card slot, stereo speakers, and Wi-Fi 6. Unfortunately, we don't know anything about how much Lenovo's Gaming Chromebook will cost, so we'll have to wait for an official announcement.
A fantastic all-around Chromebook
The Lenovo Chromebook Flex 5i might not be the best Chromebook overall, but it's pretty darn close. It provides a convertible and lightweight design, solid battery life, 11th Gen Intel power, a backlit keyboard, and so much more.
