Power users will no longer scoff at Chromebooks, as Chrome OS-based laptops now have a new weapon to take on Windows PCs

Our sister site Anandtech reported today that AMD has announced five new APU (accelerated processing unit) chips made specifically for Chromebooks newly optimized Ryzen hardware and Vega graphics, and will be included in HP, Lenovo, and Asus notebooks coming later this year

The set consists of three Ryzen chips: the Ryzen 3 3250C, Ryzen 5 3500C, and Ryzen 7 3700C The Ryzen 3 is based on a dual-core 14 nanometer Dali processor with two Zen cores and three Vega compute units The higher-end Ryzen 5 and 7 chips are based on the 12nm Picasso processor, with four Zen+ cores and as many as 11 Vega compute units

There is also an Athlon Gold 3150C and an Athlon Silver 3050C, both based on the same Dali processor as Ryzen 3

AMD already has an A-series chipset for existing entry-level machines, so this product line is intended to support the mid- to high-end levels of Chromebooks

If you don't speak in chipsets or cores, you may be a bit confused by the above language; AMD has simplified this by claiming that Ryzen-class APUs will offer at least twice as fast performance (versus the A-series) on web tasks

Also, productivity and graphics tasks (when running applications on Linux or Android other than Chrome) are expected to improve performance by 66% to 150%, according to AMD

HP will have two versions of the same new Chromebook, the HP Pro c645, with both Athlon and Ryzen processors (selectable) It will be available in December, at a yet-to-be-determined price

The laptop has many of the standard specs one would expect, with an HP Privacy Camera shutter (and optional fingerprint sensor) The display is available in either 1080p Full HD or 768p HD

Customizable with up to 128GB of NVMe storage and 12GB of RAM, the lowest specs are 4GB of memory and a 32GB eMMC hard drive HP says it offers up to 105 hours of battery life, with optional fast charging available

Ports include dual USB Type-C and Type-A outputs, a microSD slot, and HDMI

As noted above, this is just the beginning of these new AMD Ryzen Chromebooks, with other OEMs joining Lenovo and Asus, which will also be launching laptops later this year

How will these laptops compare in speed to the upcoming Intel 11th generation Tiger Lake chips? We can't wait to find out