Samsung Chromebook review

People laugh when I pull the old Samsung Series 5 Chromebook out of my bag. I almost feel the need to apologize for it when I turn it on: “Here’s a $450 laptop that just browses the web. Sorry, everyone!” The big Chrome logo on the machine’s lid is a constant reminder to passers-by that I’m definitely not playing World of Warcraft (perhaps a good thing), using Spotify, or doing a Skype video call.

On some level, a chuckle is a fair response — the notion of spending several hundred dollars 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 (and my house), I’ve never seen a Chromebook in the wild; it’s not a very scientific study, but I suspect they haven't sold well.

But Samsung’s latest model could fix that. The new Chromebook capitalizes on ARM’s stratospheric ascent — both in popularity and horsepower — to extricate Intel from the machine, reducing cost, power consumption, and heat dissipation in the process. On paper, that sounds like a win / win / win. In fact, this new model is the first retail device to use Cortex-A15, ARM’s next-generation architecture that could prove to be one of x86’s most formidable competitors in the consumer PC space ever.

In practice, this Intel-free design means that it's light, fanless, diskless, completely silent, and at $249, cheap enough to grab your attention — even if you’re still skeptical (and understandably so) about the concept of a web-only laptop. But does it hit the magical sweet spot on the price-to-capability curve?

Basically, this Chromebook performed like a Chromebook. That’s bad news for Intel in this end of the market, because it’s proof positive that you don’t need Intel-grade muscle to effectively power this platform. It’s also bad news for anyone who was hoping that the Series 3 would mark some pivotal moment where Chrome OS’s performance suddenly matches that of Windows or OS X.

And yet, somehow, I can’t help but like it. I’ve always justified my irrational love of the Chromebook platform by pointing out that its limited capabilities make it the perfect device for writing with minimal distraction. There simply isn’t much to be distracted by: it’s just you and a poorly-performing web browser. You have little choice but to wait it out in Google Docs until the words come to you (coincidentally, that’s exactly how this review was written). At $350 or more, though, let’s be real: that’s an impossible argument to defend. At least $250 makes it less outrageous, particularly when you don’t seem to be giving up anything or making any appreciable sacrifices over the Series 3’s Intel-based counterparts.

If there’s any part of that unabashedly bizarre philosophy that sounds appealing to you, skip all the other Chromebooks: ARM is the processor architecture that Chrome OS was waiting for, and the Series 3 executes it very well.