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Gaming Chromebooks Are On the Way With Full RGB Keyboards (9to5google.com) 60

Posted by BeauHD from the what-to-expect dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from 9to5Google: The next class of Chrome OS devices may be targeted at the gaming market -- more than one Chromebook is set to release with a full RGB keyboard. Similar to how Chrome OS offers support for Linux apps and Android apps, there's been a long-running effort -- codenamed Borealis -- to get Steam and various Linux-compatible PC games running in a virtual machine on your Chromebook. While there's yet to be any formal announcement of Steam games for Chromebooks, work has steadily continued since the project was first discovered.

Whether through Steam games or game streaming services, it seems Google's gaming ambitions for Chrome OS may be coming to fruition in the near future. According to changes to Chrome OS code in the last few weeks, Google has begun working to support Chromebooks with full color RGB keyboards -- you can't have a product for gamers without RGB, right? Right? -- starting with a new feature flag. From what we can find, each keyboard key can be individually customized to your liking to vary the intensity of the red, green, and blue lighting to create different colors and adjust the keyboard's overall backlight brightness. For now, this is only possible through an internal command for Chrome OS developers to use in testing. In time, one would assume there would be a tool within Chrome OS to let gamers change the colors of their keyboards.

At first glance, one could argue that this is just about supporting the many USB and Bluetooth connected keyboards you can buy with RGB lighting built in. However, with a bit more digging, we've found that rather than being a generic feature, Chrome OS's RGB support is being prepared for a select few unreleased devices. So who is going to be making the first gaming Chromebooks? For the time being, there appear to be at least three hardware codenames associated with RGB keyboards. The first two are Vell and Taniks, both of which are based on Intel's 12th Gen Alder Lake laptop processors. [...] A third hardware codename attached to RGB keyboards for Chrome OS is Ripple. However, rather than being the name of a particular Chromebook, it seems that Ripple is the internal name of a detachable keyboard, like that of the Pixel Slate.
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Gaming Chromebooks Are On the Way With Full RGB Keyboards More

Gaming Chromebooks Are On the Way With Full RGB Keyboards

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  • will they have bios with the OC / other config? that gamers may want?

    • I think overclocking a chromebook would go quite poorly. They don't have the components to handle doing that.

  • Hardware (Score:5, Insightful)

    by JThundley ( 631154 ) on Thursday January 27, 2022 @07:17PM (#62213797)

    Wouldn't Chromebooks need to have decent hardware first?

    • Re:Hardware (Score:5, Funny)

      by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Friday January 28, 2022 @04:20AM (#62214517) Homepage

      Wouldn't Chromebooks need to have decent hardware first?

      It's got an RGB keyboard, that'll double your frame rate instantly.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by vivian ( 156520 )

        First thing I did when I bought my gaming laptop was turn off that annoying rainbow keyboard lighting - the colors were distracting enough but what was worse was it kept moving them which looked pretty but actually affected my typing as I'd stab at the wrong keys as the colors moved.
        My framerate may have suffered but my typing definitely improved.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      You can buy a $1000 Chromebook with high end specs if you want, they are out there.

      The main issue is lack of games to take advantage of the hardware, at least until now. Most ChromeOS gaming is Android games, which are of course designed for phones and tablets which are thermally limited (no fans or big heatsinks). If they get Steam ported over it would open up a huge number of desktop games and create demand for more powerful Chromebooks.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        You can buy a $1000 Chromebook with high end specs if you want, they are out there.

        The main issue is lack of games to take advantage of the hardware, at least until now. Most ChromeOS gaming is Android games, which are of course designed for phones and tablets which are thermally limited (no fans or big heatsinks). If they get Steam ported over it would open up a huge number of desktop games and create demand for more powerful Chromebooks.

        A $1000 chromebook does not a gaming PC make. They're decent machines

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          It's a chicken and egg problem. Android games mostly run fine on integrated graphics because they are designed for mid-range phones at most. Few games are going to limit their audience to flagships.

          Once Steam becomes available, it will make more sense to install discrete GPUs.

        • Google seems to have been considering using arc dGPUs with passthrough for Borealis.

      • I wish my gaming laptop cost $1000. I like it quite a bit, but I think I'd really love it for half price.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jiriw ( 444695 )

      Yes... but you may be surprised which hardware parts need to be decent. I don't know of any laptop with high-end processing and discrete graphics that can run on battery for more than a couple of hours.
      I can imagine a sub $400 Chromebook with fast latency-optimized WiFi or 5G and a fast framerate screen run competitive gaming in combination with a Stadia subscription or a home gaming based desktop in 'server' mode and being capable of doing that for an entire day unplugged.

  • What is the point of light in gaming keyboards? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gweihir ( 88907 ) on Thursday January 27, 2022 @07:37PM (#62213835)

    I really do not get this. If you game with it, you do not have the time to even look at the keys. Hence light does nothing. And if you have time, you do not need the light. Unless this is for people gaming entirely in the dark?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      When I walk into a completely dark room, I just poke around at the desk/keys until my player moves forward. That way I achieve initial alignment between my hands and keyboard. Sure, one in ten times I walk off a cliff, but it sure beats using light.

      I also do a similar thing when I type to people between rounds/levels/whenever (I know... sometimes I like to perform Time Division Multiplexing to both type to people and play games during the same time period... I'm different like that I guess).

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Misagon ( 1135 )

        You do know, don't you, that on 99% of all keyboards the F and J keys have "homing bars" or other features to help you feel your way to position your hands without looking.

        Same with the 5 key on the numeric keypad. Also, many keyboards have a stepped Caps Lock key that makes it easier to find the A key next to it.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

      RGB is gamer cred nowadays. There are even RGB on internal components of the PC, with expectation that you'll have bright, distracting lighting in the box sitting next to you with a glass door so you can see it.

      It's weird. I remember having backlight on early gaming keyboards that would glow dim red so you could see keys in dimply lit room without ruining your night vision. Then I remember backlight going configurable RGB because... it was cool? I have two such keyboards in use right now, and they're all in

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Makes sense.

        Well, I have one keyboard with backlights and I had to disable them. The designers were driving the LEDs with a 500Hz PWM (possibly Arduino in the keyboard controller and nobody that could do a faster PWM on Arduino in the design team) and inadequate filters, so it was creating rather strong audio interference. There was also no way to turn them off completely, so there is now a cut in a PCB trace. Struck me as a really bad design. It works nicely now without light.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rhipf ( 525263 )

        You are sitting in front of a computer screen and you think that having red backlighting on your keyboard is going to preserve your night vision? Unless all you are showing on the computer monitor is redscale (or whatever the red equivalent of grayscale is) images having a red backlight on your keyboard isn't going to be doing much to preserve nigh vision.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

          No, I think that when I'm in a dark room, and my screen is asleep, I will be able to find the keyboard and press space to wake it up.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Rhipf ( 525263 )

            Ah. I don't have a lighted keyboard on anything but my laptop and it turns off when the laptop goes to sleep. I didn't realize that USB backlit keyboards acted differently.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by Luckyo ( 1726890 )

              Screen, not entire machine. For example, when you have something like a big game update running overnight, you just put the screen to sleep and go to sleep yourself.

              Then wake up in the early morning and hit space to see if update is ok before going to do morning chores. Turning on the room light would hurt your eyes for a few seconds while pupils shrink, whereas turning on a fairly dim screen with software in dark mode won't.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by q4Fry ( 1322209 )

        I am heavily speculating here, but it might be useful to backlight the WASD in one color, the number keys in another color, EFRGX and space in a third, and then the rest of the keyboard in dim red.

        I haven't done much gaming since the advent of funny backlit keyboards, but I'm still hoping for the keyboard-with-screens-on-the-keys to become a thing.

    • After a certain point it becomes too costly to get a meaningful increase in gaming performance. and if you are like me and don't even have very good skills, spending more on your "rig" doesn't help you anyways. But what you can do, and much cheaper than a new graphic card, is put pretty lights all over your case and keyboard.

      More seriously you can color code your various action keys. If you're doing RTS or MMORPG where you might use one hand for the mouse and the other for dozens of command keys and macros,

  • And for plain text editing ... (Score:3)

    by Krishnoid ( 984597 ) on Thursday January 27, 2022 @07:41PM (#62213841) Journal
    There's still no native Google Drive support. How about a basic code editor?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by hazem ( 472289 )

      There's still no native Google Drive support. How about a basic code editor?

      These Google-constrained devices were never intended to create things. They're devices designed to enhance consumption and optimize revenue generation.

      You typing code in a text editor doesn't make Google any money. In fact it deprives them of profits because they can't show you ads or sell you content while you're coding.

  • Am I the only one getting annoyed? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by ls671 ( 1122017 ) on Thursday January 27, 2022 @07:43PM (#62213853) Homepage

    Am I the only one getting annoyed by that RGB crap that doesn't make much sense to me? I mean RGB keyboards, RGB cooling fans or liquid tubing cooling, RGB hardrives, etc. etc.

    Think of it, a Red Green Blue keyboard! That's literally what it says!

    • Many things in life are not necessary, but some people think it looks cool or even necessary. Cars with glowing neon lights underneath don't make much sense, but it's a thing. People get tattoos, etc.

    • RGB freaking DIMM sticks! And for high-end non-ECC RAM it's even hard to buy a non-RGB one (or at least it was when I was shopping -- before finally dumping the crap and grabbing 256GB of slow but reliable ECC).

      What's the point in THAT? A keyboard is at least supposed to sit on the outside of the machine, while any glass window with interfere with the case primary's function: keeping noise in while letting heat out.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rhipf ( 525263 )

        It is actually rather easy to find non-RGB RAM. You buy RGB RAM and turn of the LEDs. Bingo! RAM with no RGB lighting. 8^)

        If the speed of the RAM is a big issue this would be the way to go (assuming you can't find same speed RAM without RGB) and it is also the way to go if the non-RGB RAM of comparable speed is significantly more expensive.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It's due to the rise of YouTube PC builders. As well as RGB lighting you can get parts like motherboards and graphics cards with all-white PCBs and heatsinks, or all black. Most cases have at least the option of a window on the side.

      In order to differentiate themselves and get some views, the YouTube builders started making their PCs into works of "art", with garish RGB rainbows everywhere and all the cable clutter hidden away. Oh yeah, most cases these days let you hide most of the cabling behind the mothe

  • Who even ... (Score:3)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Thursday January 27, 2022 @07:48PM (#62213861)

    ... looks at their keyboard when they are typing or shooting the enemy?

  • Gaming. Chromebooks. (Score:3)

    by splutty ( 43475 ) on Thursday January 27, 2022 @07:52PM (#62213869)

    What the fuck?

    "Certified for Minesweeper."

  • Can it run linux? (Score:4, Funny)

    by Z80a ( 971949 ) on Thursday January 27, 2022 @07:53PM (#62213873)

    Or it's just something pretending to be a computer?

  • I'm not getting the market segment. To my knowledge, Chomebooks have a few segments:

    * K-12 schools, because it is hard to infect or destroy a Chromebook.

    * People who just want a "terminal" for cloud services, and data stored on GDrive. This is where it may be understandable where someone wants a decent CPU, RAM for caching, decent screen, and so on..

    * Something to take along for a trip, so if it gets stolen, there isn't any usable data on it, and the Chromebook can be killed from remote.

    None of these r

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by iamacat ( 583406 )

      * Something that doesn't constantly get borked by drivers, or updates, or DLL hell so that when I want to play a game I can just dive in rather than waiting for half an hour or doing system administration.

    • Build it and they will come?

      In the education sector and COVID, isn't BYOD more of a thing than school-issued? If a schoolkid wants a higher specced Chromebook for gaming, that's a parent's decision to spend the extra bucks.

      But I suspect this is dog-fooding within Google. Get everyone, or most in the company, weened off other platforms; you buy them all a high end Chromebook that they work 8+ hours a day on and whatever free time gaming on the same device.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jiriw ( 444695 )

      Steam support on Chrome OS could be interesting, but also flaky if the hardware isn't decent enough. But a Chromebook with mostly low-end hardware but a fast/low latency Wifi, high framerate screen and maybe some other 'gamer' options may be very interesting in combination with a Stadia subscription... and (after a few hacks applied?) as a remote terminal for your own gaming PC 'server' whether that's a high-end gaming laptop plugged in at home or a full tower desktop with high-end gpu.
      At home this setup wi

    • I wonder what market niche this serves...

      I've thought the same thing. If someone wants a Chromebook, a $300 unit does the core stuff. If someone is willing to spend $1,000 or more on a laptop with gaming in mind, my MSI Katana was $999 and has a Core i7, a GTX3050, and runs Steam/Origin/Epic games by virtue of being a Windows laptop. It certainly isn't going to win any benchmarking contests, but it plays everything well-enough, especially at the price point. The article (I skimmed it...) doesn't mention a GPU at all.

      So, people who have $1,000 and

    • I think it will be a way for students to flex while they are in class.

  • carries the same connotation as 'racing golf' also, why is the primarily advertised feature a rgb keyboard?

  • Be still, my racing heart (Score:3)

    by robi5 ( 1261542 ) on Friday January 28, 2022 @01:49AM (#62214339)

    Yay, finally a selection of linux games running inside a virtual machine of an already underpowered piece of hardware!

  • FFS (Score:3)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Friday January 28, 2022 @07:17AM (#62214683) Homepage

    "Gaming"

    "But it has RGB!"

    Fuck off with the RGB shite.

  • "Gaming"

    Scans summary for information on the GPU or overall gaming performance

    Comes up empty

    "But it has RGB!"

    Comments and closes window in disgust

    Fuck off with the RGB shite. It's the PC equivalent of "go-faster stripes" on a car.

  • I've always been confused how wasting CPU cycles on a lighted keyboard is supposed to improve game performance?

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