The Chrome Cast

This week on The Chrome Cast, we dig into many of the new features that have arrived in the Chrome OS world with version 88 of the operating system.  With the new screen saver, WebAuthn, and the updated screen capture tool, there's a lot to love about the latest update for your Chromebook. Additionally, we spend some time talking about the recent arrival in the office: the Lenovo Thinkpad C13 Yoga...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we were excited to dig in a bit on the 9 new Chromebooks announced at BETT 2021 that range from the latest small-core Jasper Lake Intel devices to ARM-powered Chromebooks with MediaTek and Snapdragon internals. The yearly education-focused show always follows closely behind CES and, like it always does, comes replete with a slew of new classroom-ready Chromebooks. The...

This episode is sponsored by VIZOR for Chromebooks. Schools, do you have Chromebooks? Introducing VIZOR for Chromebooks, a Chromebook management solution that goes beyond your Google Admin functionality. It integrates with G Suite and with your Student Information System. Track who has what, track check-out programs, and manage repairs. Schedule a product demo to see if VIZOR for Chromebooks can h...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we’re talking CES 2021 and about a couple Chromebooks that were released via the yearly tech show. Sure, we’re not in Vegas this year and yes, we’d love to actually be there with our hands on new hardware amongst the energy of CES, but that’s just not in the cards with the pandemic continuing to do its damage. In fact, we’re completely quarantined ourselves as a perso...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we are taking a bit to discuss some of our favorite things from 2020 and taking a look towards what we're most looking forward to in 2021.  For the past year, the mid-range Chromebook emergence takes up the bulk of our discussion time and looking forward, devices like the Snapdragon Chromebook tablet 'Coachz', Chromebooks with GPUs and ARM processors dominate the thin...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we spend the first portion of the show discussing the incredible job the Stadia team has done in bringing the Stadia experience over to iPhone and iPad via an impressive PWA. With so much happening in Stadia from game streaming to messaging to chat and Wi-Fi controller pairing, it is amazing to see a PWA do so much completely contained in a browser tab. In the second...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we spend much of our time talking through a ton of the new features on board in Chrome OS 87. From new wallpapers to Bluetooth battery reporting to ALT+TAB keyboard navigation, there’s quite a bit in this update to digest. From there we move on to talking about some of the features that are nested behind feature flags in Chrome OS 87 like holding space, the new global...

This episode is sponsored by VIZOR for Chromebooks. Schools, do you have Chromebooks? Introducing VIZOR for Chromebooks, a Chromebook management solution that goes beyond your Google Admin functionality. It integrates with G Suite and with your Student Information System. Track who has what, track check-out programs, and manage repairs. Schedule a product demo to see if VIZOR for Chromebooks can h...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we spend a bit of time talking through our latest, favorite deals as well as our picks for 2020 Gear of the Year.  From $200 Lenovo Duet's to big sales on AirPods Pro, there are so many deals going on it is a bit dizzying.  Between those deals and discussing some of our favorite tech from 2020, it makes for a fun first half of the show. After the break, our discussion...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we start things off by covering our current giveaways (both a Lenovo Chromebook Duet and Acer Chromebook Spin 713 ), tons of other great deals out there on Chromebooks for the holiday season, and we follow it all up with an overview of the Best Chromebooks of 2020 video that we published just this week.  Simply put, whether you're in it to get a Chromebook for free or...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we're talking about ARM yet again.  There's a reason we find ourselves in this lane week in and week out, and it is because ARM is finally emerging in the market as a viable counterpart to Intel's desktop dominance.  We see this more clearly than ever with both the announcement of Apple's first line of M1 ARM-powered devices and MediaTek's new Chromebook-specific ARM...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we're getting prepped and excited for a few reasons as we approach the MediaTek Summit next week.  For one, we know there is going to be some Chromebook-specific news in regard to the upcoming MT8195 chips we expect to see in Chromebooks beginning in 2021.  More exciting is the swag box MediaTek sent over that had some fun stuff inside, but most notably contained a br...

This week on The Chrome Cast, our conversation is as varied as the week's content has been.  From a new version of Chrome OS arriving, rolling out slowly, being not-really-delayed, and finally landing for nearly everyone, it has been an odd release cycle to be sure.  Additionally, we've seen the confident return of Chromebook inventory in stores, leading to pre-Black Friday sales on all sorts of d...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we’re diving into the new ARM-powered Chromebook that Acer just unveiled this week (the Chromebook Spin 513) that just so happens to be running on the new Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Compute platform. Though this device is still clearly a work in progress, the inclusion of Snapdragon chips in the Chrome OS story is notable as more high-end ARM chips are slated for 2021 fro...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we’re peeling back the onion a bit to take a deeper look at why the laptop industry’s transitions over the ARM-based chips is so important for Chrome OS. While Chromebooks have run fine on both ARM and x86 processors alike for years, it’s never quite felt like Google has been all-in on the idea. As Apple readies itself to fully unveil the new Macbooks with ARM process...

Google’s new hardware has dominated our site, YouTube channel and podcast for a few weeks now. We had preliminary leaks of the new gadgets followed by a virtual event and now we have the actual hardware in our hands here at the Chrome Unboxed office. If you missed them, we have unboxing videos of both the new Chromecast with Google TV and the new Nest Audio speaker and both items have impressed th...

There’s no real reason to fight it, right? This week has been totally dominated by Google’s latest hardware unveiling and we’re here for it. From new phones to a Chromecast with a remote to a beautiful new smart speaker, there was a lot to take in and react to. We spend the entire podcast unpacking each piece and our reactions go from excited to dubious: pumped for the new Chromecast, anxiously an...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we stay in one lane: Google's.  Specifically, Google's upcoming hardware.  Over the past few days, leak after leak has happened and pretty much everything is out in the open about new phones, a new Chromecast, a new smart speaker, and a new Wi-Fi router.  Between this week's podcast and last week's episode, we've learned a whole lot. There's a ton to be excited for an...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we spend quite a bit of our time talking through all the things we’re excited to see at Google’s event in just under two weeks from today. Between a new Nest speaker, a couple new phones, and the all new Chromecast with Google TV, there’s a lot of solid hardware getting ready to become available. While I’m happy to see the phones in the flesh and think the speaker wil...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we fully expected to talk about quite a few things, but we started in on the Surface Duo and just couldn't stop chatting.  While we did end up talking a bit about the news that MediaTek has announced a new ARM chip just for 2021 Chromebooks, the bulk of our time was spent dreaming a bit about what Chrome OS on a dual-screen folding device would look like.  While the D...

Whether you know all about USI (universal stylus initiative), have never heard about it, or are itching to know more, you really need to tune in for this episode of The Chrome Cast.  We were fortunate enough to have a fantastic and detailed conversation about the history, current status, and future of USI with none other than the Chairman of the Board for USI, Peter Mueller.  Through a series of q...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we talk about a handful of things in the lead up to our main topic of conversation: a renewed hope in a Google-made Chromebook for 2020.  Presumably the successor to the Pixelbook, 'Halvor' is in possession of a Google-only feature that we've only seen in the Pixelbook, Pixelbook Go and Pixel Slate up to this point in the #madebyGoogle era of Chromebooks.  Obviously t...

This week on The Chrome Cast, our conversation is quite a bit more nuanced than the title says, but the number of things we discussed simply can’t be conveyed in a few words. The first half centers around Google’s changes to Meet, their cooperation with Zoom, and the improved focus across the board for messaging and home-related goods. It feels like Google is proactively trimming the fat in many a...

If you took a second to read that title up there, you can probably guess: this is an odd-ball episode and we talk through some very interesting news from the past few days. Sometimes this just happens, right? The week is going along like you expect and then out of nowhere, a few things happen that you can’t seem to escape no matter what you do. For us this week, two very monumental things occurred...

This week on The Chrome Cast, we reflect a bit on the early success of Google’s new Pixel 4a and what may come with the announced Pixel 4a 5G and Pixel 5. With Google now firmly planted in the mid-range phone space with no clear indication that a flagship device is coming anytime soon, I suppose it is time to get used to the idea of Pixel phones that have far more mass appeal and far less attracti...