The flood of devices aiming to be lighter, smaller and cheaper continues.
n a review for Computerworld, J.R. Raphael takes a closer look at Samsung’s newest version of the Chromebook, which sells for just $249. The device runs on Google’s Chrome OS and is aimed at users who value cloud-based features such as email, storage and collaboration.
Related Story: Samsung Chromebook not suited for business use
The device is thin and light at just 0.8 inches thick and 2.5 lbs with an 11.6-inch screen and 1366 x 768 display. The Chromebook comes with 16GB of local SSD storage but you also get two years’ worth of 100GB Google Drive storage (which normally costs $120) for free.
According to Raphael, the keyboard is superb, the battery life is impressive at upwards of six hours, and users don’t have to worry about updating applications all the time because Chrome’s cloud-centric OS automatically does it for them.
Performance was better than Raphael may have expected given there’s only 2GB of RAM – until multiple tabs and apps were open at once. That seemed to slow the device considerably, Raphael noticed.
Still, he reckons this device is great value at just $249, especially if you want to use it mostly for Web-browsing and other cloud-based stuff like email, storage or collaboration.