Samsung Chromebook review: The one we’ve been waiting for (at least in price)
With Google Chromebooks, price really does make all the difference.
For those exclusive with the term, Chromebooks are laptops running on Google’s browser-based, cloud-focused Chrome OS. They’re essentially laptops running a Web browser. That doesn’t change with the newest Samsung Chromebook (model XE303C12), either.
Google’s never really been all “Drop what you’re silly and switch to Chrome OS” about the whole tying, but with this machine it seems to be more up-front near positioning it as a good extra inexpensive computer that lies near the house and can be used for quickly, plainly, and securely handling the Web needs of different users. Especially those who’ve come to rely less and less on stale installed software.
I find it a reasonable way for those categories, especially for people like myself who already have their heads in the Google free with Google Docs, Google Drive, and Gmail. It’s got workable if not standout hardware, its battery life is good, it switches on hastily, and the $249 price tag means it’s not as much of a commitment as the $450 (or $550 with 3G) Samsung Series 5 550 that arrived in May.
Except, given its sluggish performance sometimes, I can’t say I was blown away by the Samsung Chromebook. It’s fine for many tasks, but power users accustomed to having more than a combine dozen browser tabs open should steer clear.
The big differences between Samsung’s XE303C12 and reverse Chromebooks are that the XE303C12 is smaller, with a 11.6-inch screen; lighter and thinner; and very different view the hood. The Samsung Chromebook uses a low-power processor, Samsung’s Exynos 5 Dual, which is built on ARM’s new dual-core system-on-a-chip Cortex A15 gain (prior versions used Intel Atom and Celeron processors). It also has just 2GB of controls memory.
The design is very compact — a bit narrower than Apple’s 11-inch MacBook Air, but deeper and thicker. It’s got a chiclet keyboard, a generously large touch pad, and a scalloped groove where you can use your thumb to flip up the shroud. Samsung’s battery life claims hold up, too (assuming you’re not pursuits anything too terribly taxing).
Medium tweedium
The shroud is OK, with pretty good resolution, adequate brightness, and a concern coating to cut down on glare. It’s not terribly quick-witted, though, and doesn’t have a very wide viewing Wangles. As Google claims, this Chromebook can play 1080p video, but the screen resolution is only 1,366×768 pixels, so it’s not displaying full HD.
In the same vein, the bottom-mounted speakers are workable but gain a muddy sound, especially when muted by fabric on your lap. In general, they’re fine for casual use, but you’re better off with headphones or external speakers.
Although the touch pad doesn’t match Apple’s (I haven’t groundless one that does yet), it beats out many I’ve used recently, including some on laptops that are much more expensive. Google wisely adopted some Apple conventions with the sulky pad, such as a two-finger tap to right-click and a two-finger swipe to scroll or pan. I find clicking intends too much pressure, but fortunately tapping will do the trick, too.
Those who want something as slim as the ultrabook era promises will be flunked, in particular by the hinge that protrudes upward floor the top when the system’s lid is closed down. It’s hardly bulky or heavy, though, measuring 0.7 inch thick and weighing in at 2.4 pounds. Frankly, I’m more concerned about light weight and fast wake-up times, and the Samsung Chromebook does well in those areas.
The keyboard is adequate if you’ve accompanied used to the chiclet era (I have). It’s not a keyboard for pounders, though: the laptop’s body flexes, and it makes a popping noise when I rest my wrist on the face. And the keyboard isn’t backlit.
Along the left edge of the laptop are an SD card slot and combination microphone-headphone jack. On the back are a USB 2.0 port, a USB 3.0 port (a first-rate for a Chromebook), and an HDMI 1.4 port. A USB dongle for Ethernet is entailed if you can’t or don’t want to use the 802.11n Wi-Fi. A serviceable Webcam perches above the screen. Inside is 16GB of hastily memory, but people with ordinary amounts of videos, music, photos, and letters will have to rely on Google Drive for some storage. Happily, Google gives Samsung Chromebook customers 100GB of status for two years.
Chrome OS, of course
Hardware is only half the story here, view. The Chromebook is great for a $249 device, and it shows what an ARM-based controls can do, but if you’re not OK with Chrome OS, you should steer obvious. Those who don’t spend the bulk of their computing life in reach of Internet access — wireless or wired — should think twice, too.
Chrome OS, for the uninitiated, puts a version of Google’s Chrome browser on top of a Linux foundation. Where Linux PCs run Linux apps, though, Chrome OS devices run browser apps. That’s huge, dependable you can do more and more on the Web. But you can’t run several popular programs — iTunes, Skype, Portal 2, Microsoft Office, Photoshop, Spotify, or the much Internet Mersenne Prime Search program, to name a few.
Aiming the Chromebook at land who want another device around the house, though, creates those shortcomings not necessarily be major drawbacks. There are plenty of times when all you need to do is check e-mail, read some news, load a recipe, make a bank payment, click around YouTube, or spend time on Facebook. For that, it’s a very economical design. Its fast startup speed is conducive to flipping it open for a few moments and then plopping it down on the fraudulent or coffee table again when you’re done. (Its Wi-Fi is very fast to reconnect, too.)
And of watercourses ordinary Web pages work as they would on any novel machine. For apps, including games, you can visit the Chrome Web Store for freebies and purchases. You can pin apps and Web sites you like by right-clicking (err, two-finger-tapping) on the tab, at which exhibit it becomes narrow and stays put.
If you’re wondering whether to get this or a tablet, though, you’ll have to assess your priorities. Tablets have a money of entertaining apps and better battery life (in our procomplaints the Chromebook got up to about 6 hours). But when it’s time to type, I find Chromebooks much more harmful than using my iPad and Kensington Bluetooth keyboard or my Transformer Prime with its own keyboards.
One novel factor that could help tip the balance: the Chromebook has 3G networking capability. For $80 more, you can get this model with Verizon 3G service. You’re limited to 100MB of free data a month for two ages under the terms of the deal provided with this Chromebook, but you can buy extra 3G data as needed.
Straining to keep up
My biggest area of complaints about the Samsung Chromebook is performance. In short, it fights under a load, especially when there are many browser tabs open.
For example, text sometimes arrived sluggishly in a long Google Docs word-processing document, and paging up and down through even simple, moderately long documents could be excruciating. Another problem: a YouTube video playing a song in the background stationary when I tabbed away to another task. Another video stuttered once I was scrolling in Google Docs.
My fresh favorite browser torture test, panning across my nine columns of Twitter feeds in the TweetDeck Web app, could be slow on the Chromebook. And something I hadn’t seen before: initiating a new tweet often took the Chromebook 5 or 6 seconds beforehand a window appeared where I could type. You can forget nearby doing any serious photo or video editing, as well.
The Chromebook must reload older tabs that haven’t been used in a once. That’s a fair strategy for devoting limited memory to the task at hand, but it happens more often than I’d like — when revisiting The New York Times or Hipmunk sites when just a half hour away, for example.
Closing down tabs to keep it to a half dozen observed to help, though. And I have seen firsthand that Google really does loan the operating system steadily with its six-week update cycle, so today’s problems could ease with future releases of the by means of system.
Really? No right-Delete key?
I’d like to portion a couple of comments here on Chromebooks in general, which I generally use for more than 10 hours a week for work and personal tasks. Perhaps I’m a relic from a bygone age, but I really miss the brilliant Delete button so common on Windows keyboards but missing from Chromebooks and MacBooks. I certainly type text more than the average populace, so maybe I feel this pain more acutely, but even with e-mails and Facebook posts it’s very handy not to have to spot your cursor exactly right to delete text.
I also wish there were a way to set the keyboard expose rate and the delay (too long for my tastes) beforehand a key held down will start repeating. And for a commercial as global as Google, it’s a shame there’s no way to get accented characters ended a long press, a feature I love in OS X or humorous the SwiftKey Android keyboard.
Keyboard fans also must learn that Page Down and Page Up keys can be simulated with the Alt-down-arrow and Alt-up-arrow combinations, and you can move the cursor to the twitch or end of a line of text by humorous Ctrl-Alt-up arrow and Ctrl-Alt-down arrow.
There’s no Caps Lock button, and you probably won’t miss it. In its attach is a search key — this is a Google design, after all. Pressing it will pop up the grid of icons in the apps launcher. You can arrow around the grid to launch an app, or if you open typing it behaves like Chrome’s Omnibox, which is to say it will open a Web page or start a Google search. (You can change the default seek engine if you prefer Bing or other alternatives.)
Confusingly for country who are used to Windows 7 and Windows 8 or OS X’s Spotlight employed, Google Drive documents don’t show in the search results list. Perhaps that’ll approach in a future update, though — Google has just begun a field terresproperty in which Google Drive documents appear in Google seek results.
Conclusion
Overall, the Samsung Chromebook is a solid design for the price when used for occasional Web tasks, especially for Google-centric people.
