It really boils down to what you need. If you can live without a keyboard, get the Nexus 10. If you are on a budget, get this. If you want a keyboard and are willing to shell extra dough, get the Nexus 10 and a bluetooth keyboard.
He wasn't talking about keyboards and form factors. Chrome OS is almost completely useless for anything more than browsing the net. It's about equivalent to a basic feature phone in capability. It's for such a small niche, about the only people i could see buying Chrome OS notebooks are extremely poor students, and even then it probably wont do everything they want.
Another niche market is for people that do online investing and banking with significant assets. The added security of chrome OS is well worth having for $250 you won't find much cheaper insurance. Windows is just not safe for online financial transactions, which of course the poor student doesn't have to worry about.
By the way I find google docs to be pretty useful for productivity. I used to use open office and since I made the switch I haven't looked back. Netflix not being supported on the ARM version is kind of a bummer though. I think Google should make sure that Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon streaming all work as this definitely fits under the umbrella of cloud computing.
No, they can use a Chromebook to visit porn sites or any other activity (long list) that might get them on trouble in Windows.
I maintain the computers (just) in my house and home office, and for one user I really wish he had a Chromebook and not a Windows laptop - I keep having to restore it from image.
Oh and I use Windows 7 x64 as my main machine, with Ubuntu VM for development.
ChromeOS is NOT more secure than Windows. You are putting too much stock in anti-Microsoft blather from Google. Might as well listen to Apple's opinion of Windows.
Does this SoC even have the hardware security features built into Intel and AMD x86 chips (AES, Intel Secure Key, OS Guard)? I don't think it does. ChromeOS might require different methods to crack, but it is not more secure, and the hardware of the Chromebook is less secure.
Besides, I'd imagine any successful investor is going to be using something a lot more satisfying than a tiny, cheap netbook variation with a so-so screen.
How is Windows not safe? I've been using it how long now? Decades? And had exactly zero security intrusions. Being the market leader so you're a big target doesn't mean the platform is less safe-in fact Microsoft takes security a lot more seriously than most closed source software does.
As for this unit...it remains ridiculous. I bought a $200 Acer running real Windows 7 on AMD hardware, and it's obviously a bajillion times more functional. This thing runs one single program-Chrome, on low end hardware, doesn't properly support external displays or other devices, can't replace my real PC for...much of anything, and it actually costs as much or more than superior devices...just like the older Chromebooks did.
Utter nonsense. There are tons of options for locking down Windows the average consumer doesn't bother with but the information is widely available. Just a few changes makes it far harder for malware to get any value from the machine.
The difference is that you still have the full capabilities of Windows and its software library, along with a choice of browsers, including Google Chrome.
The people I know who do serious online financial work wouldn't blink at spending a lot more than $250 to pay someone like me to teach them to lock down their machine for work. Putting up with the limitations of Chrome OS and paying for the privilege would strike them as absurd.
Have you actually checked the chrome store? there are plenty of good applications, especially concerning productivity, surely, the overall number of apps is much lower than android, but considering most of those are useless, it is not that big of a deal. You can do plenty of stuff on the chromebook, and that that price point it is a very good bargain.
No, honestly it doesn't. If you need a keyboard you buy one of the ASUS Transformer pads. This is a very limited device that won't get you very far and really doesn't have a reason for existing. If this was just a laptop-like device running android I could see the utility but Chrome OS is basically just a kneecapped version of android.
I would totally agree with this if there was an android with a keyboard and this hardware at this price point. The transformer is good, but it's far too expensive.
I got an Ipad 2 by accident, and between that and the laptop I don't think I need anything else. I hate Apple, which makes the whole experience confusing.
Let's see, Chromebook for $249, or Transformer w/ keyboard for $600. I'm guessing if you'r a broke college student who needs something simple, the Chromebook is looking pretty good.
Not for long. When PNaCl is stabilised, ChromeOS users will be able to install native software. Obviously not Windows API stuff, but then who in their right mind would use that garbage anyway? There's a few things in the Chrome store experimenting with NaCl (the early, non-portable version) now.
How do you figure? The two share a similar SoC, and nothing else. In particular the Nexus 10 has that incredibly gorgeous 2560x1600 IPS display, whereas this Chromebook has a mediocre, off the shelf 1366x768 TN display. Given that there's only a $150 difference between the two, the screen alone easily accounts for most of that. Similarly, the N10 is a smaller device - cramming the same stuff into a smaller form factor is typically harder and more expensive.
There aren't a lot of points of comparison with the Nexus 10 screen. Granted I'm sure the screen is more expensive, but similar size, similar SOC, same memory. Given the pricing trend with the nexus 7 and chromebook I expected a price around $50 less. Or at least to come with 32gb of memory for that price. I don't think $400 is a *bad* price, but it isn't as aggressive as I expected. I'm sure there will be a parts cost breakdown soon.
"The display is functional but not very good. Build quality is decent but the new Chromebook is still a plastic notebook. Thankfully the keyboard and trackpad are both pretty decent."
Add in HDMI that doesn't work, a weird slot that isn't connected to anything, and the various other hassles described and I'm not sure exactly what the awesome here is.
Because I'm sure that your secrets are personally being observed by Google since they're just ever so valuable. That's the only reasonable line of reasoning.
/sarcasm
They're just happy to make advertising revenue off of you, and since you'll likely use Google from whatever machine you have, it won't make much difference to not use this one. Also consider that if you were doing something highly sensitive, you could always walk over and turn on your computer, assuming you trust it, especially if you have Windows. I'd be less inclined to trust the good will of the parasites lurking around on there.
Actually I work with a lot of NDA stuff (translations mostly) so yes, I really have a lot of secret stuff on my computer. ;) And believe me when I say I don't use google for ANYTHING on my work related projects. :)
And the problem is not google per se, but having a machine that's not really usable if not online. I'm not sure, but I think there's no choice for editing text apart from Google Docs?
This is not an objective opinion. It's rather my personal view of this kind of machines. I'd like a super lightweight portable laptop, but not one that's tied hands and feet to an online service.
That's the point. For really important NDA stuff we don't use search engines, AT ALL. :) I can connect to a company server with extensive documentation to serch for specific infromation on the project I'm working on (usually given to us by the committent), but I cannot really access Google or Bing and search for things i need.
For lesser project we use a company issued google profile for searches but no online document manipolation is allowed, meaning no Google Docs, Office Online, Dropbox, iCloud or anything similar. We have company online storage and we use VPN connections with tokens to generate the cyphers needed to connect. I cannot even send work files via email even if our email server is phisically based in our campus. :)
They take security very seriously where I work. ;)
I would assume that the real issue is if you can wipe chromeOS and replace with the linux of your choice. By the security choices you list, I wouldn't be using any type of windows box. From the comments below, there doesn't appear to be a "plug a USB stick in and hit a button" linux disto yet.
Nice perf numbers.On power consumption both the software and the hardware are a lot different form a phone so maybe it's not as bad as you think. Now all we need is quad A15 :D (might be doable in tablets/notebooks with bigLITTLE or Nvidia's 4+1 even on 28nm)
It will be 4 A15 cores plus a low power companion core. Who knows when it will be actually in devices.
I have not heard any announcements for quad core A15 from other sources (such as Samsung) that said it is going to happen sometime even if it has not been announced.
Excellent I've been waiting for this review. Exynos 5250 does seem a power hungry chap, which kinda destroys my hopes for a quad-core 5450 / Mali T658 in the next Galaxy phone, unless Samsung move to a new node. There is mention of 28nm process on Samsung's foundry site, combined with Big.little maybe my dreams are alive.
Anand, any news when Samsung will adopt a new process node, and will it be 28nm or 22nm?
I share your excitement, I have SGS3 and I'm so looking forward to SGS4 and what it can bring to the table. Hopefully some sort of big.LITTLE design to lower the power draw, also there is a trend of bigger battery, hopefully the trend continues without much increasing in the physical size.
I'm curious how big.LITTLE is going to work in practice. The auto switching between discrete graphics and integrated graphics on laptops may give us a clue on how well it works.
Hitting 9 W peak at 1.7 GHz? That's Haswell territory, and I'd surmise Haswell will crush any ARM, even the 64 bit ones in 2014, with a 10 W TDP envelope.
Secondarily, either Samsung is binning some low power parts for the Nexus 10 and prospective smartphones, or they have to downclock. The big question would be how much would they have to downclock.
Way to use the crappiest pictures of the display you could wrestle up. If the display is on par with other 768 TN panels used in laptops reviewed by AT, why did you use those washed out pictures of the display? I don't see the same lack of photography skills when reviewing other laptops with similar panels. I guess since Google isn't stroking AT the same way Apple does, a fair review with fair pictures would be pointless. Hacks!
Ever hear the phrase "A picture says a thousand words"? For the casual viewer, who may not delve into the display numbers, the pictures certainly do tell a story. It just depends on what story AT wants to tell.
Look at the review of the Dell XPS 14Z. According to the numbers in this review, the panel in the Sammy CB is on par, if not better than the one used by Dell. Look at the pictures of the Dell display vs the CB display. Are they on par with one another? You can certainly influence a consumers purchasing decision based on some sub-par photographs. Well done AT.
Do you really think the people technologically sophisticated enough to be interested in an AnandTech review are the same people who would base their purchasing decision on one photograph of a display?
Do you really think nobody will do a Google search for "Samsung Chromebook Review" and find AT's site on the list? I guess Google is smart enough to know a persons IQ and direct them away from AT and its "sophisticated" readers. Sheeesh, get over yourself.
Seriously? Just start reading the review, it is clearly not targeted at consumers. Heck, there's a photo of a circuit board on the first page! There's a tear down of the device (complete with photos) before the display is even discussed! Who is going to read this review other than people who care deeply about the technical aspects of the Chromebook?
But I'm starting to think you know that, and the real reason you're upset is because AnandTech pointed out that the Chromebook has a crappy display.
Most likely the Chromebook doesn't have a very good display AND the picture sucks.
I did notice that the display looks very poor in that image. I doubt it's that bad (two feet in front of you). . . typing "Chromebook" into Google will fetch you better pictures of suggesting a display of higher quality.
It is a valid comparison, however there is an unanswered question: What do I get for stepping up to the Celeron Chromebook? And that is a valid question, even though at that price point there are more options.
By stepping up to the Samsung 550, you get a larger and brighter (300 nits vs 200 nits) screen (but lower resolution, 1280x800), 4 GB of RAM, slightly better faster CPU performance, longer battery life (much bigger battery), and a card reader slot that doesn't let the card stick out (approx. 1 cm) from the case. For performance, the 4 GB of RAM is probably the most significant factor, as it lets you open many more tabs.
Some benchmarks shows 50-80% better performance for 1.3Ghz Celeron-based chromebook. http://gigaom.com/mobile/intel-v-arm-the-chromeboo... I would like to see confirmation from Anand. Also some GPU benchmarks (Celeron vs. Exynos) would be welcomed.
And that just proves celeron is no competitor for A15 as the performance difference means nothing compared to the total cost differences for the intended segment.
An more interesting comparison would even be to the old AMD APU bobcat, in some low voltage variants.
But ofcourse its the new lowcost AMD/Intel variants that is going to be the main competitors.
Samsung asks ~$450 for Celeron Chromebook, but this doesn't mean that Celeron-based netbooks have to be expensive. You can buy Acer AO756 for just $265 from bestbuy (and it inclides$100 Win Home Premium and 320Gb HDD which chromebook lacks) http://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?_dyncha... And if you wish, you can install Chrome OS on it by yourself.
Anand, could you tell us how it compares to the Atom in day to day use? I currently own a Samsung Series 5 chromebook and I would like to know if it makes any sense to upgrade to this model. Seems I would have to take a hit in battery life, but I heard you can at least watch 720p Youtube videos on it.
You can watch 1080p videos on it if you want. It has a vastly better GPU. Maybe you can sell yours, and pay little to no difference to get this new one. The performance improvement overall should be noticeable.
Anand doesn't seem to be too convinced. Performance in normal browsing seems acceptable. Don't really understand, because Chrome on a tablet is plenty fast.
It looks like ARM 15 is making it very difficult for Intel and AMD for this low cost market. Especially with win8 machines comming.
I dont know how Intel can catch up to this competition with the new Atom. When 22nm Atom hits market, TSMC is printing dirt cheap A15 on 28nm for everyone and his brother; tablets, phones, notebooks. Heck even some server segments is going Arm. And the performance looks like its sufficient for grandma.
The new Atom and new bobcat better have some tangible performance benefits both on cpu and gpu side - they simply need to drive most if not all, pc games well on a notebook.
Yeah, basically this next gen 22nm Atom core is going to be make it of break it for the Atom. I can see the Atom getting canned entirely if the 2nd gen core on 22nm sucks.
I'm impressed by the ARM performance, besides the performance and battery life, there is also the cost to consider. As far as I know, ARM cpu cost much less than x86 cpu. If I can get 50% of power for 25% of the price, that sounds like a good trade off in many scenarios.
The samsung arm a15 is basically a 6+ w SOC... If you linear scale the medfield up 3 times, it means a three core atom, and three times the graphic power (does scale linearly), and i think the performance is comparable. The medfeld is arround 64 mm2, and the three core atom and graphic is, to my best guess, 100mm2, any one give me a estimation of the die size of the samsung a15? we can calculate the price :)
The intereting thing is the total cost for the OEM. The A15 implemented as here must be dirt cheap.
Intel have high fixed cost, but arm can spread the cost to phones whatever through both Samsung but primarily TSMC.
In the long run it will be difficult for Intel the have the same low cost.
Years back they could use old fab equipment for the Atom and in that way use production capacity that had been written off the the worst part. Today they they need the new process nodes to be competitive, and that will raise cost for the Atom. I think they are in a bad market here.
Competing with TSMC and Samung is another world from competing with AMD and GF.
They need their ultrabooks, but the market is to small for the future fab cost.
Now arm can share cost from phones to notebooks. That is massive cost advantage imho.
A chromebook is too niche a product to properly judge a SoC . Typically thermals are completely different. Its fast, yes, but how will it do in a smartphone ? And chromeOS has too few apps and the chromebook has too less a res to actually judge the best SoC .....
Maybe I missed it, but does this have a built in webcam? Looks like it does from info on other sites, and I'd like to know how it performs for Skype purposes if anyone knows. Sounds like videos from youtube/facebook work ok as well, which would make this a great netbook style option.
For that price, why wouldn't anyone get a used laptop instead? At least then they'll get the benefit of a proper OS of their choice (linux or Windows, i don't know if used apple lappies go that low).
Granted, it wouldn't be new, but at least it would be many times more functional - no? :)
I think netbooks are the more obvious comparison. You can buy Intel/AMD powered netbooks running Windows/Linux for $200 and up. The "better" choice depends on just how basic your computing needs are and how much you can live with a cloud-based operating system.
Browsing on them will be much slower, especially on those single core ones that cost $200. I know because I've used one. Single core Atom browsing on a netbook is excruciatingly painful. Plus, I believe I saw in a Cnet review that this Chromebook has higher performance in browsing than IE9 with a Core 2 Quad. That's not a very fair comparison because it used IE9, but still.
I wasn't advocating one or the other, just pointing out the obvious comparison is not between used laptops and chromebooks, but between chromebooks and other "netbook-like" laptops.
It's a tradeoff between running a lightweight, but very limited operating system (Chrome) or a heavier but full-featured and mature operating system (Windows or Linux). Performance versus greater availability of features and software.
I've also used single core atom netbooks and found them painfully slow. I haven't used the newer dual core Atom or dual core AMD-based netbooks that are more common these days. I'm guessing they are similarly painful, given that single-threaded performance is the major limitation for light workloads.
I'm also interested in this. The review doesn't seem to go at all into the required internet connection and how this affects functionality. Unfortunately, we don't yet live in a world with free WiFi everywhere.
I want to ask if there is smb, already using the Samsung ARM Chromebook. I have a performance issue on working with Google docs. As you asked about the documents, I wanted to be involved. It is not that sensitive to respond, neither on-line nor offline. Does any of you have a similar problem?? Thanks in advance.
I'd have liked more info about offline use though. Even if I'm online most of the time, it's very important that i can also be productive, and entertained, while offline.
sure, the Atom N570 on 45nm is not so competitive on power and performance but I think it is misleading to compare A15 vs this rev of Atom because newer and better Intel processors are available....
I think more interesting comparison point for future competitors to A15 would be: Acer Aspire One 756 - 11.6" notebook with Sandybridge Pentium or Celeron - I have seen it as low as $290 at Best Buy and Costco. Similar price point but way more performant.
I just wish the Surface had shipped with this SOC. Windows RT sounds more interesting than chrome, but it got saddled with a much older SOC in a product twice the cost.
me too. If surface had this SOC with a higher res screen, I'd buy one. Instead I'm waiting for a hardware refresh. Tegra3 and atom are too slow, i5 is too power hungry.
I agree, Tegra 3 and current Atom are too slow, but the upcoming Atom should be better. I'm considering buying that instead of windows RT as a media pc replacement. I'm hearing a lot of miracast, has anyone coming out with the dongle yet? anything decent in the retail?
Haswell should make a pretty nice media PC. Its suppose to be really good with power consumption especially if you get into the ULV versions. If your media PC is plugged into the wall the difference between 10W or 20-30W isn't that big of a deal. I'm pretty big into HTPC and I'm probably going to swap out my llano system for haswell when the i3 or pentium versions are released.
Sorry, I probably mislead you. What I'm looking for is surface type of tablet when I want to work on a tablet, and then I can dock it on my coffee table and use miracast as a wireless mirror display. That way, I can get rid of laptop, tablet and media pc and use 1 device only. Currently I have an old core 2 duo laptop plug in 24/7 with a hdmi display and a wireless mouse as a media pc. The laptop is getting old and a replacement is needed soon.
LTE has nothing to do with the chip. Those quad core S4 Pro's aren't even integrated with LTE yet. Latest LTE efficiency comes from the fact that it's made at 28nm, not at 45nm - the LTE chip itself that is.
Not a valid comparison IMO when it comes to power consumption. That's an old 45nm Atom. Clover trail will do much better, thanks to the 32nm process and its new S0ix power states.
Still, the current Atom and Brazos are only mild updates (if that). The E2-1800 in HP's dm1 gets 547 in Sunspider, so clock-for-clock, Brazos 2.0 is ahead on this single test. However, the power consumption must be signicantly more. Still, slightly different markets.
I would very much like to see the next Atom plus AMD's Jaguar; reduced power and better performance could make for a decent A15 competitor.
Clover Trail is not a mobile chip. Only Medfield is, and they don't even have a dual core version yet. You will never see Clover Trail in smartphones (yet you will see Cortex A15), and the only reason you will see them in Windows 8 tablets is because Medfield would be too slow with Windows 8, and Clover Trail is more powerful, but also uses much more power, and they are willing to compromise on that, while lying through their teeth that it will get 8-9h of battery life. It will get nowhere close to that.
the clover trail is about 3.5+ w tdp according to some review. the samsung a15 is a 6+w soc. what make you think a 3.5 w soc cannot go to mobile, but a 6+w soc can?
What your comment has to do with what I wrote?! I never mentioned anything about smartphones. I just pointed out that you cannot compare an old 45nm chip with a brand new 32nm one, consumption wise.
Then again, just because we haven't seen clover trail on smartphones, doesn't mean it consumes too much power.
I keep reading these comments on reviews for this device like "wouldn't some other device be a better value for $250?"
How many of you actually go and buy $250 used clunker laptops and are overjoyed with the "value" you just picked up over a 2.5 lb, 0.8 inch, fanless laptop with a warranty?
I haven't seen $250 laptops that come with any "advantage" of a "proper OS". New $250 laptops almost always come with Windows 7 Starter. Used, almost always blank or Windows XP Home. They inevitably either weigh 6 lbs or run a dog slow Atom with 1GB RAM and a 4200 or 5400 rpm drive that is soundly beat by this new Exynos chip setup.
Granted, you can upgrade most any of these clumsy $250 devices talked about for another $40 as Microsoft is desperate for you to use tiles instead of a start menu.
It sounds like most of these comments are from people who would see value in the "Homer Car" over one of those Smart cars. There are plenty of devices out there for you people. This "value" comment is just getting annoyingly repetitive.
Why not add a few words comparing this to a standard netbook? $250 sounds like a unique price class, until you hop on Newegg and see that netbooks can be had for similar prices. Here's an 11.6" model for $278 that runs an AMD C60 CPU, 4GB RAM, and 320GB HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Key questions worth addressing in the article: 1) Is the Chrome user-experience dramatically better than running Windows on a low-end processor? [Particularly the more efficient Windows 8 platform.] 2) Do the advantages of a lightweight operating system really outweigh the lack of versatility compared to a full-blown OS? 3) Many of us have purchased netbooks as replacements of our parents ancient laptops. Does this Chromebook do a better job than netbooks at meeting basic computing needs?
To clarify, this isn't a "yes" or "no" question that I wanted an answer to. The "answer" depends on your computing needs and what you can afford.
I have my own general answers. For my purposes, the Chrome OS is too limited for what I want to do with a laptop-like device. The *concept* of a lightweight operating system that can run on low-end hardware is fantastic. However, the Chrome OS ecosystem is still lacking in features and software availability. Microsoft's RT operating system sounds like it is getting closer to this goal, at least if Anandtech's review is to be believed. We'll have to see if 3rd party software appears to round-out the ecosystem. And the price is still $600 if you want the keyboard cover, so out of this sub-$300 discussion.
On the other hand, a Windows-based netbook can run all of the software I need, but painfully slowly. It's the reason I don't own a netbook and chose to spend more than $300. But if $300 is all you have to spend, and you need something portable that runs all of your productivity software, an 11.6" netbook might be better for you than a Chromebook.
Anand: How fast does this boot up? Is it like a smartphone/tablet, instantaneous? Is it like an apple ssd/os, pretty quick? Or like a window 7 SSD watch the screens go by? Or like a windows xp/hd x 7 years old, you might as well sort the laundry, text your girlfriend, and brush your teeth boot? That's a big question, because this really is like a tablet with a keyboard and a bad screen.
Tablets and phones don't boot-up instantaneously. That's waking from idle mode that you're talking about, which basically just means turning on the screen.
When Cortex A7 arrives in big.Little I expect the idle times to drop dramatically in A15 set-ups, and I doubt Intel can keep up with that. Not to mention they still won't keep up in graphics department.
Anand, can you stop plugging Surface into Android and Chromebook reviews? Why would I want to hear how Surface might do in the future with this chip that Chromebook already has? Seriously.
Three instructions are decoded and dispatched to 5 clusters of 8 execution queues (8 slots each) per cycle, then each cycle each execution queue can issue a cycle to its associated execution unit (note this diagram is using issue/dispatch opposite from how it's often used). There's no execution relationship like given in Anand's diagram, the clusters are: NEON (2x), load/store (2x), simple ALU (2x), multiply, and branch.
Slide 20 introduces the independent issue queues, although subsequent slides make it all a bit more ambiguous (and more like the block diagram you included). I didn't include "issue" width for each of the arrows in my diagram to keep thing simple but I can see that it can definitely give the wrong impression.
Let me see about doing a better pass on the A15 once I'm back from my current trip.
More proof that ARM ISA isn't magically more efficient than x86 in perf/watt.
My i7-3720QM Mac can complete Kraken in 2100ms, with a load power consumption of 30W and idle power of 12W (display on at mid-brightness, discrete GPU off). Ivy has very good power gating, so I'll just assume the CPU is consuming 20W. This results in 42 Joules to complete one run of Kraken. The A15 on the other hand, with a differential of 4 watts (again assuming perfect gating at idle) takes 38.8 Joules. In server usage, perf/watt is king. If the best ARM can deliver is 10% better perf/watt at the expense of 5x per-core performance, they're not going to make a dent against Xeon. I imagine V8 could be optimized more for ARM, but the gains there are not nearly as big as before.
Some other observations -
I ran 8 instances of Kraken at once to make use of all the cores and HT, while reducing the effect of perf/watt-killing Turbo Boost. Power consumption was about 65W total, or approximately 55W going into the CPU. Each Kraken finished in about 3700ms, so what we have is 55W*3.7s/8 = 25 joules per Kraken. Much better, but obviously an apples-to-oranges comparison against the A15 which should probably have two instances run on it for optimal efficiency.
Also, shame on Intel/Samsung/Google for the Chromebook 500. 12W idling for a netbook is just ridiculous.
I don't think we can pull the 32nm vs 22nm fab card here either, because Intel has always been ahead in this respect and the gap is widening.
The new chromebook is a near-winner! While it is targetting impulse purchase, low-budget buyers, and 2nd world economies, they should consider a 1st world premium buyer audience. If this had a better quality screen with "retina" pixel density, I would buy one in a heartbeat. I don't want to game... I want to read my PDFs without having to zoom to make the text legible... and with the SD card reader... it would be a perfect image display device for the SD cards once it comes out of the camera. 1366x768 is very 2009, not 2012.
Kinda like Firefox OS... or whatever they are calling it. Just not sure what the point is. Maybe they figured linux needs just a few more radically different distributions :-)
Both Atom and Sandy /Ivy Bridge uses 4 thread compared to 2 threads the Cortex A15 uses. A better comparison would be a Quad Core A15. Which free the Core from doing other work in a Single Threaded Benchmarks and better illustrate mutithreaded performance.
The A50 will offer 20 - 30% performance increase compared to A15 at 32 bit and further improvement at 64bit mode. This, with higher frequency and Quad Core or Hex Core will surely bridge the gap between everyday Laptop and a Chromebook.
It doesn't matter. HT is pretty gimmicky anyway. You can maybe 10% improvement in performance.
Don't forget A57 will not just have better IPC than A15, but will also go to higher clock speeds - up to 3 Ghz, actually. A quad core A57 chip at 3 Ghz will be more than enough performance for most people, while having very good battery life.
I'm guessing this is not what you guys agreed to regarding what advertisements on your site can do. Here's the brilliant message you get:
CONGRATULATIONS! You've been selected from the [MY STATE] region to take part in our annual visitor survey. This will only take 30 seconds of your time and will enhance user experience. Upon completion you will have the opportunity to get a iPad or iPad Mini, a $1000 Best Buy Card , or a $1,000 Visa Gift Card.
"PC notebooks that still struggled with the same virus/malware issues they'd been facing for years"
That comment had me confused. Is he talking about the crap companies put onto their non-business notebooks or did I miss some sort of virus/malware hell in 2010 that somehow later got solved?
This could be better, but it is ok I have seen worst than this What did you expect with so low price This does not work but let's see something else that works And here it is a USB 3.0 that works as a slow USB 2.0, and here it is a slot that it is not a slot but a hole
More or less this is what I was reading in this article. So you pay $249 and you buy a very light machine with overall poor quality and an OS that it is very limited in what you can do with it. And only 6 hour battery time? Better buy a netbook, tablet or a second hand laptop for that price.
"Note that the previous Atom solution required two chips: the N570 and its NM10 Express PCH. The !!! -= N570 =- !!! had a 2.1W TDP and was used for all IO, while the N570 and its two Atom cores needed about 8.5W. "
I guess that is the NM10 actually? Otherwise it makes no sense, to me at least. I keep reading and loved the expression that "ARM is the new AMD", perhaps we should call them "ARMeD", since they are in the same boat now.
Anyone care to take a guess on how much this device would retail for if it included a battery with 50% or 100% more capacity? That would be a 45 or 60 Whr battery, respectively. I think it would fairly useful to be able to pull 9 hours from a single charge.
You're forgetting to mention your basing that on a 1.3Ghz cpu from a year ago instead of the 1.7ghz tegra3+ that they're currently putting out (htc one x+ etc). That's about another ~27% you're leaving off NV's table right anand?
So Intel's current tech is just about to catch NV's old tech with Tegra4 just around the block that will increase cpu (I don't expect much here, but they don't need much already quad and performs on par with what just came out to a large degree), and double gpu since going quad instead of dual, so at worst it will double if no chip improvement at all, and dual channel finally. Looks like they'll be behind again just after launch I guess? They'll have to do better than catching last years tech. And they didn't make it into xmas devices like Tegra. So again NV will get their tech out in time in Q1 for craploads of devices to be planned all year. I'm thinking it's best to be fastest in March/April if you want to be designed into Xmas devices.
Surface may have chosen the 1.3ghz but they should have ran a 1.7ghz Tegra3+. I guess it saved them $10/surface (less?). I'm sure customers would rather pay $5-10 for another 30% performance. They should at least offer the option. Oh well. I told my dad to buy a Nexus 10 for xmas anyway and I'll wait for a great 10in Tegra4 as if I'm going to game (dad isn't much) I want Tegra game optimizations and everything out now isn't quite as good as I'd like for Xbox360 portable replacement and double as a laptop i9300 replacement (it's 8yrs old...LOL). Nvidia seems to be the only one helping devs make some great stuff and gaining praise from the likes of Carmack and Epic's Unreal team. Tegrazone.com has some great games in the pipe. I'm looking forward to Baldurs Gate enhanced on a 65in TV in the near future too...LOL. That game should run on anything out by everyone on the top end and give gamers a good 100+hrs of fun on the bigscreen without an xbox360/ps3. With my limited game time, it should hold me over until android gaming really takes off. There are 5 unreal 3 engine games in the pipe now, and lots of other good looking stuff at tegrazone says next xmas should be excellent. I'm sure Id's engine will get used by them in a few games also. Between these and my PC I should have no reason to even look at an xbox720/ps4. I'm guessing a lot will be in the same boat.
I may have to pony up for the cube u30gt jelly bean to get me to xmas which should produce a tegra4+. Then again going from 40nm to 20nm there may be no need. That's a HUGE decrease in chip size and samsung is better than TSMC at any process. The U30GT (and it's ilk) look pretty dang good for $200 tablet at 10in for something to use for training vids/books etc until next year.
Thanks for the detailed (as usual) review. A question:
Since it idles at 6.33W and has a 30 Watt-hour battery, shouldn't it last less than 5 hours with the screen on? It lasted 6.07 hours in the browsing test.
I have used the Chromebook Since the CR-48 then moved to the Acer and now this one. You will be surprised as to how useful the apps found in the Google store really are. I use Microsofts 365 and I am just as productive as if I was using the full program on a normal laptop. I recently found a new online service called Lime Documents, fantastic. The writing program is called Lime Writer and after using it I can honestly say I will never have any use for none web apps again. www.live-documents.com/live_writer.html The same goes for the Excel and Powerpoint clone, there awesome apps.
I love having the security the Chromebooks give me, I travel a lot and have either have had my laptop stolen or lost after a night of drinking. These give me the freedom of just shrugging my shoulders and saying oops instead of freaking out that someone now has photos of me and my dog with peanut butter. That was a joke of course it was the cat, at 250 dollars though these really are disposable computers.
My company recently bought over 300 Chromeboxes and Chromebooks. Our company is an all Unix environment with 90 percent of our data and internal apps being served from Oracle, in which all info is displayed with web apps. The few people who need Office or other software like the treasury department can display them using Citrix. A feature that was left out of the article, I for one use a CRM program called Goldmine. When I travel the 4G connection I have is more then fast enough to display this program and others. The Chromeboxes make a perfect dumb terminal, their also priced much better then the HP solution we were using. Google also doesn't mess about, we have many spares to switch out the defective ones if nessecsary. We then send them back to Google who just gives us new ones.
To tell you how useful a web program can be our software development team uses online development apps that were found in the Google store. They claim it's as good as if they were using Eclipse or Netbeans. I was actually amazed when they showed me. It's also a good employee incentive to give out a laptop to everyone even the secretaries. Yes they are just Chromebooks but our staff really seems to enjoy them as they can't muck'em up like they can with ordinary machines. We supply our people with Samsung 550's, the ARM version was deemed to slow but I took ome of the evaluation machines for my self as I like the size. I find it to be quick enough for my needs, I can stream 1080p movies from my Google Drive account without breaking a sweat so it's just fine for my needs.
He should enlighten everyone how? I call BS on your enlightened engineers claims!
I'm fuming mad at Samsung for blatant false advertising. I have tried ChromeOS as well as Ubuntu with Unity and XFCE and the average throughput over USB 3.0 is 16MB/s, which is slower than my 2011 Mackbook Pro over USB 2.0 :(
I actually bought my Chromebook for image transfer and storage from SD card to USB 3 drive. The fact it cannot produce at all has left me with a $250 doorstop.
We’ve updated our terms. By continuing to use the site and/or by logging into your account, you agree to the Site’s updated Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
149 Comments
Back to Article
zappb - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
looks awesome - between this and the Nexus 10Flunk - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I recommend the Nexus 10, better screen and OS. ChromeOS is a real turkey.quiksilvr - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
It really boils down to what you need. If you can live without a keyboard, get the Nexus 10. If you are on a budget, get this. If you want a keyboard and are willing to shell extra dough, get the Nexus 10 and a bluetooth keyboard.B3an - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
He wasn't talking about keyboards and form factors. Chrome OS is almost completely useless for anything more than browsing the net. It's about equivalent to a basic feature phone in capability. It's for such a small niche, about the only people i could see buying Chrome OS notebooks are extremely poor students, and even then it probably wont do everything they want.jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Another niche market is for people that do online investing and banking with significant assets. The added security of chrome OS is well worth having for $250 you won't find much cheaper insurance. Windows is just not safe for online financial transactions, which of course the poor student doesn't have to worry about.jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
By the way I find google docs to be pretty useful for productivity. I used to use open office and since I made the switch I haven't looked back. Netflix not being supported on the ARM version is kind of a bummer though. I think Google should make sure that Hulu, Netflix, and Amazon streaming all work as this definitely fits under the umbrella of cloud computing.damianrobertjones - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Windows is safe... Don't run as full admin and maybe the user might have some common sense not to visit porn sitesklmccaughey - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
No, they can use a Chromebook to visit porn sites or any other activity (long list) that might get them on trouble in Windows.I maintain the computers (just) in my house and home office, and for one user I really wish he had a Chromebook and not a Windows laptop - I keep having to restore it from image.
Oh and I use Windows 7 x64 as my main machine, with Ubuntu VM for development.
Wolfpup - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link
Nothing wrong with porn sites...like any other business they're not especially wanting to screw over their customers.Sabresiberian - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link
ChromeOS is NOT more secure than Windows. You are putting too much stock in anti-Microsoft blather from Google. Might as well listen to Apple's opinion of Windows.Does this SoC even have the hardware security features built into Intel and AMD x86 chips (AES, Intel Secure Key, OS Guard)? I don't think it does. ChromeOS might require different methods to crack, but it is not more secure, and the hardware of the Chromebook is less secure.
Besides, I'd imagine any successful investor is going to be using something a lot more satisfying than a tiny, cheap netbook variation with a so-so screen.
jeffkro - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link
You do realize there is a higher end chromebook that runs on a ULV celeron cpu right. If you want better specs it is available.jeffkro - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link
The celeron runs windows pretty fast so you know its lighting fast for chrome OS.agnar150 - Saturday, November 3, 2012 - link
You could not be more wrong. The OS structure is inherently more secure and it is very much more secure than Windows.Wolfpup - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link
How is Windows not safe? I've been using it how long now? Decades? And had exactly zero security intrusions. Being the market leader so you're a big target doesn't mean the platform is less safe-in fact Microsoft takes security a lot more seriously than most closed source software does.As for this unit...it remains ridiculous. I bought a $200 Acer running real Windows 7 on AMD hardware, and it's obviously a bajillion times more functional. This thing runs one single program-Chrome, on low end hardware, doesn't properly support external displays or other devices, can't replace my real PC for...much of anything, and it actually costs as much or more than superior devices...just like the older Chromebooks did.
epobirs - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link
Utter nonsense. There are tons of options for locking down Windows the average consumer doesn't bother with but the information is widely available. Just a few changes makes it far harder for malware to get any value from the machine.The difference is that you still have the full capabilities of Windows and its software library, along with a choice of browsers, including Google Chrome.
The people I know who do serious online financial work wouldn't blink at spending a lot more than $250 to pay someone like me to teach them to lock down their machine for work. Putting up with the limitations of Chrome OS and paying for the privilege would strike them as absurd.
UltraTech79 - Friday, November 16, 2012 - link
"People that do online investing and banking with significant assets" have better options than shitty chrome OS or standard windows. Ridiculous.ddriver - Wednesday, January 9, 2013 - link
Have you actually checked the chrome store? there are plenty of good applications, especially concerning productivity, surely, the overall number of apps is much lower than android, but considering most of those are useless, it is not that big of a deal. You can do plenty of stuff on the chromebook, and that that price point it is a very good bargain.Flunk - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
No, honestly it doesn't. If you need a keyboard you buy one of the ASUS Transformer pads. This is a very limited device that won't get you very far and really doesn't have a reason for existing. If this was just a laptop-like device running android I could see the utility but Chrome OS is basically just a kneecapped version of android.jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Its kneecapped for security, their is a reason for it.klmccaughey - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
I would totally agree with this if there was an android with a keyboard and this hardware at this price point. The transformer is good, but it's far too expensive.I got an Ipad 2 by accident, and between that and the laptop I don't think I need anything else. I hate Apple, which makes the whole experience confusing.
garfnodie - Thursday, November 15, 2012 - link
Let's see, Chromebook for $249, or Transformer w/ keyboard for $600. I'm guessing if you'r a broke college student who needs something simple, the Chromebook is looking pretty good.Myrandex - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Eh instead of the Nexus 10 + keyboard, Microsoft Surface all the way!Krysto - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Why? I want a good high-res screen on my device if I'm going to $400, which is $100 cheaper and has the same amount of free storage as Surface.qwerty321 - Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - link
Not for long. When PNaCl is stabilised, ChromeOS users will be able to install native software. Obviously not Windows API stuff, but then who in their right mind would use that garbage anyway? There's a few things in the Chrome store experimenting with NaCl (the early, non-portable version) now.Midwayman - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I'm just a little shocked how how much the nexus 10 costs vs the chromebook. Clearly there is some price padding in the nexus 10 price.kllrnohj - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
How do you figure? The two share a similar SoC, and nothing else. In particular the Nexus 10 has that incredibly gorgeous 2560x1600 IPS display, whereas this Chromebook has a mediocre, off the shelf 1366x768 TN display. Given that there's only a $150 difference between the two, the screen alone easily accounts for most of that. Similarly, the N10 is a smaller device - cramming the same stuff into a smaller form factor is typically harder and more expensive.Midwayman - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
There aren't a lot of points of comparison with the Nexus 10 screen. Granted I'm sure the screen is more expensive, but similar size, similar SOC, same memory. Given the pricing trend with the nexus 7 and chromebook I expected a price around $50 less. Or at least to come with 32gb of memory for that price. I don't think $400 is a *bad* price, but it isn't as aggressive as I expected. I'm sure there will be a parts cost breakdown soon.Krysto - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Nexus 10 is a high-end tablet. Chromebook is a pretty low-end laptop, in all regards.sna19703 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Get a Windows RT Tablet.kyuu - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Once they release one with a better SoC than Tegra 3 and a 1600x900 screen or better, sure.Krysto - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Which is going to be another year, by which point Android tablets will be on to the next-gen hardware.name99 - Sunday, November 4, 2012 - link
You have an odd definition of awesome."The display is functional but not very good. Build quality is decent but the new Chromebook is still a plastic notebook. Thankfully the keyboard and trackpad are both pretty decent."
Add in HDMI that doesn't work, a weird slot that isn't connected to anything, and the various other hassles described and I'm not sure exactly what the awesome here is.
Andhaka - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Seems a nice machine on paper, but I don't really know how much I would trust an "always online" Google machine with my data.Seems too much of a trade off.
Cheers
coder543 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Because I'm sure that your secrets are personally being observed by Google since they're just ever so valuable. That's the only reasonable line of reasoning./sarcasm
They're just happy to make advertising revenue off of you, and since you'll likely use Google from whatever machine you have, it won't make much difference to not use this one. Also consider that if you were doing something highly sensitive, you could always walk over and turn on your computer, assuming you trust it, especially if you have Windows. I'd be less inclined to trust the good will of the parasites lurking around on there.
coder543 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
turn on your regular* computer/typo fixed
Andhaka - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Actually I work with a lot of NDA stuff (translations mostly) so yes, I really have a lot of secret stuff on my computer. ;) And believe me when I say I don't use google for ANYTHING on my work related projects. :)And the problem is not google per se, but having a machine that's not really usable if not online. I'm not sure, but I think there's no choice for editing text apart from Google Docs?
This is not an objective opinion. It's rather my personal view of this kind of machines. I'd like a super lightweight portable laptop, but not one that's tied hands and feet to an online service.
Just MY two cents. :)
jamyryals - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I'm pretty sure they support offline Google docs using a local disc cache. Still though, I'm pretty sure we are not the target for this platform.Andhaka - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Exactly what I was saying. For my kind of work it's not a viable solution. :)chrnochime - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
So what do you use at work instead of Google then? Curious because AFAIK all other search engines do the same as Google...Andhaka - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
That's the point. For really important NDA stuff we don't use search engines, AT ALL. :)I can connect to a company server with extensive documentation to serch for specific infromation on the project I'm working on (usually given to us by the committent), but I cannot really access Google or Bing and search for things i need.
For lesser project we use a company issued google profile for searches but no online document manipolation is allowed, meaning no Google Docs, Office Online, Dropbox, iCloud or anything similar. We have company online storage and we use VPN connections with tokens to generate the cyphers needed to connect. I cannot even send work files via email even if our email server is phisically based in our campus. :)
They take security very seriously where I work. ;)
Cheers
wumpus - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I would assume that the real issue is if you can wipe chromeOS and replace with the linux of your choice. By the security choices you list, I wouldn't be using any type of windows box. From the comments below, there doesn't appear to be a "plug a USB stick in and hit a button" linux disto yet.jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Look into ixquick if you are worried about search privacy.jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
"I'm not sure, but I think there's no choice for editing text apart from Google Docs?"If you are really tied to MS office you can use MS's cloud based office suite.
jjj - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Nice perf numbers.On power consumption both the software and the hardware are a lot different form a phone so maybe it's not as bad as you think.Now all we need is quad A15 :D (might be doable in tablets/notebooks with bigLITTLE or Nvidia's 4+1 even on 28nm)
Roland00Address - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
It will be 4 A15 cores plus a low power companion core. Who knows when it will be actually in devices.I have not heard any announcements for quad core A15 from other sources (such as Samsung) that said it is going to happen sometime even if it has not been announced.
Jorange - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Excellent I've been waiting for this review. Exynos 5250 does seem a power hungry chap, which kinda destroys my hopes for a quad-core 5450 / Mali T658 in the next Galaxy phone, unless Samsung move to a new node. There is mention of 28nm process on Samsung's foundry site, combined with Big.little maybe my dreams are alive.Anand, any news when Samsung will adopt a new process node, and will it be 28nm or 22nm?
Work is already underway to port Ubuntu to it:)
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/10/ubuntu-12-04-up...
amdwilliam1985 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I share your excitement, I have SGS3 and I'm so looking forward to SGS4 and what it can bring to the table. Hopefully some sort of big.LITTLE design to lower the power draw, also there is a trend of bigger battery, hopefully the trend continues without much increasing in the physical size.Krysto - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Why? Samsung will do it just like Nvidia with Tegra 4, and put 1 or 2 Cortex A7 chips next to the A15's, which will handle 80% of the tasks.Aenean144 - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
I'm curious how big.LITTLE is going to work in practice. The auto switching between discrete graphics and integrated graphics on laptops may give us a clue on how well it works.Hitting 9 W peak at 1.7 GHz? That's Haswell territory, and I'd surmise Haswell will crush any ARM, even the 64 bit ones in 2014, with a 10 W TDP envelope.
Secondarily, either Samsung is binning some low power parts for the Nexus 10 and prospective smartphones, or they have to downclock. The big question would be how much would they have to downclock.
On to the Nexus 10 analysis.
Kevin G - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Very respectable performance from the Cortex A15. It'll be interesting to see how it'll fair in a smart phone but the bar has been set.superflex - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Way to use the crappiest pictures of the display you could wrestle up.If the display is on par with other 768 TN panels used in laptops reviewed by AT, why did you use those washed out pictures of the display? I don't see the same lack of photography skills when reviewing other laptops with similar panels.
I guess since Google isn't stroking AT the same way Apple does, a fair review with fair pictures would be pointless.
Hacks!
PsychoPif - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Why would you base your opinion on a picture when they provide numerics to back up the review?Since I learned about Photoshop, I no longuer believe what I see on a picture anyway.
superflex - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Ever hear the phrase "A picture says a thousand words"?For the casual viewer, who may not delve into the display numbers, the pictures certainly do tell a story. It just depends on what story AT wants to tell.
superflex - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Look at the review of the Dell XPS 14Z. According to the numbers in this review, the panel in the Sammy CB is on par, if not better than the one used by Dell. Look at the pictures of the Dell display vs the CB display. Are they on par with one another?You can certainly influence a consumers purchasing decision based on some sub-par photographs.
Well done AT.
PeteH - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Do you really think the people technologically sophisticated enough to be interested in an AnandTech review are the same people who would base their purchasing decision on one photograph of a display?superflex - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Do you really think nobody will do a Google search for "Samsung Chromebook Review" and find AT's site on the list?I guess Google is smart enough to know a persons IQ and direct them away from AT and its "sophisticated" readers.
Sheeesh, get over yourself.
PeteH - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Seriously? Just start reading the review, it is clearly not targeted at consumers. Heck, there's a photo of a circuit board on the first page! There's a tear down of the device (complete with photos) before the display is even discussed! Who is going to read this review other than people who care deeply about the technical aspects of the Chromebook?But I'm starting to think you know that, and the real reason you're upset is because AnandTech pointed out that the Chromebook has a crappy display.
SND_ - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Most likely the Chromebook doesn't have a very good display AND the picture sucks.I did notice that the display looks very poor in that image. I doubt it's that bad (two feet in front of you). . . typing "Chromebook" into Google will fetch you better pictures of suggesting a display of higher quality.
LogOver - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I would like to see a comparison with the Celeron-based Chromebookkrumme - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Celleron is a different price segment.The comparison was perfect and valid imho.
MadMan007 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
It is a valid comparison, however there is an unanswered question: What do I get for stepping up to the Celeron Chromebook? And that is a valid question, even though at that price point there are more options.Selden - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
By stepping up to the Samsung 550, you get a larger and brighter (300 nits vs 200 nits) screen (but lower resolution, 1280x800), 4 GB of RAM, slightly better faster CPU performance, longer battery life (much bigger battery), and a card reader slot that doesn't let the card stick out (approx. 1 cm) from the case. For performance, the 4 GB of RAM is probably the most significant factor, as it lets you open many more tabs.jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
You also get the ability to play netflix content.LogOver - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Some benchmarks shows 50-80% better performance for 1.3Ghz Celeron-based chromebook.http://gigaom.com/mobile/intel-v-arm-the-chromeboo...
I would like to see confirmation from Anand. Also some GPU benchmarks (Celeron vs. Exynos) would be welcomed.
krumme - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link
And that just proves celeron is no competitor for A15 as the performance difference means nothing compared to the total cost differences for the intended segment.An more interesting comparison would even be to the old AMD APU bobcat, in some low voltage variants.
But ofcourse its the new lowcost AMD/Intel variants that is going to be the main competitors.
LogOver - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link
Samsung asks ~$450 for Celeron Chromebook, but this doesn't mean that Celeron-based netbooks have to be expensive. You can buy Acer AO756 for just $265 from bestbuy (and it inclides$100 Win Home Premium and 320Gb HDD which chromebook lacks)http://www.bestbuy.com/site/searchpage.jsp?_dyncha...
And if you wish, you can install Chrome OS on it by yourself.
AgeOfPanic - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Anand, could you tell us how it compares to the Atom in day to day use? I currently own a Samsung Series 5 chromebook and I would like to know if it makes any sense to upgrade to this model. Seems I would have to take a hit in battery life, but I heard you can at least watch 720p Youtube videos on it.Krysto - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
You can watch 1080p videos on it if you want. It has a vastly better GPU. Maybe you can sell yours, and pay little to no difference to get this new one. The performance improvement overall should be noticeable.AgeOfPanic - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Anand doesn't seem to be too convinced. Performance in normal browsing seems acceptable. Don't really understand, because Chrome on a tablet is plenty fast.krumme - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
It looks like ARM 15 is making it very difficult for Intel and AMD for this low cost market. Especially with win8 machines comming.I dont know how Intel can catch up to this competition with the new Atom. When 22nm Atom hits market, TSMC is printing dirt cheap A15 on 28nm for everyone and his brother; tablets, phones, notebooks. Heck even some server segments is going Arm. And the performance looks like its sufficient for grandma.
The new Atom and new bobcat better have some tangible performance benefits both on cpu and gpu side - they simply need to drive most if not all, pc games well on a notebook.
I am impressed by the performance of ARM here.
extide - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Yeah, basically this next gen 22nm Atom core is going to be make it of break it for the Atom. I can see the Atom getting canned entirely if the 2nd gen core on 22nm sucks.andrewaggb - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Yeah, intel must be feeling crazy pressure. They are 6-12 months behind. Both Haswell and the new atom should be coming out now with windows 8.amdwilliam1985 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I'm impressed by the ARM performance, besides the performance and battery life, there is also the cost to consider. As far as I know, ARM cpu cost much less than x86 cpu.If I can get 50% of power for 25% of the price, that sounds like a good trade off in many scenarios.
wsw1982 - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
The samsung arm a15 is basically a 6+ w SOC... If you linear scale the medfield up 3 times, it means a three core atom, and three times the graphic power (does scale linearly), and i think the performance is comparable. The medfeld is arround 64 mm2, and the three core atom and graphic is, to my best guess, 100mm2, any one give me a estimation of the die size of the samsung a15? we can calculate the price :)krumme - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link
The intereting thing is the total cost for the OEM. The A15 implemented as here must be dirt cheap.Intel have high fixed cost, but arm can spread the cost to phones whatever through both Samsung but primarily TSMC.
In the long run it will be difficult for Intel the have the same low cost.
Years back they could use old fab equipment for the Atom and in that way use production capacity that had been written off the the worst part. Today they they need the new process nodes to be competitive, and that will raise cost for the Atom. I think they are in a bad market here.
Competing with TSMC and Samung is another world from competing with AMD and GF.
They need their ultrabooks, but the market is to small for the future fab cost.
Now arm can share cost from phones to notebooks. That is massive cost advantage imho.
mayankleoboy1 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
A chromebook is too niche a product to properly judge a SoC . Typically thermals are completely different.Its fast, yes, but how will it do in a smartphone ? And chromeOS has too few apps and the chromebook has too less a res to actually judge the best SoC .....
Krysto - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Not like the Atom one was using bigger resolution. And Exynos 5 Dual can support up to 2560x1600, as we've already seen with Nexus 10.MilwaukeeMike - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Maybe I missed it, but does this have a built in webcam? Looks like it does from info on other sites, and I'd like to know how it performs for Skype purposes if anyone knows. Sounds like videos from youtube/facebook work ok as well, which would make this a great netbook style option.deneb - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
For that price, why wouldn't anyone get a used laptop instead? At least then they'll get the benefit of a proper OS of their choice (linux or Windows, i don't know if used apple lappies go that low).Granted, it wouldn't be new, but at least it would be many times more functional - no? :)
Midwayman - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Battery life. A old low end laptop is going to have terrible battery life.TrackSmart - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I think netbooks are the more obvious comparison. You can buy Intel/AMD powered netbooks running Windows/Linux for $200 and up. The "better" choice depends on just how basic your computing needs are and how much you can live with a cloud-based operating system.Krysto - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Browsing on them will be much slower, especially on those single core ones that cost $200. I know because I've used one. Single core Atom browsing on a netbook is excruciatingly painful. Plus, I believe I saw in a Cnet review that this Chromebook has higher performance in browsing than IE9 with a Core 2 Quad. That's not a very fair comparison because it used IE9, but still.TrackSmart - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
I wasn't advocating one or the other, just pointing out the obvious comparison is not between used laptops and chromebooks, but between chromebooks and other "netbook-like" laptops.It's a tradeoff between running a lightweight, but very limited operating system (Chrome) or a heavier but full-featured and mature operating system (Windows or Linux). Performance versus greater availability of features and software.
I've also used single core atom netbooks and found them painfully slow. I haven't used the newer dual core Atom or dual core AMD-based netbooks that are more common these days. I'm guessing they are similarly painful, given that single-threaded performance is the major limitation for light workloads.
Jumangi - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Chromebook...a "solutiion" still in search for a problem/market to serve.Peroxyde - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Can you please clarify how the Chromebook perform the following tasks in offline mode?1. Can I work and save documents when not connected to the Internet?
2. Is it possible to play music or video files stored on the SD Cards? What media formats are supported? (MP3, MP4, MKV?)
3. Can the Chromebook access media files over the LAN, via DLNA client or SAMBA shares?
Thanks in advance for any help.
FormulaRedline - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I'm also interested in this. The review doesn't seem to go at all into the required internet connection and how this affects functionality. Unfortunately, we don't yet live in a world with free WiFi everywhere.Selden - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Offline YESA/V YES (but not all formats)
Samba NO
ddy - Saturday, November 17, 2012 - link
I want to ask if there is smb, already using the Samsung ARM Chromebook. I have a performance issue on working with Google docs. As you asked about the documents, I wanted to be involved.It is not that sensitive to respond, neither on-line nor offline. Does any of you have a similar problem??
Thanks in advance.
StormyParis - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Nice review, thanks.I'd have liked more info about offline use though. Even if I'm online most of the time, it's very important that i can also be productive, and entertained, while offline.
prophet001 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
The ultimate digital pick-pocket.rootheday - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
sure, the Atom N570 on 45nm is not so competitive on power and performance but I think it is misleading to compare A15 vs this rev of Atom because newer and better Intel processors are available....I think more interesting comparison point for future competitors to A15 would be:
Acer Aspire One 756 - 11.6" notebook with Sandybridge Pentium or Celeron - I have seen it as low as $290 at Best Buy and Costco. Similar price point but way more performant.
Clovertrail based machines - reviewed on this site.. http://www.anandtech.com/show/6340/intel-details-a...
... while this is Win8 not ChromeOS, I would expect power and performance to be similar.
Krysto - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
I bet those don''t look as good as the Chromebook either. You're paying for the whole package.Midwayman - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I just wish the Surface had shipped with this SOC. Windows RT sounds more interesting than chrome, but it got saddled with a much older SOC in a product twice the cost.andrewaggb - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
me too. If surface had this SOC with a higher res screen, I'd buy one. Instead I'm waiting for a hardware refresh. Tegra3 and atom are too slow, i5 is too power hungry.amdwilliam1985 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I agree, Tegra 3 and current Atom are too slow, but the upcoming Atom should be better. I'm considering buying that instead of windows RT as a media pc replacement.I'm hearing a lot of miracast, has anyone coming out with the dongle yet? anything decent in the retail?
jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Haswell should make a pretty nice media PC. Its suppose to be really good with power consumption especially if you get into the ULV versions. If your media PC is plugged into the wall the difference between 10W or 20-30W isn't that big of a deal. I'm pretty big into HTPC and I'm probably going to swap out my llano system for haswell when the i3 or pentium versions are released.amdwilliam1985 - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Sorry, I probably mislead you.What I'm looking for is surface type of tablet when I want to work on a tablet, and then I can dock it on my coffee table and use miracast as a wireless mirror display. That way, I can get rid of laptop, tablet and media pc and use 1 device only.
Currently I have an old core 2 duo laptop plug in 24/7 with a hdmi display and a wireless mouse as a media pc. The laptop is getting old and a replacement is needed soon.
wsw1982 - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
the samsung a15 is also 6+ w range soc according to the reviewKrysto - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Anand has said Haswell will have higher TDP than IVB on the same level of performance. That 10W variant is just a significantly lower powered version.tipoo - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Agreed, even WP8 got a better SoC than T3 (Krait). Odd choice. Snapdragon S4 Pro in the surface would have been nice.jeffkro - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Krait, might loose out to this A15 in all out performance but it is pretty great for battery life especially on LTE phones.Krysto - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
LTE has nothing to do with the chip. Those quad core S4 Pro's aren't even integrated with LTE yet. Latest LTE efficiency comes from the fact that it's made at 28nm, not at 45nm - the LTE chip itself that is.tipoo - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Impressive that the A15 beats Atom across the board, and draws significantly less power doing that. Complete leapfrog.eddman - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Not a valid comparison IMO when it comes to power consumption. That's an old 45nm Atom. Clover trail will do much better, thanks to the 32nm process and its new S0ix power states.tipoo - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Fair enough, but the performance per clock won't go up significantly until Silvermont.silverblue - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Still, the current Atom and Brazos are only mild updates (if that). The E2-1800 in HP's dm1 gets 547 in Sunspider, so clock-for-clock, Brazos 2.0 is ahead on this single test. However, the power consumption must be signicantly more. Still, slightly different markets.I would very much like to see the next Atom plus AMD's Jaguar; reduced power and better performance could make for a decent A15 competitor.
lmcd - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Supposedly these were the leaky chips, so we could have a similar story in Samsung's favor.Krysto - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Brazos has a much higher TDP though. Was it 10W for CPU and another 8 for the GPU? It's crazy.Krysto - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Clover Trail is not a mobile chip. Only Medfield is, and they don't even have a dual core version yet. You will never see Clover Trail in smartphones (yet you will see Cortex A15), and the only reason you will see them in Windows 8 tablets is because Medfield would be too slow with Windows 8, and Clover Trail is more powerful, but also uses much more power, and they are willing to compromise on that, while lying through their teeth that it will get 8-9h of battery life. It will get nowhere close to that.wsw1982 - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
the clover trail is about 3.5+ w tdp according to some review. the samsung a15 is a 6+w soc. what make you think a 3.5 w soc cannot go to mobile, but a 6+w soc can?eddman - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
What your comment has to do with what I wrote?! I never mentioned anything about smartphones.I just pointed out that you cannot compare an old 45nm chip with a brand new 32nm one, consumption wise.
Then again, just because we haven't seen clover trail on smartphones, doesn't mean it consumes too much power.
Hulk - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Good quality IPS screen on my next laptop or I stay with my Dell 640m forever.Put a SSD in it recently and I'm totally fine with it.
slackpenguin - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I keep reading these comments on reviews for this device like "wouldn't some other device be a better value for $250?"How many of you actually go and buy $250 used clunker laptops and are overjoyed with the "value" you just picked up over a 2.5 lb, 0.8 inch, fanless laptop with a warranty?
I haven't seen $250 laptops that come with any "advantage" of a "proper OS". New $250 laptops almost always come with Windows 7 Starter. Used, almost always blank or Windows XP Home. They inevitably either weigh 6 lbs or run a dog slow Atom with 1GB RAM and a 4200 or 5400 rpm drive that is soundly beat by this new Exynos chip setup.
Granted, you can upgrade most any of these clumsy $250 devices talked about for another $40 as Microsoft is desperate for you to use tiles instead of a start menu.
It sounds like most of these comments are from people who would see value in the "Homer Car" over one of those Smart cars. There are plenty of devices out there for you people. This "value" comment is just getting annoyingly repetitive.
eddman - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
You are right about the 250$ range, but with a little more you can get some good stuff.http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+14%26%2334%3B+L...
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Asus+-+15.6%26%2334%3B...
TrackSmart - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Anand,Why not add a few words comparing this to a standard netbook? $250 sounds like a unique price class, until you hop on Newegg and see that netbooks can be had for similar prices. Here's an 11.6" model for $278 that runs an AMD C60 CPU, 4GB RAM, and 320GB HDD: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N8...
Key questions worth addressing in the article:
1) Is the Chrome user-experience dramatically better than running Windows on a low-end processor? [Particularly the more efficient Windows 8 platform.]
2) Do the advantages of a lightweight operating system really outweigh the lack of versatility compared to a full-blown OS?
3) Many of us have purchased netbooks as replacements of our parents ancient laptops. Does this Chromebook do a better job than netbooks at meeting basic computing needs?
Krysto - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Yes it is, and Windows 8 is not that much more efficient than Windows 7. Maybe 5% more efficient.TrackSmart - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
To clarify, this isn't a "yes" or "no" question that I wanted an answer to. The "answer" depends on your computing needs and what you can afford.I have my own general answers. For my purposes, the Chrome OS is too limited for what I want to do with a laptop-like device. The *concept* of a lightweight operating system that can run on low-end hardware is fantastic. However, the Chrome OS ecosystem is still lacking in features and software availability. Microsoft's RT operating system sounds like it is getting closer to this goal, at least if Anandtech's review is to be believed. We'll have to see if 3rd party software appears to round-out the ecosystem. And the price is still $600 if you want the keyboard cover, so out of this sub-$300 discussion.
On the other hand, a Windows-based netbook can run all of the software I need, but painfully slowly. It's the reason I don't own a netbook and chose to spend more than $300. But if $300 is all you have to spend, and you need something portable that runs all of your productivity software, an 11.6" netbook might be better for you than a Chromebook.
karasaj - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Does anybody notice that A15 pretty much beats the Z2760 from the Surface review hands down in every way?If only Surface RT had that. But then again that might say just as much about IE versus chrome.
alvinchim - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Anand: How fast does this boot up? Is it like a smartphone/tablet, instantaneous? Is it like an apple ssd/os, pretty quick? Or like a window 7 SSD watch the screens go by? Or like a windows xp/hd x 7 years old, you might as well sort the laundry, text your girlfriend, and brush your teeth boot? That's a big question, because this really is like a tablet with a keyboard and a bad screen.slackpenguin - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I keep seeing figures of 10 seconds cold boot, 2 seconds from sleep mode, and 3 seconds off.Krysto - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Tablets and phones don't boot-up instantaneously. That's waking from idle mode that you're talking about, which basically just means turning on the screen.Krysto - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
When Cortex A7 arrives in big.Little I expect the idle times to drop dramatically in A15 set-ups, and I doubt Intel can keep up with that. Not to mention they still won't keep up in graphics department.Anand, can you stop plugging Surface into Android and Chromebook reviews? Why would I want to hear how Surface might do in the future with this chip that Chromebook already has? Seriously.
Exophase - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Anand's Cortex-A15 diagram looks really weird vs an official one.. http://regmedia.co.uk/2011/10/20/arm_a15_pipeline_...Three instructions are decoded and dispatched to 5 clusters of 8 execution queues (8 slots each) per cycle, then each cycle each execution queue can issue a cycle to its associated execution unit (note this diagram is using issue/dispatch opposite from how it's often used). There's no execution relationship like given in Anand's diagram, the clusters are: NEON (2x), load/store (2x), simple ALU (2x), multiply, and branch.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I based my diagram on a lot of the content in here:http://www.arm.com/files/pdf/AT-Exploring_the_Desi...
Slide 20 introduces the independent issue queues, although subsequent slides make it all a bit more ambiguous (and more like the block diagram you included). I didn't include "issue" width for each of the arrows in my diagram to keep thing simple but I can see that it can definitely give the wrong impression.
Let me see about doing a better pass on the A15 once I'm back from my current trip.
Take care,
Anand
madmilk - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
More proof that ARM ISA isn't magically more efficient than x86 in perf/watt.My i7-3720QM Mac can complete Kraken in 2100ms, with a load power consumption of 30W and idle power of 12W (display on at mid-brightness, discrete GPU off). Ivy has very good power gating, so I'll just assume the CPU is consuming 20W. This results in 42 Joules to complete one run of Kraken. The A15 on the other hand, with a differential of 4 watts (again assuming perfect gating at idle) takes 38.8 Joules. In server usage, perf/watt is king. If the best ARM can deliver is 10% better perf/watt at the expense of 5x per-core performance, they're not going to make a dent against Xeon. I imagine V8 could be optimized more for ARM, but the gains there are not nearly as big as before.
Some other observations -
I ran 8 instances of Kraken at once to make use of all the cores and HT, while reducing the effect of perf/watt-killing Turbo Boost. Power consumption was about 65W total, or approximately 55W going into the CPU. Each Kraken finished in about 3700ms, so what we have is 55W*3.7s/8 = 25 joules per Kraken. Much better, but obviously an apples-to-oranges comparison against the A15 which should probably have two instances run on it for optimal efficiency.
Also, shame on Intel/Samsung/Google for the Chromebook 500. 12W idling for a netbook is just ridiculous.
I don't think we can pull the 32nm vs 22nm fab card here either, because Intel has always been ahead in this respect and the gap is widening.
lemonadesoda - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
The new chromebook is a near-winner! While it is targetting impulse purchase, low-budget buyers, and 2nd world economies, they should consider a 1st world premium buyer audience. If this had a better quality screen with "retina" pixel density, I would buy one in a heartbeat. I don't want to game... I want to read my PDFs without having to zoom to make the text legible... and with the SD card reader... it would be a perfect image display device for the SD cards once it comes out of the camera. 1366x768 is very 2009, not 2012.ol1bit - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
I don't understand why Chrome OS continues at all?Just slapping JellyBean on this hardware would have much more functionality.
andrewaggb - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Only google can answer this question....Kinda like Firefox OS... or whatever they are calling it. Just not sure what the point is. Maybe they figured linux needs just a few more radically different distributions :-)
ssddaydream - Wednesday, October 31, 2012 - link
Please, will somebody ban this clown?ShaneMickey, that is...
ssddaydream - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
...there will be support that would allow AndroidOS, Linux, or Windows RT to be installed and properly functioning on this device.iwod - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Both Atom and Sandy /Ivy Bridge uses 4 thread compared to 2 threads the Cortex A15 uses. A better comparison would be a Quad Core A15. Which free the Core from doing other work in a Single Threaded Benchmarks and better illustrate mutithreaded performance.The A50 will offer 20 - 30% performance increase compared to A15 at 32 bit and further improvement at 64bit mode. This, with higher frequency and Quad Core or Hex Core will surely bridge the gap between everyday Laptop and a Chromebook.
Krysto - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
It doesn't matter. HT is pretty gimmicky anyway. You can maybe 10% improvement in performance.Don't forget A57 will not just have better IPC than A15, but will also go to higher clock speeds - up to 3 Ghz, actually. A quad core A57 chip at 3 Ghz will be more than enough performance for most people, while having very good battery life.
nishantmohan - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
"Plugging the Chromebook into a relatively modern (~2 year old) Samsung LED backlit LCD HTDV caused the Chromebook to reboot itself."i dont know why but I burst into laughter when i saw this....
legoman666 - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
Any word on the ship date for the 3g version? I preordered one on Amazon on the 19th, no word on ship date and I can't find one mentioned anywhere.TrackSmart - Thursday, November 1, 2012 - link
I opened this page and got taken here: http://testables.net/d/juicyru.comI'm guessing this is not what you guys agreed to regarding what advertisements on your site can do. Here's the brilliant message you get:
CONGRATULATIONS!
You've been selected from the [MY STATE] region to take part in our annual visitor survey.
This will only take 30 seconds of your time and will enhance user experience. Upon completion you will have the opportunity to get a iPad or iPad Mini, a $1000 Best Buy Card , or a $1,000 Visa Gift Card.
Mumrik - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link
"PC notebooks that still struggled with the same virus/malware issues they'd been facing for years"That comment had me confused. Is he talking about the crap companies put onto their non-business notebooks or did I miss some sort of virus/malware hell in 2010 that somehow later got solved?
yannigr - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link
This could be better, but it is okI have seen worst than this
What did you expect with so low price
This does not work but let's see something else that works
And here it is a USB 3.0 that works as a slow USB 2.0, and here it is a slot that it is not a slot but a hole
More or less this is what I was reading in this article. So you pay $249 and you buy a very light machine with overall poor quality and an OS that it is very limited in what you can do with it. And only 6 hour battery time?
Better buy a netbook, tablet or a second hand laptop for that price.
koss - Friday, November 2, 2012 - link
"Note that the previous Atom solution required two chips: the N570 and its NM10 Express PCH. The !!! -= N570 =- !!! had a 2.1W TDP and was used for all IO, while the N570 and its two Atom cores needed about 8.5W. "I guess that is the NM10 actually? Otherwise it makes no sense, to me at least.
I keep reading and loved the expression that "ARM is the new AMD", perhaps we should call them "ARMeD", since they are in the same boat now.
owned66 - Saturday, November 3, 2012 - link
put ubuntu on it = winruneks - Monday, November 5, 2012 - link
Anyone care to take a guess on how much this device would retail for if it included a battery with 50% or 100% more capacity? That would be a 45 or 60 Whr battery, respectively. I think it would fairly useful to be able to pull 9 hours from a single charge.actionjksn - Thursday, November 8, 2012 - link
How would the performance on this compare to a similarly clocked Core 2 Duo? I'm talking about CPU tasks not graphics.TheJian - Monday, November 12, 2012 - link
You're forgetting to mention your basing that on a 1.3Ghz cpu from a year ago instead of the 1.7ghz tegra3+ that they're currently putting out (htc one x+ etc). That's about another ~27% you're leaving off NV's table right anand?So Intel's current tech is just about to catch NV's old tech with Tegra4 just around the block that will increase cpu (I don't expect much here, but they don't need much already quad and performs on par with what just came out to a large degree), and double gpu since going quad instead of dual, so at worst it will double if no chip improvement at all, and dual channel finally. Looks like they'll be behind again just after launch I guess? They'll have to do better than catching last years tech. And they didn't make it into xmas devices like Tegra. So again NV will get their tech out in time in Q1 for craploads of devices to be planned all year. I'm thinking it's best to be fastest in March/April if you want to be designed into Xmas devices.
Surface may have chosen the 1.3ghz but they should have ran a 1.7ghz Tegra3+. I guess it saved them $10/surface (less?). I'm sure customers would rather pay $5-10 for another 30% performance. They should at least offer the option. Oh well. I told my dad to buy a Nexus 10 for xmas anyway and I'll wait for a great 10in Tegra4 as if I'm going to game (dad isn't much) I want Tegra game optimizations and everything out now isn't quite as good as I'd like for Xbox360 portable replacement and double as a laptop i9300 replacement (it's 8yrs old...LOL). Nvidia seems to be the only one helping devs make some great stuff and gaining praise from the likes of Carmack and Epic's Unreal team.
Tegrazone.com has some great games in the pipe. I'm looking forward to Baldurs Gate enhanced on a 65in TV in the near future too...LOL. That game should run on anything out by everyone on the top end and give gamers a good 100+hrs of fun on the bigscreen without an xbox360/ps3. With my limited game time, it should hold me over until android gaming really takes off. There are 5 unreal 3 engine games in the pipe now, and lots of other good looking stuff at tegrazone says next xmas should be excellent. I'm sure Id's engine will get used by them in a few games also. Between these and my PC I should have no reason to even look at an xbox720/ps4. I'm guessing a lot will be in the same boat.
I may have to pony up for the cube u30gt jelly bean to get me to xmas which should produce a tegra4+. Then again going from 40nm to 20nm there may be no need. That's a HUGE decrease in chip size and samsung is better than TSMC at any process. The U30GT (and it's ilk) look pretty dang good for $200 tablet at 10in for something to use for training vids/books etc until next year.
sathish2020 - Wednesday, November 21, 2012 - link
"With Apple pushing at the top and Google working the bottom" Nice one.deslock - Thursday, November 29, 2012 - link
Thanks for the detailed (as usual) review. A question:Since it idles at 6.33W and has a 30 Watt-hour battery, shouldn't it last less than 5 hours with the screen on? It lasted 6.07 hours in the browsing test.
ramonchis - Thursday, January 10, 2013 - link
Hi. I got one of these a couple of days ago. In the first day I broke the LCD by putting some weight on the laptop.I went to the store (Best Buy) to check if they could repair it of exchange it, but they did not offer any solutions.
So.... I would like to change the screen myself, which I have done in the past with other laptops.
Did you get a chance to open the screen lid? Do you know the LCD model?
Thanks!
calden - Sunday, January 27, 2013 - link
I have used the Chromebook Since the CR-48 then moved to the Acer and now this one. You will be surprised as to how useful the apps found in the Google store really are. I use Microsofts 365 and I am just as productive as if I was using the full program on a normal laptop. I recently found a new online service called Lime Documents, fantastic. The writing program is called Lime Writer and after using it I can honestly say I will never have any use for none web apps again. www.live-documents.com/live_writer.html The same goes for the Excel and Powerpoint clone, there awesome apps.I love having the security the Chromebooks give me, I travel a lot and have either have had my laptop stolen or lost after a night of drinking. These give me the freedom of just shrugging my shoulders and saying oops instead of freaking out that someone now has photos of me and my dog with peanut butter. That was a joke of course it was the cat, at 250 dollars though these really are disposable computers.
My company recently bought over 300 Chromeboxes and Chromebooks. Our company is an all Unix environment with 90 percent of our data and internal apps being served from Oracle, in which all info is displayed with web apps. The few people who need Office or other software like the treasury department can display them using Citrix. A feature that was left out of the article, I for one use a CRM program called Goldmine. When I travel the 4G connection I have is more then fast enough to display this program and others. The Chromeboxes make a perfect dumb terminal, their also priced much better then the HP solution we were using. Google also doesn't mess about, we have many spares to switch out the defective ones if nessecsary. We then send them back to Google who just gives us new ones.
To tell you how useful a web program can be our software development team uses online development apps that were found in the Google store. They claim it's as good as if they were using Eclipse or Netbeans. I was actually amazed when they showed me. It's also a good employee incentive to give out a laptop to everyone even the secretaries. Yes they are just Chromebooks but our staff really seems to enjoy them as they can't muck'em up like they can with ordinary machines. We supply our people with Samsung 550's, the ARM version was deemed to slow but I took ome of the evaluation machines for my self as I like the size. I find it to be quick enough for my needs, I can stream 1080p movies from my Google Drive account without breaking a sweat so it's just fine for my needs.
qwerty321 - Wednesday, March 20, 2013 - link
One of the guys working at Linaro claims he has the USB 3.0 port pushing 70+ MB/s. I'm guessing an engineer knows better than a laypress hack.EvilTed - Saturday, September 7, 2013 - link
He should enlighten everyone how?I call BS on your enlightened engineers claims!
I'm fuming mad at Samsung for blatant false advertising.
I have tried ChromeOS as well as Ubuntu with Unity and XFCE and the average throughput over USB 3.0 is 16MB/s, which is slower than my 2011 Mackbook Pro over USB 2.0 :(
I actually bought my Chromebook for image transfer and storage from SD card to USB 3 drive.
The fact it cannot produce at all has left me with a $250 doorstop.
Class action suit anyone?
ET