Chromebooks are quite the oddity. Probably the closest category of laptops that they fit into is under the “Netbook” name. The Chromebook I’ll be reviewing today is the Samsung XE303C12-H01US, also known as the Samsung ARM 3G Chromebook. The biggest difference that sets this Chromebook apart from the others is that it uses Samsung’s own ARM CPU, compared to an Intel one. For only costing $250 (WiFi base model) it measures up to the more expensive Intel based Samsung 550 series of Chromebooks quite well. This is a long term review where the subject has been used for a full 6 months before it was reviewed.
Specs
The Chromebook measures in at 11.04” x 8.09” x 0.69” and 2.43 lbs – 28cm x 20.5cm x 1.75cm and 1.1 kg. Not the thinnest or the lightest for netbooks but it’s no heavyweight. It sports a 1.7Ghz Samsung Exynos 5 Dual with 1MB of cache, 2GB of RAM and a 16GB SSD. Its LED HD screen is 11.6” (29.5cm) and has a resolution of 1366×768. Common netbook features include speakers, webcam, 802.11 A/B/G/N, Bluetooth 3.0 and a chiclet style keyboard. For I/O ports it has a USB 3.0, USB 2.0, HDMI, Audio In/Out, and a 3 in 1 card reader. I’ve found the battery can last up to nine hours with no WiFi and lowest brightness level. With WiFi, full brightness, audio playing, and heavy web browsing the battery fluctuates between five and six hours.
Software
Unable to run common Windows and Mac OS X apps, Chromebooks are regarded as being pretty limited in functionality. However, the Chrome web store is filling up quickly with lots of apps and games for users to use and fill that empty void of their old Windows/Mac OS X apps. The most popular app is Google Drive, which is a bonafide Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Cloud storage and more suite of applications. The Chromebook’s biggest caveat is that it is an “always online” platform. Offline, it isn’t much more than a word processor and cached email browser. As all of Google’s apps are cloud based it is necessary to be online with a decent internet connection. Luckily, we live in the age of technology and being online at all times isn’t exactly hard to do, especially if you opt for the 3G version. Google is fortunately smart and includes many additional benefits for Chromebook buyers such as 100GB of free online storage using their Drive service, 100MB a month of Verizon 3G service, and 12 free connections to GoGo’s inflight WiFi service.
