Samsung’s Galaxy Chromebook is unusually fancy and handsome for a platform usually associated with cheap, low-end machines, at least outside of Google’s own flag-carrier devices. How does it stack up?
The Verge says its no good because despite the pretty case, high-end hardware and 4k screen, it’s unreliable and has poor battery life. Engadget thinks it’s likeable enough, but also complains of the poor power management. Wired, however, gives it 8/10, describing it as “everything you could ever want in a laptop based on the Chrome browser.”
This is unquestionably a nice laptop. You are paying for what you get though. At $999 the Galaxy Chromebook is an expensive piece of kit, and one that’s never going to run, for instance, Adobe Photoshop, videogames like Overwatch, or other popular desktop applications.
If that’s not a requirement for you, there’s much here to love. An example of the refinement and integration in this laptop is when you press in on the spring-release pen to pull it out; the Galaxy Chromebook will automatically open Google Keep, and be ready for your handwritten notes or sketches (which are easier to make when you take advantage of the 360-degree convertible design). It’s a small thing, but a lot of these great, small things are what add up to make this the smoothest, nicest ChromeOS experience I’ve ever had.
I can’t imagine using something this fancy without wiping out the toy OS and installing Ubuntu Linux instead.
One thing that struck me is that The Verge‘s full-column warning (partially embedded below) about the clickwrap contracts the user must agree to just to start the machine. These are commonplace with gadgets, but rarely in such great numbers or with such hostile presentation. The reviewer writes they were unable to read them.
Tech companies have turned Linux into a transmission vector for adhesion contracts that are virtually impossible to read. To think, they used to complain that the GPL was a virus!
