Xolo’s new Chromebook with Rockchip RK3288 costs $200


Xolo is an Indian smartphone and tablet vendor who just entered the netbook game with the new Chromebook.

The new portable device costs just 12,999 INR or US$205, and is powered by the Rockchip RK3288 processor which GizChina patrons would be well acquainted with. If you aren’t, here’s what the RK3288 has — a quad-core CPU with a 1.8GHz clock rate and a Cortex A17 architecture.

Coming back to the Xolo Chromebook, it has a 11.6-inch screen with a 1366 x 768 pixel resolution, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of on-board storage (10GB out of which should be available to the end user). You would naturally want to add extra storage, and hence, there’s a microSD slot for that.

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To top it off, the device has a 1MP front camera and a 4200mAh battery along with the usual radio (WiFi, Bluetooth) and 2x USB ports, and an HDMI out port.

As usual, 100GB of Google Drive storage can be availed for free (for up to 2 years) with the purchase of the Xolo Chromebook. The Xolo Chromebook is yet to go on sale (it’ll be available on Snapdeal, but an exactly identical device in the form of the Nexian Air Chromebook (which also launched today) can be bought from Amazon already.

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41 Comments

  1. Natsumi
    May 15, 2015

    No more *** chromebook, something with a decent HD and able to run ubuntu!!!!

    • Manu
      May 16, 2015

      i dont really see the problem uninstalling chromeos and installing ubuntu (besides the poor amount of ram)

      • bobo
        May 16, 2015

        Get the $3xx Toshiba Chromebook if you want FHD. I’ve got the 720p, or so, version, and I’m pleased with it.. No lag, whatsoever.

      • balcobomber25
        May 16, 2015

        2GB of RAM is more than enough to run Ubuntu. Ubuntu can run on computers with as little as 512mb of RAM. Even better is installing one of the lighter versions of Linux that are based on Ubuntu, most of those are designed to run on laptops with very low memory (128mb).

    • balcobomber25
      May 16, 2015

      Practically every Chromebook can run Ubuntu, Arch and Bodhi Linux. For an HD model there is the Chromebook Pixel.

      • Natsumi
        May 16, 2015

        They can harly run it, plus I want HD space, a chromebook doesn’t have it.

        • balcobomber25
          May 16, 2015

          I run Ubuntu on the original Samsung Arm Chromebook, it runs beautifully. There are some Chromebooks with actual HD’s, Acer has one with 320GB. The ones without HD’s have SD slots and support external hard drives.

          • Natsumi
            May 16, 2015

            Then in my country I only have chromebooks with 32gb of space… a pity (I was told it’s hard to install an ubuntu depending on the cpu) because chromebooks are light (what I need) and not very expensive.
            I’ll keep saving money…. XD

            • balcobomber25
              May 16, 2015

              Whoever told you its hard doesn’t know what they are talking about. There is entire community dedicated to nothing but running Ubuntu (and other Linux Distros) on Chromebooks. They have step by step guides that take less than 20 minutes start to finish. 32 GB is more than enough to run Ubuntu and you can also expand that with an SD card or external Hard Drive.

  2. joe mont
    May 15, 2015

    Seems overpriced coming from some no name brand with a cheap chinese processor.

    • balcobomber25
      May 16, 2015

      “no name brand with a cheap chinese processor”. Neither of those is actually true, Xolo is a very well known brand, maybe not to you personally, but they have been around for a few years now. Rockchip has been around for awhile too, they make some very good SoC’s especially for the home media player market.

      • Marius Cirsta
        May 16, 2015

        It still is overpriced though. For the same price you can probably get and Acer powered by a much more powerful Intel SOC.

        For me any Intel SOC is a much better deal because of the open source support anyway. This means I can easily install Linux instead of ChromeOS on it.

        • balcobomber25
          May 16, 2015

          I never said it wasn’t overpriced.

          Any Chromebook you can install Linux on. Chrome os itself is based off of Gentoo Linux. A number of distros have been ported to run on Arm Chromebooks. I have personally used Ubuntu, Arch and Bodhi on a Samsung Arm Chromebook.

          • Marius Cirsta
            May 16, 2015

            Sure but it’s much nicer when you have open GPU drivers, upstream MESA support and all that…
            Till ARM gets their shit togerther and release open source GPU drivers I think Intel stuff is a better deal especially if it can be had for the same price.
            Besides I think a Broadwell derived SOC will be much more powerful than a RK3288 ….
            Something like Helio X20, now that would be interesting to have in a Chromebook …

            • balcobomber25
              May 16, 2015

              Obviously it is easier with Intel but its not impossible with ARM. Personally I would like to see AMD Chromebooks with Radeon GPU’s.

            • Marius Cirsta
              May 16, 2015

              That would be nice indeed …. maybe with their newer APUs somone will build some…. I bet they’re nor asking more than Intel for their SOCs …. well at least they shouldn’t.

            • balcobomber25
              May 16, 2015

              AMD actually said earlier this year they won’t enter Chromebooks until they become more popular.

  3. Natsumi
    May 15, 2015

    No more *** chromebook, something with a decent HD and able to run ubuntu!!!!

    • Frozzem
      May 16, 2015

      i dont really see the problem uninstalling chromeos and installing ubuntu (besides the poor amount of ram)

    • balcobomber25
      May 16, 2015

      Practically every Chromebook can run Ubuntu, Arch and Bodhi Linux. For an HD model there is the Chromebook Pixel.

    • bobo
      May 16, 2015

      Get the $3xx Toshiba Chromebook if you want FHD. I’ve got the 720p, or so, version, and I’m pleased with it.. No lag, whatsoever.

    • Natsumi
      May 16, 2015

      They can harly run it, plus I want HD space, a chromebook doesn’t have it.

    • balcobomber25
      May 16, 2015

      I run Ubuntu on the original Samsung Arm Chromebook, it runs beautifully. There are some Chromebooks with actual HD’s, Acer has one with 320GB. The ones without HD’s have SD slots and support external hard drives.

    • balcobomber25
      May 16, 2015

      2GB of RAM is more than enough to run Ubuntu. Ubuntu can run on computers with as little as 512mb of RAM. Even better is installing one of the lighter versions of Linux that are based on Ubuntu, most of those are designed to run on laptops with very low memory (128mb).

    • Natsumi
      May 16, 2015

      Then in my country I only have chromebooks with 32gb of space… a pity (I was told it’s hard to install an ubuntu depending on the cpu) because chromebooks are light (what I need) and not very expensive.
      I’ll keep saving money…. XD

    • balcobomber25
      May 16, 2015

      Whoever told you its hard doesn’t know what they are talking about. There is entire community dedicated to nothing but running Ubuntu (and other Linux Distros) on Chromebooks. They have step by step guides that take less than 20 minutes start to finish. 32 GB is more than enough to run Ubuntu and you can also expand that with an SD card or external Hard Drive.

  4. joe mont
    May 15, 2015

    Seems overpriced coming from some no name brand with a cheap chinese processor.

    • balcobomber25
      May 16, 2015

      “no name brand with a cheap chinese processor”. Neither of those is actually true, Xolo is a very well known brand, maybe not to you personally, but they have been around for a few years now. Rockchip has been around for awhile too, they make some very good SoC’s especially for the home media player market.

    • Marius Cirsta
      May 16, 2015

      It still is overpriced though. For the same price you can probably get and Acer powered by a much more powerful Intel SOC.

      For me any Intel SOC is a much better deal because of the open source support anyway. This means I can easily install Linux instead of ChromeOS on it.

    • balcobomber25
      May 16, 2015

      I never said it wasn’t overpriced.

      Any Chromebook you can install Linux on. Chrome os itself is based off of Gentoo Linux. A number of distros have been ported to run on Arm Chromebooks. I have personally used Ubuntu, Arch and Bodhi on a Samsung Arm Chromebook.

    • Marius Cirsta
      May 16, 2015

      Sure but it’s much nicer when you have open GPU drivers, upstream MESA support and all that…
      Till ARM gets their shit togerther and release open source GPU drivers I think Intel stuff is a better deal especially if it can be had for the same price.
      Besides I think a Broadwell derived SOC will be much more powerful than a RK3288 ….
      Something like Helio X20, now that would be interesting to have in a Chromebook …

    • balcobomber25
      May 16, 2015

      Obviously it is easier with Intel but its not impossible with ARM. Personally I would like to see AMD Chromebooks with Radeon GPU’s.

    • Marius Cirsta
      May 16, 2015

      That would be nice indeed …. maybe with their newer APUs somone will build some…. I bet they’re nor asking more than Intel for their SOCs …. well at least they shouldn’t.

    • balcobomber25
      May 16, 2015

      AMD actually said earlier this year they won’t enter Chromebooks until they become more popular.

  5. Noname1919
    May 16, 2015

    Processor is nice. But no fhd. Onda 11.6 is better choice

  6. hans
    May 16, 2015

    4200mah battery on a 11 inch screen? What is the running time, 2 hours?

    • balcobomber25
      May 16, 2015

      The Samsung Arm Chromebook with 11.6 inch display has a 4800 mAh battery, brand new it averaged around 9 hours battery time, after 2.5 years of use I get about 6-7 hours.

  7. Guest
    May 16, 2015

    4200mah battery on a 11 inch screen? What is the running time, 2 hours?

    • balcobomber25
      May 17, 2015

      The Samsung Arm Chromebook with 11.6 inch display has a 4800 mAh battery, brand new it averaged around 9 hours battery time, after 2.5 years of use I get about 6-7 hours.

  8. May 17, 2015

    The thing about ANY laptop form factor device is screen size and keyboard usability.

    While I really quite like chromium OS for a basic PC, I think it’s water that the screen isn’t at least 15″. A 15.6″ 2K display would be ideal for a device like this. And the larger footprint would let them put a bigger battery inside.

  9. Dave Weinstein
    May 18, 2015

    The thing about ANY laptop form factor device is screen size and keyboard usability.

    While I really quite like chromium OS for a basic PC, I think it’s water that the screen isn’t at least 15″. A 15.6″ 2K display would be ideal for a device like this. And the larger footprint would let them put a bigger battery inside.