Samsung's revamped Chromebook 2 is a comeback winner
"Samsung bucks the Chromebook trend, creating a uniquely attractive and
thin laptop with a fanless design that's ahead of the curve.
For
Spiffy looks
Thinnest yet
Decent HD screen
Against
Annoyingly sluggish at times
Slightly shorter battery life
Introduction and design
When
Samsung announced its second Chromebook, it made my head turn. Rather
than following the flock of Chromebooks with a cheap plastic bodies,
Samsung opted to give it's new cloud-based laptop a leatherette finish
on its lid, plus a 1080p display for the 13-inch model. It
seemed liked the most interesting Chromebook since their inception.
Unfortunately, Samsung unwisely saddled the laptop with its Exynos
processor, meant primarily for tablets and smartphones. With a mobile
chip at the heart of the Chromebook 2, it chugged heavily whenever met
with any sort of multitasking. Now just less than five months later Samsung has given
the smaller 11.6-inch Chromebook 2 an early refresh, which swaps the
mobile processor for an freshly released Bay Trail Intel Celeron CPU.
The refreshed notebook retains the same great styling and fanless
design, so lets see if this quick fix has turned the Samsung Chromebook 2
11 into the winner it was meant to be.
Design
Cheap
plastic and affordability almost come hand-in-hand when it comes to
laptops and Samsung has gracefully sidestepped this problem. In fact the
Chromebook 2 looks to be even more well engineered than many mid-range
laptops. The back of the laptop lid is wrapped with a leather-like finish that reminiscent to the design of Samsung Galaxy S5
down to the faux stitching. It's a nice touch that gives you a slightly
soft material to grip the laptop whilst carrying it around. It's also
stays crisp and clean without picking up any greasy finger prints.
The
rest of the laptop's body is made of a light gray plastic, but does not
flex even when you're mashing away at the keyboard. This is largely due
to the laptop's metal internal frame, which extends across the entire
body. Each of the corners are also reinforced with metal, which adds an
extra bit of protection in case the laptop falls. The
laptop as a whole also tapers off to a very thin and light body, thanks
to the laptop's fanless design. It's a super sleek design that folds
into a slim 0.66-inch package. There aren't many Chromebooks or laptops
in general (outside of ultrabooks) that come even close to the same
level of thinness.
A cry for Helpouts
Chromebooks
are lauded for their simplicity. This is what makes them perfect for
young students and … let's just say less tech savvy individuals. The
Samsung Chromebook 2 takes this a step further with a video call help
desk called Helpouts. Similar to Amazon's Mayday service, the tool
connects you with a real-life person to resolve a technical issue. After
pinging the service I was connected with an agent in less than 15
minutes, so the wait times aren't terrible compared to most customer
service lines – looking at you, UPS. (Keep in mind that the service was
in its beta phase at the time of testing.) On the call, I
asked the representative how to take screenshots on Chrome OS. A few
beats later, the technician was able to supply me with the answer after
referring to the user manual.
Although
Helpouts piggy backs on Google Hangouts for video calls, it can't use
many of the service's build in features. Screen sharing failed to
initialize on my end during my call, but the technician was able to show
me his screen. To top it off, remote desktop was not even an available
option. With both of these features out, there's practically no way of
simply showing the help desk person your exact problem. Mayday,
by comparison, allows an agent to see your screen, navigate to menus
and literally draw arrows to point you in the right direction. The two
services and devices aren't directly comparable, but Samsung and Google
have a long way to go in improving Helpouts.
Specifications and Performance
You're
looking at one of the thinnest Chromebooks yet, measuring in at 11.40 x
8.60 x 0.66 inches. The Acer C720 comes somewhat close with a laptop
body measuring 11.34 x 8.03 x 0.75 inches. Meanwhile the Dell Chromebook
11 is the thickest of the bunch at 11.6 x 7.9 x 0.97 inches. Most
11.6-inch Chromebooks hover around 3 pounds, including the 2.8 pound
Acer C720 and 2.9 pound Dell Chromebook 11. However, the Samsung
Chromebook 2 wins in this lightweight title match, weighing in at a
scant 2.65 pounds.
Spec sheet
CPU: 2.58GHz Intel Celeron Processor N2840 (dual core, 1MB Cache, up to 2.58GHz with Turbo Boost)
Graphics: Intel HD Graphics
RAM: 2GB DDR3L (1333MHz)
Screen: 11.6-inch, 1366 x 768
Storage: 16GB SSD
Ports: 1 x USB 3.0, 1 x USB 2.0, HDMI, microSD slot, headphone/mic jack
Connectivity: 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0
Camera: 720p HD webcam
Weight: 2.65 pounds
Size: 11.40 x 8.60 x 0.66 inches (W x D x H)
At
$249 (about £154, AU$282), this is one mighty affordable laptop even
with most Chromebooks already coming at a nice bargain. By comparison,
the Dell Chromebook 11 runs $279 (about £173, AU$317) and the Acer C720
has the lowest asking price of $199 (about £124, AU$227).These
specifications should look awfully familiar if you're comparing this
machine with other Chrome OS-based options. Like the Dell Chromebook 11
and Acer C720, the Chromebook 2 comes with a very similar 11.6-inch and
1366 x 768 resolution screen, 16GB SSD and 2GB of RAM. Despite
these similarities, the new 2.58 GHz Intel Celeron N2840 processor is
the real show stopper for the new Chromebook 2. Not only does it replace
Samsung's mobile Exynos chip, it's also Intel's fanless Bay Trail
design. Most other Chromebooks, including the Acer C720
and Dell Chromebook 11, have used the 1.4GHz Celeron 2955U processor
from Intel's Haswell family. The Bay Trail chip runs a bit cooler
without any bothersome fan whine, but it also sacrifices some
performance making it the slower chip.
The oddest stuttering problem
Speaking
of slowness, I experienced some noticeable lag in Chrome. Oddly enough
this stuttering occurred when trying type a website or search query into
the address bar. The Intel chip also sometimes chugged as scrolled
through Google Drive document, especially with any documents containing
tables or graphs at all. Otherwise, the Chromebook 2 had
no trouble loading up 25 browser tabs while listening to tunes over
Google music. The Bay Trail chip also had no lagging issues when playing
1080p video on YouTube.
Not a picture perfect screen
So
far, another fault of Chromebooks is they all almost universally have
terribly washed out displays, save for a few outliers like the Chromebook Pixel.
The Chromebook 2 manages buck this trend as well – but not entirely –
with a bright display that manages to be good but not great. Colors
are never truly vibrant, especially considering Samsung's penchant for
oversaturated AMOLED panels. However, the Chomebook 2 still manages to
display accurate colors. What's more, you can actually see blacks as
they were meant to be seen rather than gray blotches.
Battery life that goes on and on and on and…
The
Samsung Chromebook 2 has very good battery life, though we've seen
longer. While writing the majority of this review, watching a two hour
movie and streaming Google Music the whole time, the Chromebook 2's
battery lasted for 7 hours and 32 minutes. That's more than generous
enough to get you a full day's worth of cloud computing while leaving
the power plug at home. Still, this not the best better
battery life we've seen. That honor still belongs to the Acer C720,
which bested the Chromebook 2 with an absurd eight hours and 30 minutes
of run time. The Dell Chromebook 11 also had an exceedingly long eight
hours and 22 minutes of battery life. It seems the Haswell chip wins
again if by only an extremely slim margin.
Verdict
Thanks to the new Intel processor, the Samsung Chromebook 2
is a much more capable machine. The laptop did not show any signs of
chugging while multitasking and it still retains its thin fanless
design. In case you've been avoiding Samsung's Chromebook offerings
after hearing horror stories of the much maligned Exynos processor, you
should really give them another chance now.
We liked
In
a sea of nearly identical plastic Chromebooks, Samsung's laptop is a
uniquely thin and attractive option. You won't find another Chromebook
adorned with a leatherette finish or one that's thinner than 0.66
inches. It's also one of the most well built Chromebooks, with a metal
frame and reinforced corners.
The
Samsung laptop also bucks another Chromebook 2 trend by including a
fairly decent screen. Plus the inclusion of Helpouts adds another
feather to Samsung's cap even if it still has a ways to go, if it wants
to match Amazon's Mayday service. Still, no other Chromebook yet
includes this extra safety net. That distinction alone might be enough
to sway you towards Samsung.
We disliked
While you can finally multitask with
this newly implemented Bay Trail processor, the part unexpectedly
chugs. Thankfully, the problem only rears up in two cases; either typing
something into the address bar or navigating through a graphic-rich
Google Drive document. But, as these are fairly common exercises, this
annoying slow down could grow grating overtime. The Samsung Chromebook 2 is also somewhat flawed in that it has a comparatively shorter battery life. The Acer C720's
ridiculously long eight hour and 30 minute run time that makes the
Samsung machine's seven hours and 32 minute lasting power look short by
comparison.
Final verdict
The Samsung Chromebook 2
is also one of the first laptops sporting a Bay Trail processor, which
affords its unique fanless design. Unfortunately, packing in this new
Celeron CPU isn't a simple flat upgrade. Samsung's second
crack at its second Chromebook loses a bit of performance and roughly
an hour of battery life, compared to its Haswell-equipped competitors.
Regardless, Samsung's latest appears just as capable and comes in a
slimmer package. That's a fair trade in my book. In the
future we'll likely see more laptops adopt Intel's next generation Core M
processors as they promise to deliver more power on a fanless
architecture without reducing battery life. The Samsung Chromebook 2 is
simply the first leap into what will likely be the future of all
Chromebooks, and it's a bright first attempt. That in itself is reason
enough to put the Samsung Chromebook 2 on your radar.
