Due in part to the pandemic, laptop shipments increased by about 26% last year and are on track to hit a record 236 million units in 2021, according to market research firm TrendForce. This is in contrast to the 3% movement (up or down) in previous years; Chromebooks have especially benefited from this uptick, with shipments reaching a record 47 million units, but the coming quarters may not be so kind to Chrome OS devices.

In terms of PC gaming, Chromebooks by themselves are not that interesting. The hardware is too weak for gaming and the platform (Chrome OS) is limited in that regard. The best gaming laptops are Windows machines with discrete graphics.

But the story changes with game streaming services, especially GeForce Now. nvidia opened the door to ray-traced gaming on Chromebooks last year when it began beta testing GeForce Now on Chromebooks that meet minimum system requirements.

We'll get to that in a moment.

It's been a little while since we tested it (on a 13.3-inch Pixelbook Go with an 8th generation Intel Core i5 CPU), but we found that with a strong and stable Internet connection, GeForce Now works quite well on a Chrome OS machine.

So that's not a bad thing.

That's not to say you should necessarily buy a Chromebook. But many people are buying Chromebooks for a variety of reasons, and according to TrendForce, Chromebook shipments this year are expected to reach a "staggering" growth rate of 50% over the previous year, with most of those shipments going to the US (70%) and Japan (10%).

So why the poor outlook for Chromebooks going forward? There are several reasons. One is that the education market, where Chromebooks are primarily sold, is saturated, according to TrendForce. Coupled with the fact that the general public is starting to return to work and school, demand for laptops and Chromebooks could take a hit.

There are other factors as well.

"One recent rumor is that demand for laptops will decline in the second half of 2009. The main reasons for this decline are notebook brands increasingly believing that the low margins on Chromebooks are unprofitable, the rising price of the 11.6-inch panels used in 70% of all Chromebooks, and a shortage of certain semiconductor components TrendForce states, "The price of 11.6-inch panels, which are used in 70% of all Chromebooks, is rising, and there is a shortage of certain semiconductor components.

For this reason, according to TrendForce, laptop makers are scaling back production of Chromebooks to ensure that they do not have a large excess of inventory. They have already "overbooked certain components, resulting in increased inventory," so sitting on piles of unsold Chromebooks is something they don't want to do.

According to TrendForce, the first signs of this will appear in the fourth quarter of this year, when they expect overall notebook shipments to drop 3%.

No mention is made of how this will affect pricing. However, if notebook makers end up with excess inventory, there could be attractive sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday (more than usual). If you're interested in buying a Chromebook and can wait, that might be the best time to do so.