HP Releases New 802.11ac Compatible Mobile Devices

Apple isn’t the only big tech company releasing new 802.11ac compatible mobile devices in the last few days. HP has released a series of second generation Chromebooks that take advantage of the speeds 11ac offers.

Featuring 11 and 14 inch screens, the two models of Chromebook come at a decent price, too: $199 for the 11 inch and $299 for the 14 inch. HP has gone for different chip sets for the two devices as well, with the smaller device using an Intel Celeron N2830 chip while the larger device has an NVIDIA Tegra K1 SoC chip. Here are some further basic stats: both Chromebooks have 2-4 GB of DDR3L-1333MHz RAM, 16 GB of onboard eMMC storage and 100 GB of Google Drive storage. Most importantly for Solutions Review, they have 2×2 802.11ac chips, which will enable significantly faster connection speeds for these devices.

Those significantly faster speeds might be even more important to the HP Chromebooks than it might be for a more traditional device. Chromebooks are thin clients, meaning that the apps they run aren’t usually stored and/or run on the device itself, but in the cloud. The device therefore acts more like a portal or gateway.  As a result great internet connectivity and speed are a must-have for any thin-client device, as without the right level of internet service, apps that users try to run may not work properly. Improved internet speed from a properly designed 802.11ac WLAN network will therefore lead to a direct improvement in the performance of apps on 802.11ac capable Chromebooks.

The results from these devices flooding the market for businesses that haven’t thought about implementing an 802.11ac enterprise WLAN solution should be concerning. If users start asking why their thin-client devices don’t work well on your organization’s network but work absolutely great on your competitors, then you may have a problem on your hands. With the flood of AC capable devices coming onto the market, HP’s new Chromebooks should give the enterprise yet another reason to look at investing in the latest wireless standard.

For a more in depth look at HP’s two new Chromebooks at Tom’s Hardware, click here.