Google's Chromebooks, the company's low-priced budget laptops that run on their own proprietary ChromeOS have been slowly gaining the popularity of the crowd mainly due to their product costs. That said, Google recently combined ChromeOS with the mainstream Android ecosystem by integrating all Android apps available on the play store. As the reports indicate, most of the devices already compatible with Android apps.
A recent report from Digital Trends indicates not all Chromebooks are able to offer the same experience even if it meant to support Android apps, part of Google's latest move to attract more audience towards their portable devices. The report mentions that those models with inbuilt ARM processors generally tend to perform better and offer a seamless operating experience than models with Intel processors on board.
As mentioned in the report, Shrout research tested the performance of both Intel-based Chromebooks and those with ARM processors onboard. The performance of Android apps on devices like Acer Chromebook R13 and R11 mainly differed in boot times, stability and battery life. The R13 is equipped with a MediaTek M81732C ARM processor while the R11 uses an Intel Celeron N3060CPU. Numerous store apps that were downloaded to both the devices varied in all the aforementioned tests.
The test report also indicated that the ARM-based Acer R13 Chromebook performed better consistently on all the tests while the Intel-based R11 Chromebook had a few hiccups like stuttering, longer loading times and general instability with many other applications. The power efficiency of the former device was consistent over that of the Intel-based product.
As mentioned in the report, the majority of Android applications are mostly written and optimized for ARM processors. Since Intel processors are mainly used in mainstream laptops, the compatibility of the same with Chromebooks will not yield better results leading to constant performance issues.
