Lenovo announces the most powerful ARM-based Chromebook with an OLED display by Pradeep Viswanathan Lenovo today announced the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14, its most powerful ARM-based Chromebook. This Chromebook is powered by the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 processor, which features an NPU that can deliver up to 50 TOPS of AI performance. The Chromebook Plus 14 comes with a 14-inch OLED display, with optional touchscreen models. Customers can customize this laptop with up to 16 GB of RAM based on their performance needs. Thanks to the power-efficient SoC, Lenovo claims that this Chromebook can last up to 17 hours on a single charge, the longest battery life on a Chromebook Plus. The Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 is now available for purchase in the US, starting at $649 from Best Buy and Lenovo’s official website. To make the purchase more valuable, Google is offering a one-year subscription to its Google AI Pro plan (a $240 value) with every Chromebook Plus. To take advantage of the powerful on-device AI capabilities of the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14, Google is releasing the following two exclusive AI features: Smart grouping: Users can use AI to organize open Chrome tabs and documents into logical groups. Image editing in the Gallery app: The Gallery app can be used to remove backgrounds, make stickers, and more. Apart from the above exclusive features, Google is also releasing the following updates to all Chromebook Plus models starting today: Select to search & Text capture: A Google Lens-like capability is now available on Chromebooks. Users can just long-press the on-screen launcher button or use the screenshot tool to select anything on their screen for instant Google Search results. Users can also use the new "Text capture" to automatically extract text from images and send it to Google Workspace apps or calendars as editable text. The Quick Insert (QI) key, which was introduced earlier this year, now allows users to easily generate images using AI in addition to its existing capabilities. The new "simplify" feature within "Help me read" will help students convert complex language into more understandable content. Google’s popular NotebookLM research and note-taking app is now pre-installed on every Chromebook Plus. Netflix’s popular Squid Game: Unleashed game is coming to Chromebooks as an optimized desktop app with keyboard and mouse controls and some exclusive in-game items, including skins. With its high‑performance, premium hardware and advanced AI features, the new Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 is trying to position itself as a strong contender against Windows laptops in the premium segment.

Sounds ok. More competition is better for the consumer/user.

To be fair, GOG Galaxy, which has been a launcher for multiple platforms from day 1 still works really well. It just runs whichever launcher process a game needs in the background, and kills it when you exit the game. Of course it only works for launching games, not the storefronts, chat, discussions etc - but as a way of organising your games library, seeing which titles you own on multiple services, it works really well. Sounds like MS will be doing exactly the same thing.

It makes more sense when you realize this is for the handhelds, and the Xbox app is likely what's going to control/activate the "Xbox full-screen experience" that disables unneeded desktop services and such.

I'm not against the idea...it just isn't going to work. We are already dealing with multiple launcher issues, between game stores like Steam and games that require their own launcher. There is no way adding a 3rd layer makes it better for anyone. Now IF game studios universally moved away from their own proprietary launchers in favor of a universal launcher like this, that might be cool, but even if the launcher is fully capable of providing all the features they want (which I highly doubt), then I still doubt companies would choose it over their software...we all know companies want to run as much software as possible on our computers, and something like a launch that has an excuse the run in the background for reasons, even better.