A chromebook that works like one. Review on Samsung Chromebook

Disclaimer -This is a specs review and not a user review.

It has been pretty obvious what google has been trying to do in a last few years – It has been trying to dominate the internet through the search, mobile communication through android, the tablet market(somewhat). And now google seem to have taken it encroachment into the apple’s arena in a new way. It brings in the chromebook. The chromebook might not be a hot news for many of you’ll who has already seen the Sasmsung chromebook that released last year. But that is not this blogs story. Anyways the chromebook that released last year was a huge dud, common who carries a laptop just for netbrowsing, we are anyways irritated with those boring netbooks.  People laugh when you talk about the old chromebook, On some level, that might be is a fair response — the notion of spending several thousand rupees on a weakly-configured machine that won’t run your existing apps and can’t really do much of anything without an internet connection is a tough sell. But that’s not a new argument: Chromebooks have been in the market for over a year now, and people have been saying this since day one. Outside of Google I/O and the occasional press event, we’ve never seen a Chromebook in the wild; it’s not a very scientific study, but I suspect they haven't sold well.But the device  I’m going going to introduce today might change that. I will not say that this is a macbook competitor, it too far from that. But it does make everyday computing better in its own way.

Lets begin with the device, specifically – the new Samsung 5 series chromebook .

Look and Feel - Until now, with regards to the price Samsung's Chromebooks have come with a build quality a step above what most netbooks have to offer. As you might expect, now the price has been slashed to Rs 15000, it feels slightly cheaper than the last-generation Series 5 550, but only slightly.  It has  a grey plasticky build and seems light with its weiht around 1.2 kg which is much much lighter than the original chromebook last year.  The keyboard and the trackpad has an elite macbook feel to it.  It much thinner which stands at 0.8 inches but the drawback here is that it does not have an Ethernet port but it does have a 3g sim card slot which might cater well with the audience. It also has an SD card reader Usb 3.0 and 2.0 slots, a 3.5 mm headphone jack and an HDMI output post. This is sealed device hence the internals cannot be messed with.

Keyboard - Given what the Chromebook is  an inexpensive, ultra-mobile device for people who prefer physical keyboards, Samsung really can't get away with offering a shoddy typing experience.  The typing experience is what matters and this device is not shoddy in this regard, despite the fact that this smaller model has a little less room to fit all those buttons. The individual keys have a pleasantly soft finish, and all of the major buttons are amply sized. The trackpad is nice and spacious, which makes it easy to pull off two-finger scrolling. Single-finger navigation is also reliable, but with tap-to-clicking, we sometimes had to apply a little extra pressure to make those taps register. Overall, though, it's easy to use. Unfortunately, it doesn't support pinch-to-zoom, which would have been nice for magnifying websites with fine print and sprawling maps.

Display and sound

The device has a 11.6 inch display with a 1366 x 768 display and has a matte finish.  Still, a matte finish doesn't necessarily equate to wide viewing angles. Push the display forward and the screen will wash out, making it very difficult to read text or follow along with a movie. The brightness is also lower than it was on earlier Chromebooks: 200 nits compared with 300. Neither of these things should be deal-breakers; you'll just want to futz with the angle before settling in to work with the Chromebook on your lap. The Chromebook's dual 1.5-watt speakers are located on the bottom side of the machine, very close to the front edge. As you might imagine, the sound doesn't get very loud, but you still might want to avoid cranking it up unless you really can't hear.

performance and battery life

Samsung's first two Chromebooks ran dual-core Atom and Celeron processors, respectively, this third-gen model moves to a fanless design with an ARM chip - specifically, a dual-core A15-based Samsung Exynos 5 Dual(5250) SoC. Paired with it are 2GB of RAM, 16GB of built-in flash storage, 802.11a/b/g/n and Bluetooth. This  falls somewhere between the original Atom-based Chromebooks and the current Celeron-equipped Series 5 model. As for battery life, it's rated for six and a half hours of runtime. Its better than most Ultrabooks that currently available in the market, . For years now, Atom-powered netbooks have been capable of 10-hour battery life. The latest crop of Atom-powered Windows 8 tablets also claim about 10 hours of juice. Not to mention, many ARM-powered tablets last nine or 10 hours - we're talking products like the latest iPad, the ASUS Transformer Pad TF700 and the Surface for Windows RT. So, while six and a half hours is nice, it doesn't compare that well to what you'll get from other low-cost mobile devices.

Software

The biggest and perhaps the most excting things about his device would be the Chrome OS which has leaped in many regards since its release. A  layman's explanation for Chrome OS: it's the Chrome browser you're used to using, except that's all you see when you boot up the computer. But if you like to go more into details, I'd say this: Chrome OS has evolved quite a bit over the last year and a half, and looks more like a traditional OS than it did when the first Chromebook had released . Chrome OS now has a "desktop, " of sorts. I am using quotes because the desktop isn't a space where you can pin shortcuts to websites or documents you might be working on. You can, however, change the wallpaper and pin favorite apps to the bottom of the screen. Ultimately, though, it's not a desktop in the conventional sense of the word; it's more of a visual flourish that should help newcomers feel more at home with their Chromebooks. Speaking of the sort, the first time you sign on you'll see a welcome box containing the following: a primer on apps, the touchpad, saving / accessing files, working offline, documents and working with photos. Everything happens in the browser, if that wasn't already clear. And while there haven't been any major UI changes, Google has, at least, added more functionality to its web apps and you’ll find a lot of great apps in google’s webstore, which might give some software giants a run for their money.

Final verdict

No matter how cheap Chromebooks get, they will always be a polarizing class of product: there are some people who couldn't be paid to use a laptop where everything is done in the browser. That said, a price of 14k seems like an appropriate price for this sort of device. But this device might not be apt for many, So who's this for? I think  thinking travelers who need a lightweight machine for the road, or parents who cringe at the idea of spending 30k on a laptop for their kids. And these were always the target customers, really, except now they're unlikely to find a tablet or equally nice netbook for the same amount of money. In that regard, a price cut goes a long way.

exceprts from the Verge, Ars Technica and the engadget

Comments and criticism are welcome,

Additions to this review are more that welcome,

Thanks and regards,

SlightlyDrunk