Samsung Chromebook (Wi-Fi, 11.6-Inch) Reviews
Agree with the overwhelmingly positive reviews. Size, portability, keyboard, cost, browsing and bootup speed were musts for me, and it completely lives up to my expectations. I LOVE how it turns on in two seconds, has no fan, doesn't get hot, and doesn't cost so much that I would lose a lot of sleep if something happened to it. And if it did, and I got a new one (which I would), it would be exactly the same as my past Chromebook upon the first login bc of Cloud Storage and syncing. Amazing. I think the build quality is plenty sturdy, the screen is plenty resolute, and I have never had any trouble getting wifi where available.
I've grown to love the dedicated search button instead of Ctrl T for a new tab, and have gotten sick nasty at using the back, forward keyboard buttons for browsing. Touchpad is good, clicking easy, scrolling is good, two-finger right click is responsive 100%.
One sentiment I haven't seen mentioned often is how it forces to you explore some of Chrome's capabilities through extensions and apps, an eye-opening experience for someone who had been using Chrome as primary browser for years. This experience has been a pleasure, and I am continually impressed with capability of "just a browser". Cloud storage in Google Drive is fast and easy. Set it as an extension button at the upper right of the screen, and voila, anything saved anytime, to any of your devices with internet connection. Silverbird for Twitter, Evernote, and Any.do are also terrific extensions. And if you're not using Google News yet, get on board.
The apps are surprisingly useful as well. On PC, I've used extensively GIMP and Photoshop for image manipulation and photo editing, and used REAPER and Audacity a lot for music recording and editing. Sumo Paint does everything (layers, masks, lassos, plenty of effects) that I used in GIMP. For music production, I'm between Audiosauna and Audiotool, which both seem to have all the capability I had in REAPER and Audacity. Easy to hook up mic, preamp through USB, and start recording. A BIG thing I've noticed with both of those is how surprisingly peppy they are, which I assume is due to the heavy lifting being done on a more powerful machine somewhere outside of my Chromebook. Regardless, that's quite all right with me. Oh yeah, and they're free too.
I use Google Remote Desktop for the rare occasions I need something on my PC which I keep on at home. Works like a champ. At first I went through Excel remotely for pivot tables and more of the heavy lifting operations, but now I've realized it really is just as easy to do in Google Docs, and have all but abandoned the remote desktop, except in cases I need a picture or something from my PC hard drive that hasn't been uploaded to Cloud.
The only two downsides for me (disclaimer: I don't do heavy gaming on my computer, or anywhere else...). 1) It's an impractical device if you don't have an internet connection. But there is literally no place I ever want to browse for any length of time, or do work, that doesn't have wifi. So for me this isn't a downside, which leaves only one real downside for my using experience...no Delete button. I'm getting over it, but I still miss it sometimes...
Pluses far outweigh minuses. Great machine for anyone.
Oh and for all the peeps wondering about delivery time since out of stock online. It's currently taking about 15 days from order placement to doorstep.
I received my Chromebook 4 days ago after a two week wait. That isn't a bad wait for one of the top two or three selling computer items on Amazon, and it's worth the wait. I bought it sight unseen, and I couldn't be any happier with my choice.
The Chromebook is essentially a non-touchscreen tablet with a keyboard. It is what netbooks wanted to be but weren't. It is roughly two inches wider, an inch deeper, and a quarter inch thicker than my first generation iPad and incredibly light with very similar styling. The keyboard feels "right" - the keys are properly sized and spaced and have a natural movement. There are a few differences that take some getting used to (no outdated caps lock key, for instance), but those are easily overcome. I especially like the placement of the volume and brightness controls. The touchpad is very nice - not large enough to get in the way, not too small, although it does not always register my fingers on the first touch. The screen is bright enough to be seen even with the sun at my back. The speakers are surprisingly decent and not too tinny with a touch of bass.
The battery life is very impressive - I used the Chromebook for all of my surfing, email, and posting for a day without having to recharge. Whenever I stopped using the device I just closed the screen and it hibernated; when I raised the screen the machine awoke almost instantaneously. I also like that I can completely lower the brightness of the screen to black - nice if I'm listening to audio and don't need to see what's on the screen.
The Chrome experience takes some getting used to. Pretty much everything is treated like a webpage in the browser; while there are plenty of items in the Chrome store, very few, if any, are actual applications that run on the machine itself. I'm still trying to learn how to make my Drive documents available offline, and Google Docs has some differences when compared to Office, but these are to be expected. There is a learning curve for some keyboard commands and touchpad gestures. I find myself minimizing the browser instead of the font size at times, and I'm searching for the home button when I reach the bottom of a webpage, but these are minor differences from my usual experience. I do miss the keyboard shortcut for switching tabs; perhaps I'm missing something.
My only complaint so far is that I wish the screen would fold 180 degrees. When lounging on the couch with the device in my lap I'm tempted to push the screen too far back. It isn't a major complaint by any stretch.
The Chromebook is a good device, but it is a great device for the money. It seems like the perfect device to pair with a pico projector for sales presentations or for allowing the kids to watch videos while traveling.
With such a variety in computers these days it is difficult to decide on which product to go with. I have the seen the likes of pcs and macs come and go, but Samsung is now featuring a new kind of device: the Samsung Chromebook. The Chomebook is meant to make your average internet routines, such as sending emails and updating your facebook page, a mucheasier task. So the Chromebook is a internet friendly device. The Chromebooks reminds of the WolVol PINK Mini Computer Laptop Notebook 7 inch PC WIFI internet Android 2.2 Built-in Camera 4gb HD 256mb Ram (INCLUDES: Velvet Pouch Case, Charger, Mini Optical Mouse) ,which is also very internet friendly. Much like the fortress, the Chromebook indeed has a quality of web browsing which is great when I want to dosomething simple on my computer. The difference between these devices, aside from price, is that the Chromebook has more features to it as it feels like you have your very state of the art computer(though that is not to say the Fortress is not handy tool). There is indeed room for this device to grow, but I do like what I have seen as the Chromebook is a handy tool for anything dealing with web browsing
First thing this thing is purpose built to do 1 thing, get you on the Internet. Expecting it to do anything else and your expecting to much. Yes it may play SOME video file types and audio but it is hardly built for that and a normal machine with VLC or some other video player will do the job vastly better. Your limited to using online services to do anything, but have offline Google Docs/Scratchpad and a couple other things. There is the 2 years worth of 100gb online storage, which is good for backing up files online so you can quickly access them on the go since your 16gb HD will get filled quickly if you try to use it. I personally just use the 100gb free storage for backing up files off site.
If your buying this with the expectation of using the 100gb of online storage as if it was a hard drive, don't. It's best used as a backup of your data and to quickly upload your newly made files in Google Docs and such so you can access it anywhere with an Internet connection. As trying to rely on an Internet connection to get the data isn't a good way to go about it, and sometimes it has taken a few minutes for things to show up in the Google Drive folder on the laptop itself. Which trust me put me into a bit of a panic after I wrote a 4 page essay and it wasn't appearing when I needed to submit it in a few hours. After 10min or so it finally appeared. This is one of the small bugs or shortcomings I found with the OS, there were 1-2 other bugs I found after I thoroughly put it through it paces in the last few weeks. May sound like a lot, but honestly I find more on my primary Win 7 desktop machine in the same time frame, the difference is that I have other options in terms of programs on the Windows machine so I can ignore it. Where as with this I have to work with it.
What everyone says is true the boot time is incredibly fast. Never felt the need to time it myself. It will get your online so you can check emails/facebook/etc. With me I personally bought it for school, which means I will end up using Google docs for notes and writing assignment (than putting it into a real word processor before submitting, so I can use spelling/grammar check). As well and researching assignments all of which this thing will do quite well.
What this laptop is though is the exact definition of K.I.S.S (Keep It Short and Simple). It is a stripped down OS with cheap quality hardware which was selected to give the best user experience, not benchmark experience. The arm A15 1.7ghz dual core is more than capable of handling all tasks this was designed for (Internet) and the SSD provides a quick boot experience, quality keyboard/touchpad and overall build quality. The only grip here is with the screen with bad viewing angels, and how the light sensor keeps adjusting the screen too much based on the light condition.
The OS itself is one of the things I like the most. It is highly sandboxed with how the OS was designed, with updates pushed silently in the background. And all the user data is encrypted with 128bit encryption, and quite a bit of other encryption found in various other places in the OS using the TPM. Something I won't go into as it's a good read if you look into it, and some of it goes over my head so I'd rather not spread false information. For me the encryption part is quite important as it is a laptop and will be used on the go and having it lost/stolen will just mean I lose the device itself and not half to worry about personal information being compromised. Assuming it is powered down, or signed off not just a locked screen (and you used a good strong password). The OS also has a "Self Healing" which I hear some people refer to it as, when the computer turns on it checks against a known good version of itself to check for tampering and if there is any tampering it will use that instead of the tampered version.
The biggest strength this laptop has is also it's weakness. It is built with simplicity in mind. It carries the mentality of "If it works it works, if it doesn't it doesn't" there are pretty much no workarounds to that (K.I.S.S as I referred to it earlier). Where as with a Window or "real" Linux based machine there is almost always a workaround you can do to get the job done. Where as with this if something doesn't work your out of luck, your not given the ability to install any actual programs or any real control in the computer settings. The amount of control in the computer settings is what you find in the Chrome Browser and a few other small settings which I wouldn't mind someone computer illiterate play with (AKA no real ability to change anything). But you do have the option to change the "search key" back to "caps lock" if you choose to do so. Though personally I found more use for the search key as it brings up the minimized taskbar and will search the Internet and various other things for you.
In short this laptop is made to be used on the Internet, nothing more nothing less. If you want a laptop to do basic web browsing on the cheap this is for you. If you want something to write up paper and do web browsing, you can do that to. But I highly recommend loading up what you write into a real word processor so you can take advantage of spelling/grammar check and all the other features Google Docs doesn't provide or provide a good enough version of as I find it quite basic. In terms of buying this for school, I find it would be quite good for that so far from playing with it for the last several weeks though I haven't had a chance to try it out in class myself yet. As I already put several notes into Google docs so far, and have had great battery life with this. You can easily make it through any class without charging.
And to answer your question you may be asking yourself. Yes it's a great little laptop and worth buying IF you can manage to work within it's limitations. If you want to know if you can, install chrome on your computer and try to use nothing but that and Google docs, Google drive, and other Google web based programs for a day or two. The rest of the OS is quite simple to learn, it took me less than 10min to figure out almost everything I could do with it due to having experience with Chrome Browser. It also has chrome remote access so you can remote access your Windows based machine to do quick amount of real work while on the go, but it isn't something I rely on if you can.
This is a Chromebook. It's not intended to be a windows replacement although I bought it primarily to replace my laptop. I found that 95% of my time was on internet, not on native windows apps so I gave it a try. I had previously tried to do that with a tablet and found that there were times when I wanted to type more that getting out the bluetooth keyboard and connecting were just too much trouble. What I have done is put my 17 inch heavy laptop in my office and set it to never sleep and closed the lid. On the few occasions I need to do something on Windows then I just simply use Chrome Remote Desktop and remote into my laptop to do it. Now I've found that my tablets and the Chromebook almost completely replace my need to haul my laptop around the house.
I had a few issues with this device primarily around WiFi but I suspected that was because it was so new and the Chrome OS was not yet mature on these. I changed to the Beta channel and sure enough my WiFi issues were corrected with the next release of the OS.
Aside from that there are some minor irritants like the USB 3.0 port and the headphone jack being tight and having to push too hard to get the devices in, but these aren't too important. Without these issue I would have given the device 5 stars.
The speed which the Chromebook boots and is ready (about 10 seconds) and the speed which it awakes from sleep (about 3 seconds) is simply outstanding and makes this a tremendous portable device. The number of apps available for Chrome is excellent and even the display works perfectly even though it is not high definition. I barely notice the text resolution and I didn't buy it for a HD video experience so that is not an issue for me. The 100G of storage offered in the cloud with this device makes it a steal.
This is an inexpensive device SO DON'T EXPECT THE BUILD QUALITY of an expensive device. That said however, the build quality is certainly fine and the chiclet keyboard is excellent.
I highly recommend this device for anyone who mainly is connected in browser. It is much more convenient than a tablet for typing and much more portable and faster than a laptop. Well done Google and Samsung!
This is the perfect way to go online, and at a perfect price. I like not needing to worry about viruses or getting PC updates. I can do almost everything I did with my PC, except Netflix and Photoshop. But I am sure I will soon be able to get netflix on this chromebook also. And there are tons of apps , some even similar to photoshop. I would recommend this Chromebook to anyone who needs an inexpensive way to do most anything you do online.
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