Intel throws its latest chips into Chromebooks, Chromeboxes, and a Chromebase

SAN FRANCISCO — Intel and Google introduced a bunch of new Chrome OS devices running on Intel chips at a joint press event today.

New Chromebook laptops from Acer and Dell will feature the forthcoming fourth-generation Intel Core i3 chips. Acer’s take will cost $350.

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LG’s new all-in-one Chromebase device — a single box that holds the screen and computing guts — will include Celeron chips based on the Haswell architecture and will hit markets later this month for $350.

And new HP Chromeboxes will also pack Haswell-based Celeron chips from Intel.

Later this year Asus, Acer, Lenovo, Toshiba, will release Chromebooks that contain new chips based on the new Bay Trail architecture.

Also, Asus had new Chromebooks, and Lenovo came out with its first Chromebooks for consumers.

Chromebooks already sell well on Amazon and other retail venues. And Google is selling into twice as many schools now as it was in September, Google vice president of product management Caesar Sengupta said. But Google doesn’t just think about that. It’s about customer satisfaction, too.

The top six laptops in terms of ratings are all Chromebooks, Sengupta said.

“It’s about what the users experience and how they really use the platform after they’ve bought it,” he said.

Perhaps consumers will like the devices unveiled today more than the those currently on the market, whether they perform better with compute-intensive tasks, weigh less, or just offer longer battery life. Or that the Haswell or Bay Trail chips in the new devices are conflict-free, as Intel’s Navin Shenoy said.

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This is especially true because OEM devices like these are far more appealing to a wide swath of consumers and less like the pricey Chromebook Pixel.

But Google is also adding on the software side of the equation for these new devices. Google Now and voice commands will come to Chromebooks, Sengupta said. Chromebooks will be able to show movies offline in the future, too.