Once upon a time, Chromebook hardware walked a very narrow path. Most of the devices worked with a small or large core Intel processor and with 2 GB or 4 GB of RAM. With the exception of a couple of ARM-based outliers and the expensive Pixel Chromebooks, there wasn’t much variation in the specs. Generally speaking, it had a sizable group of Chromebooks powered by Intel that were rolling out once a year or so with a bit of overlap when the next chipset hit the Chrome OS platform. Those days are long gone.
It’s 2020 and today, users can choose between 8th generation Kaby Lake or 10th generation Comet Lake. It has current small-core devices on the market spanning three generations, from Apollo Lake to Gemini Lake-R, and let’s not forget, AMD is now in the mix and more powerful AMD APUs are on the way. Oh, there’s also the MediaTek 8183 that powers Lenovo’s Chromebook Duet and it will start appearing on more devices in the coming months. Add the expired Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and you will get a list of CPUs a mile long. Then there is RAM and storage. 4GB, 8GB and 16GB. DDR3 or DDR4. Solid state storage? eMMC or NVMe? It all gets very confusing very quickly and many Chromebook manufacturers are not very clear about what is inside each device. Getting into a local Best Buy and trying to buy a Chromebook based solely on what’s next to the box can be a daunting and frustrating experience. Don’t even get me started on Amazon. Most third-party Chromebook sellers have no idea what’s inside the devices they sell. They simply list the specs as best they can, and the buyer gets what he gets.
If you own a Chromebook and aren’t sure what hardware you’re using, we have a couple of simple methods to help you identify what’s inside your Chrome OS device. If you bought it new, you probably have a rough idea of what processor it has and how much RAM and storage it has, but maybe you took one away from a friend or maybe it’s a device borrowed from your school or place of business and you want know a little more about the internal aspects. Without worries. The first place we recommend checking is to head to the Chrome Web Store and grab a little Chrome app called Cog – System Information Viewer.
What is the tooth?
Well, as its name implies, it is a system information viewer. The lightweight Chrome app will give you information about your devices, such as the CPU (you can see the actual model of the CPU to find out what generation it is), RAM (memory), storage size, and even system temperature. Cog will even show you every core on your CPU and that includes virtual cores if you have an Intel Core processor that supports hyperthreading. At the bottom of the app, you’ll see information about battery level, screen output, keyboard language, and even pre-installed plug-ins that ship with Chrome OS. Cog is not only a great way to take a look at the hardware you have, but it will also give you an idea of how much CPU and RAM your device currently uses. If your Chromebook seems to be having trouble, you can open Cog and see if your CPU or memory is running low. From there, you can open Chrome OS Task Manager to see what’s causing the problem. You can find Cog in the web store here.
Chrome system
If you’re like us and like to dig a little deeper into your device, Chrome OS really does have an “about the system” info page. You can access all the specifications of your Chromebooks and more by pointing your browser to chrome://settings. Don’t worry, you can’t break anything on this page. It is for reference only, but contains a wealth of system information about your hardware and your specific account level settings. When you open the page, which could take a minute or so, you’ll see a long list of collapsed buttons. Each contains information about the corresponding item on the left of the page. You can search for specific items by clicking Ctrl + F and typing your query. For example, if you type “meminfo”, it will take you to the line where the RAM of the devices is listed. On my Chromebook, it lists 8027704 kB, which is 8 GB of RAM. ->
On this page, you can see the channel your device is on or the version of Chrome OS it is on along with the “code name” of your devices and whether or not the Chromebook is managed. There are a lot of nerdy specs on this page and we visit it frequently when looking for hidden gems within a device. Again, this is probably more than most users will want to know, but it’s a great way to find out more specific details about your device. Cog is still the cleanest and easiest way to find your device information if you only want the basics. Either way, these are two good methods with which you can learn a little more about your Chromebook. Until next time.
