Lenovo Sapphire: Everything We Know So Far
Published on by Jim Mendenhall
ChromeOS has tried the premium tablet thing before. It did not go well. When Google launched the Pixel Slate in 2018, it was supposed to prove that ChromeOS could hold its own against the iPad Pro as a serious tablet platform. Instead, it became one of the most cautionary tales in Chromebook history—and Google abandoned the entire product category shortly after. Now, more than seven years later, code discoveries in the Chromium repositories suggest that Lenovo is building something called “Sapphire”: a 13-inch detachable tablet that would become the first Chromebook Plus tablet ever made. The question isn’t whether Sapphire sounds impressive on paper—it absolutely does. The question is what had to change in the entire ChromeOS ecosystem to make a device like this possible, and whether those changes are enough to succeed where the Pixel Slate failed.
This isn’t just a hardware story. Sapphire sits at the intersection of several trends we’ve been tracking for months: the rise of ARM processors in Chromebooks, the upcoming ChromeOS-to-Android kernel transition known as Aluminium OS, and the steady elevation of the Chromebook Plus brand as Google’s premium tier. Each of those developments was significant on its own, but none of them individually solved the tablet problem. Understanding Sapphire means understanding how all of these threads finally converged.
The Pixel Slate Lesson
Before getting excited about what Sapphire could be, it’s worth remembering what the Pixel Slate actually was. Google launched it in late 2018 as a premium ChromeOS tablet with Intel Core processors, a gorgeous 12.3-inch display, and a starting price of $599 that climbed past $1,599 for the fully loaded model. On paper, it checked every box. In practice, it was a mess.
The software was the biggest problem. ChromeOS tablet mode in 2018 was essentially an afterthought—laggy animations, inconsistent touch targets, and an interface that never felt like it was designed for fingers first. The i5 model developed a reputation for storage failures, and even the expensive configurations struggled with basic tablet tasks that an iPad handled effortlessly. Google discontinued the Pixel Slate line within a year and publicly stated they were exiting the tablet hardware business. The message was clear: ChromeOS wasn’t ready for tablets, and Google wasn’t willing to keep trying.
That decision left a vacuum in the ChromeOS tablet space that persisted for years. Lenovo’s Chromebook Duet series filled part of the gap with affordable, competent detachables, but these were budget devices—great for media consumption and light productivity, but nobody’s idea of a premium tablet experience. The dream of a ChromeOS tablet that could genuinely compete with an iPad Pro went dormant. Understanding why it took seven years to wake up requires looking at what Google built in the meantime.
The Chromebook Plus Gap Nobody Talks About
When Google introduced the Chromebook Plus certification in 2023, it established minimum hardware requirements that any device needed to meet in order to earn the badge and access exclusive features like Magic Editor in Google Photos, Gemini integration, and enhanced Live Caption. Those requirements included specific processor performance thresholds, a 1080p webcam with temporal noise reduction, at least 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of storage.
Here’s the thing nobody really discussed: not a single ChromeOS tablet could meet those requirements. The Lenovo Chromebook Duet series, the HP Chromebook x2, the ASUS Chromebook Detachable—none of them qualified. The processor requirements were originally built around Intel Core i3 12th-gen and AMD Ryzen 3 7000-series chips, which are laptop-class processors that generate significant heat and demand active cooling. Cramming that kind of silicon into a thin tablet with acceptable battery life was essentially impossible without design compromises that would undermine the entire point of a tablet.
This created an odd situation where you could buy a Chromebook Plus clamshell or convertible, but if you wanted a pure tablet or detachable form factor, you were locked out of Google’s premium tier entirely. The AI features, the enhanced photo editing, the Gemini assistant—all of it was reserved for devices with keyboards permanently attached. For anyone who preferred the tablet form factor, the message was that ChromeOS considered you a second-class citizen.
How ARM Silicon Changed the Equation
The Chromebook Plus tablet gap existed because of a fundamental physics problem: the processors powerful enough to qualify generated too much heat for a tablet form factor. What changed the equation wasn’t a clever cooling solution or a thinner fan—it was the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra, an ARM chip built on TSMC’s 3nm process that finally delivers laptop-class performance without laptop-class thermal demands.
The Kompanio Ultra’s architecture abandons the traditional big.LITTLE approach of mixing powerful and efficient cores. Instead, it uses what MediaTek calls an “all-big-core” design: one Arm Cortex-X925 running at 3.62GHz, three Cortex-X4 cores, and four Cortex-A720 cores. There are no small efficiency cores dragging down performance when you need it. The result, as we covered in our ARM processor wars analysis, is a chip that scores 2,542 in Geekbench 6 single-core tests—ahead of both the Intel Core 5 120U and the Intel Core Ultra 7 155U. That’s Chromebook Plus-qualifying performance, delivered in a package that enables fanless designs with up to 17 hours of battery life.
This is the piece that was missing for seven years. When the Pixel Slate launched, there was no ARM processor capable of competing with Intel on raw performance while simultaneously enabling the thin, fanless, all-day-battery design that tablets demand. MediaTek changed that calculus in 2025, and Sapphire is the first tablet designed to capitalize on it. The 50 TOPS of NPU performance doesn’t hurt either—that’s the kind of on-device AI horsepower that makes Chromebook Plus features like real-time translation and photo enhancement work without constant cloud dependency.
What We Know About Sapphire
Everything we know about Sapphire comes from code commits discovered in the Chromium Gerrit—the public repository where ChromeOS development happens in the open. No official announcement has been made, no press releases have been issued, and Lenovo hasn’t confirmed anything publicly. That caveat is important, because what follows is based on code analysis, not marketing materials.
Chrome Unboxed confirmed that Lenovo is the manufacturer behind Sapphire through a Gerrit commit that linked the device’s board name to Lenovo’s coreboot configuration. This was initially surprising because the device features a four-color light bar—a design element historically associated with Google’s own hardware, from the original Chromebook Pixel through the Pixelbook line. But given Lenovo’s work on the Chromebook Plus 14 (which Chrome Unboxed and multiple reviewers have called the best Chromebook ever made), the company has clearly earned Google’s trust with premium ChromeOS hardware.
The display appears to be a 13-inch BOE panel, identified by its model number NS130069-M00. BOE’s naming convention consistently uses the first two digits after the prefix to indicate screen size—the HP Chromebook x2 11 used a BOE “NV110” panel, for instance. A 13-inch screen puts Sapphire squarely in iPad Pro and Surface Pro territory, sized for productivity rather than casual consumption.
Additional code commits reveal a wirelessly charging USI 2.0 stylus that magnetically docks to the tablet and charges via NFC at up to one watt—enough to keep a stylus topped up while it sits idle. This is a significant step up from the USB-C or AAAA battery-powered styluses that current ChromeOS tablets use. A side-mounted fingerprint scanner integrated into the power button rounds out the known hardware, echoing the same biometric approach that the Pixel Slate used.
What We Don’t Know (and Why It Matters)
For all the exciting hardware details, several critical unknowns will ultimately determine whether Sapphire succeeds or becomes another footnote. Price is the obvious one. Display resolution and refresh rate haven’t been confirmed in the Chromium code—and on a 13-inch tablet designed for stylus work, anything less than a high-DPI panel with 120Hz refresh would be a significant disappointment. RAM and storage configurations are unknown. And there’s no confirmed release date beyond “later in 2026.”
These gaps matter because the premium tablet market is ruthless about value. Apple’s 13-inch iPad Pro starts at $1,299 with an OLED display, M-series silicon, and access to the most mature tablet app ecosystem in the world. Microsoft’s Surface Pro starts at $999 for the LCD model and $1,499 for OLED, running full Windows 11 with desktop application compatibility. Both include proven stylus ecosystems and years of tablet-optimized software refinement.
Sapphire will need to find a price point that acknowledges ChromeOS’s more modest tablet software library while leveraging its unique strengths: seamless Google integration, excellent web app performance, superior battery life, and built-in Linux development environment. At $799, it would offer a compelling alternative for users who don’t need iPadOS’s creative app ecosystem or Windows’ desktop software compatibility. At $999 or above, the value proposition becomes much harder to justify against established competitors. Price, more than any spec, will determine whether Sapphire opens a new market or repeats the Pixel Slate’s mistake of asking premium prices for a platform that hasn’t fully proven itself in tablet mode.
The Aluminium OS Question
Sapphire’s timing raises an interesting dilemma that extends beyond the device itself. Google is actively developing Aluminium OS—the project that will rebuild ChromeOS on the Android kernel, creating a more unified platform with deeper Android app integration. Code references suggest that Sapphire is being used internally as a testing platform for Aluminium OS development, which makes sense: a high-end tablet with powerful ARM silicon is exactly the kind of device you’d want to validate a touch-first Android-based operating system.
But here’s the practical question: if Sapphire ships in late 2026 running traditional ChromeOS, and Aluminium OS arrives as a full platform later, buyers face the “should I wait?” problem. On one hand, Sapphire would presumably receive Aluminium OS as a software update when the platform is ready—Google has consistently maintained that existing Chromebooks will transition. On the other hand, early Aluminium OS might have the same kind of growing pains that plagued the Pixel Slate’s software at launch. Being among the first devices to run a new operating system is exciting, but it’s also a risk.
The honest answer is that this shouldn’t stop anyone from buying Sapphire if the price is right. ChromeOS in 2026 is a vastly more mature tablet operating system than what the Pixel Slate launched with. The improvements to tablet mode, split-screen multitasking, and Android app integration over the past seven years have been substantial. Sapphire on current ChromeOS should be a good experience. If Aluminium OS eventually makes it a great one, that’s a bonus—not a prerequisite.
Where Sapphire Fits in the Bigger Picture
Sapphire isn’t the only ChromeOS detachable in the pipeline. At CES 2026, ASUS announced the Chromebook CM32 Detachable with a 12.1-inch 2.5K display at 120Hz, powered by the MediaTek Kompanio 540. But the CM32 and Sapphire aren’t really competitors—they represent opposite ends of the ARM tablet spectrum. The CM32 is an affordable detachable aimed at education and casual use, while Sapphire is positioning itself as a premium productivity device.
Together, though, they signal something important: OEMs are taking the ChromeOS tablet form factor seriously again for the first time since the Pixel Slate era. The combination of ARM processors that can actually deliver competitive performance, Google’s Chromebook Plus framework that provides a quality floor, and the looming Aluminium OS transition that promises better Android integration has created conditions where building a high-end ChromeOS tablet is no longer a fool’s errand.
Whether Sapphire ultimately delivers on this promise depends on the unknowns we’ve discussed—primarily pricing and display quality. But the fact that it exists at all, that the ChromeOS ecosystem has evolved to the point where a Chromebook Plus-certified tablet is even technically possible, represents genuine progress. The road from the Pixel Slate to Sapphire was long and full of dead ends. It took a 3nm ARM chip, a complete rethinking of what processors Chromebook Plus could accept, and an OEM willing to bet on premium ChromeOS hardware. Lenovo, MediaTek, and Google have each done their part. Now we wait to see if the sum of those parts adds up to a tablet worth buying.
