The whole Google does digital signage thing just got even more interesting – with Google via Asus announcing the Chromebit, which is effectively a Chromebox as an HDMI stick.
The units are expected to cost less than $100 USD.
The Chromebits will have a Rockchip processor, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of eMMC flash storage. If I am reading reports correctly, the processor is the Rockchip RK3288, which is a quad-core ARM Cortex-A17 (not a slug). They will run the full Chrome OS.
This is similar in some ways to the Intel Compute Stick announced a few weeks ago and aimed at the Windows market.
So, you will have a stick on the market for sub-$100 that VERY likely won’t be a buggy piece of crap like many of the Android-driven sticks shipped over by the container from China and sold as media players. The reports I’ve been getting from people testing Chromeboxes say the OS drives a lot of performance out of modestly spec’d devices, so it will be interesting to hear what software companies that are trying Chrome for digital signage think of these units.
The stick are expected to ship this summer.
Here’s the word from Google off one of its blogs.