HP shipping Chromebook x360 11 G1 Education Edition next month

Google may not be willing to produce its own Chromebooks anymore, but that doesn't mean it can't bask in the glory of its platform, which has dominated the education market for some time. Case in point: The company just blogged about Chromebooks being the top computing device in Swedish schools, giving it the opportunity to announce a new education notebook running the Chrome OS.

That laptop is the HP Chromebook x360 11 G1 Education Edition, which HP itself hasn't announced or listed on its website. Nonetheless, Google says it will arrive in the middle of next month. It doesn't provide much in the way of details about the new system, other than to note that it's a convertible laptop with 360-degree hinge, support for optional stylus input, and a USB Type-C charging port.

The Chromebook may be a version of HP's existing ProBook x360 11 Education Edition laptop, which runs Windows 10 and has a similar convertible design, though its USB Type-C connection is only for data transfer. HP has called this ProBook "the world's thinnest rugged convertible notebook PC," and Google's blog post describes the HP Chromebook as similarly rugged. If the ProBook's specs are a guide, the Chromebook may use either an Intel Celeron or Pentium processor, though its RAM and storage demands may be less than the Windows version (which comes with 8GB of memory and at 64GB of built-in storage).

With new models like the Chromebook x360 11 G1 Education Edition, Google's lead in the education market doesn't look like it's slowing down. In fact, the latest market research shows that Chromebooks had 58 percent market share of computers shipped to U.S. schools in 2016 (up from 50 percent in 2015), with former teacher's pet Apple falling to third place behind Windows systems.