Like much of the tech around us, education technology is evolving at an unprecedented pace. Students and teachers spend significant amounts of time working with cloud-based classroom management systems, digital whiteboards, online curricula, multimedia, and interactive learning platforms. AI is turbocharging the pace of change by providing new ways for teachers to automate tasks, implement targeted and adaptive learning strategies, assess student progress, and much more. Many of these technologies require significant computing resources, and some schools that give ChromeOS devices to students and staff may find that their existing hardware has trouble keeping up. Investing in ChromeOS device upgrades can help, but buyers need to know their hardware choices will equip their schools for future success in an AI-enabled world. 

To measure the impact of specific ChromeOS device hardware upgrades, we tested four ChromeOS devices with increasingly powerful Intel processors—an Intel Celeron N4500, an Intel Processor N100, an Intel Processor N200, and an Intel Core i3-N305 processor. Then, we created two processor-intensive session-restore scenarios that students and teachers with active tabs might encounter during a typical day. The first scenario measured how long it took each system to repopulate over a dozen open tabs and apps after a shutdown. The second scenario included all the tabs and apps of the first scenario, and added a Google Meet session with AI-based visual effects.  

In all our comparison tests across both scenarios, each level of Intel processor upgrade resulted in quicker app and tab recoveries after shutdown—in some cases saving several minutes of waiting time. These results indicate that when a school is considering an investment in new ChromeOS devices to handle the increased resource demands of edtech workloads, more powerful Intel processors are a choice that can make a real difference to students and teachers alike. 

To read more about our Intel-powered ChromeOS device performance comparison tests, check out the report below.