Samsung Series 3 Chromebook review

When Google first introduced the Chromebook, a cut-price laptop running the company’s own Chrome OS, it relied on an internet connection to run applications and had almost no offline features. The low-power Intel Atom processor and 16GB SSD kept costs down, but it was hardly ideal for frequent travellers or anyone without an internet connection. Several hardware revisions and a complete operating system overhaul later, Google and manufacturing partner Samsung are back with the newest Chromebook – the Samsung Chromebook Series 3. This latest model is smaller, lighter, and could be the best Chromebook yet.

Weighing just 1.1kg and with an 11.6in screen, the Series 3 is barely any larger than a netbook and easily light enough to be classified an Ultrabook were it running Intel hardware. Samsung has kept the same silver brushed metal effect design as the previous model – the Samsung Series 5 550 Chromebook, along with the black keyboard and all-in-one touchpad. It’s more than a little reminiscent of Apple’s MacBook Air, even down to the slight lip in the chassis to make room for your fingers when opening the lid. It’s made from plastic, rather than metal, but we wouldn’t expect any different for £229.

Despite its small dimensions, there’s still room for two USB ports and an HDMI video output at the back of the laptop, along with an SD card reader and 3.5mm combination audio jack at the side. It also has 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, which is crucial for getting online and making the most of Chrome OS.

Samsung has repositioned the screen hinge to accommodate the rear ports, building it into the lid. It protrudes slightly, but it isn’t obtrusive and certainly didn’t stop us sliding it in and out of a laptop bag. It does, however, mean that there’s only a limited amount of screen tilt, which is where we encountered our first real issue. The 11.6in display uses a TN panel with distinctly average viewing angles, and you can’t turn the brightness up particularly high, making it tough to see what’s on the screen unless you’re hunched directly over the laptop.

DISPLAY

We wouldn’t expect anything more than 1,366×768 in a budget laptop, which is fine here for working on a single document or browsing the web. It’s also high enough to watch native 720p video, but 1080p content will be compressed to fit. We were able to play 1080p YouTube videos very smoothly, so there’s clearly plenty of power under the hood.

The matt screen finish at least helps keep light reflections to a minimum, but we noticed its colour clarity wasn’t nearly as accurate as a glossy display. It’s perfectly usable for word processing, web browsing and watching the occasional video, but it doesn’t leave photos looking their best. As you’d expect from a budget laptop, sound quality is merely average. It’s good for radio plays, but not so good for films. You’ll definitely want to plug in a pair of headphones if you’re watching video.

In general use, we weren’t too impressed with the Chromebook’s keyboard. The black, Chiclet-style keys are well proportioned and sensibly spaced apart from one another, but they have almost no travel and very little bounce, making it feel as if you’re typing on a flat surface. Combined with the very stubby wrist rest, which can dig into the palms of laptop typists that lay their hands flat, we struggled to find a comfortable working position. We did at least like the search key, which replaces the caps lock key. It’s almost universal, letting you search for apps or look up something on Google, but you can’t use it to search through your Gmail or Google Drive documents.

The touchpad fares much better, mostly because Chrome OS was designed with this style of touchpad in mind. Multitouch gestures are spot on, and even though we prefer having physical buttons we can’t fault how well two-finger clicks and scrolls work here. Although it has plenty of horizontal room, our main concern is that it feels a little cramped when scrolling vertically.

SPECIFICATIONS

Google is able to sell the Chromebook at such a low price because it has moved away from Intel hardware. In a major departure from previous models, this latest version uses an ARM-based processor instead of the Intel Atom CPUs seen previously. ARM architecture is completely different to Intel’s x86-based chips and is more commonly used for smartphones and tablets, but it makes its laptop debut here. The Samsung-manufactured Exynos 5 is a 1.7GHz dual-core chip that’s paired with 2GB of RAM and a 16GB SSD.

It’s easily powerful enough to run multiple browser windows and play (downscaled) Full HD video, or even play games, although you’re limited to the games available through the Chrome app store. As Chrome OS isn’t compatible with our regular benchmark suite, we used the JavaScript-based SunSpider online benchmark, which completed in 707.4ms. That’s around 60ms faster than last year’s Intel-powered Chromebook, but it still trails behind our 3.1GHz Phenom II X2 550, which finished in 297ms, and a 3GHz Core i3-540, which did the job in 228ms.

Even so, you’re never left waiting to start work or get browsing because the operating system boots in under nine seconds. It also managed very well on battery power, lasting just over seven hours hours when looping an MP3 file and with the screen set to half brightness. Google claims six and a half hours when using Wi-Fi, but that’s still enough to get you through most of the day on a single charge.

CHROME OS

To focus on the hardware alone would do the Chromebook a disservice. Chrome OS is a make-or-break feature whose appeal will depend greatly on your use for the laptop. It’s seen several improvements since it first launched, adding a desktop to provide a more familiar experience to anyone picking one up for the first time, but you’ll still need to connect to the internet at least once to get a Google account registered to the device and download apps ready for use offline.

It’s a straightforward process, even if you’ve enabled two-step authentication for your Google account. It took us less than five minutes before we were facing the desktop, with all our Chrome bookmarks, tabs and extensions automatically downloaded from the cloud.

From there, almost everything you do in Chrome OS is done through the web browser. There are several shortcut icons at the bottom of the screen that are designed to mimic the Windows taskbar, along with a pop-out application drawer which aggregates everything you install from the Chrome web store, but they all point you straight back to the browser. There are a few exceptions, most notably the pop-out calculator and Scratchpad notes tool, which can be dragged around the screen independently.

With no additional software, you’re reliant on Google services for all your everyday tasks. Gmail is there for email, Tweetdeck is ready for twitter and Google Drive is on hand for editing documents. Drive automatically syncs your files in case you lose your internet connection, so you never have to worry about not being able to read an important document. We had no trouble editing text files when offline, but couldn’t edit a shared spreadsheet, which could be a problem if you’re used to using Excel when on the move.

Multimedia files are handled much better here than with previous editions of Chrome OS, mainly thanks to having a separate window to differentiate between local, cloud and external storage. You can drag thumbnails from one to the other just like you can in Windows, and although file format support isn’t as wide as Microsoft’s operating system, Chrome OS still recognises most audio, video, image and document files types.

CONCLUSION

Considering how much development Google has invested in Chrome OS, it’s great to see it grow into a more useful operating system now that it’s able to run many tasks without an active internet connection. Switching to ARM hardware was a big decision, but we think it’s paid off and there are few other budget laptops that are such great value. It’s cheaper than many 10in tablets too, yet it includes a keyboard. The only downside is that Chrome OS is still very limited compared to Windows, so if you depend on certain software you may struggle to adapt to its online focus. If you’re looking for a cheap second machine for working or browsing on the move, the Samsung Series 3 Chromebook could be perfect.