Dell

Dell

Dell

Dell

Google

Every time we review a Chromebook, we end up with the same complaint: you can buy cheap Chromebooks, and you can buy a great Chromebook, but there's not much that exists in between those two extremes. Even with the price cut it got earlier this year, the Chromebook Pixel is two or three times more expensive than most other Chromebooks, and the cheap ones all make compromises in quality or performance to cut prices.

Dell's new Chromebook 13 might be the one that hits the sweet spot. It's made from a combination of carbon fiber and aluminum/magnesium, the same kinds of materials used in its premium XPS laptops. It has a 13.3-inch 1080p IPS display, available with and without touch. It includes Intel's Broadwell-U processors, weighs a respectable 3.2 pounds (a less impressive 3.53 pounds with touch), and promises 12 hours of battery life. It goes on sale "likely in early September."

The $399 base model will include a Broadwell Celeron processor, 16GB of storage, and 2GB of RAM—the RAM is a little low, but it's a good mix of performance and build quality for the price. Core i5, Core i7, 32GB storage, 4GB and 8GB of RAM, and the touchscreen are all available as options (a fully loaded model can cost as much as $899). A backlit keyboard, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.0 is standard on all models, and while it doesn't include the handy USB Type-C ports we liked so much on the Chromebook Pixel, it does have a USB 3.0 port, a USB 2.0 port, a full-size HDMI port, and an SD card slot.

The laptop was announced as part of a Google presentation on the Chromebooks For Work initiative, a set of tools for users and IT administrators that help schools and businesses use and manage Chromebooks. Google is improving Chrome OS' support for VPNs and printers, making it easier for IT admins to manage Wi-Fi and other network connections for large numbers of computers and use virtualization to provide Windows apps to ChromeOS users. Though the features were highlighted alongside the Dell Chromebook 13, they'll be available for all up-to-date Chromebooks and Google says some of the features have already rolled out (others, like virtualization, have been supported in some fashion for years).

We'll be giving the new Dell Chromebook a full review at some point before its release in September.