It’s true that Chrome OS runs acceptably on more modest hardware than Windows 10 or 11 does. But the happiest trend we’ve seen in Chromebooks in recent years has been the surge in models with processors more powerful than an Intel Celeron, memory more than the bare minimum of 4GB, and solid-state drives more generous and capable than a humble 64GB of eMMC flash storage. The Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 is not part of that trend—it hopes you won’t notice any of the above, but that you will notice its eye-catching Fiesta Red hue and high-quality QLED display. Those are great features, but it’s up to you whether to pay $549 for a Chromebook that is otherwise equipped like one that costs half as much.
That’s ‘QLED,’ Mind You, Not ‘OLED’
The Galaxy Chromebook 2 is a more affordable successor to the Galaxy Chromebook Samsung launched early in 2020—a $999 convertible with a dazzling AMOLED screen with 4K resolution. This model’s touch screen is the same size (13.3 inches), but it settles for full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) resolution.
(Photo: Molly Flores)
And instead of the OLED technology increasingly seen in high-end laptops, its QLED design is an enhancement of a conventional LCD. It has an LED backlight, so black pixels still have a little light behind them instead of being completely turned off, but QLED tech puts a quantum dot filter over the backlight to improve contrast and make colors more vivid.
It’s a successful compromise, but you may not be as happy with the Galaxy 2’s other compromises. Instead of its predecessor’s Core i5, it has a dual-core Celeron 5205U processor. It’s heavier—2.71 versus 2.3 pounds—and it doesn’t come with an S-Pen stylus as the first Galaxy Chromebook did. To be fair, the new Samsung is trimmer than another recently reviewed, like-size 13.3-inch convertible, the 2.97-pound Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 Chromebook; it measures 0.55 by 12 by 8 inches to the Lenovo’s 0.67 by 12.2 by 8.4.
(Photo: Molly Flores)
Our test unit is a $549 Best Buy configuration. The retailer also sells a model with a 10th Generation Intel Core i3 CPU and double the memory (8GB) and storage (128GB, though it’s still eMMC flash instead of an SSD). Both versions are also available in Mercury Gray. We’d expect the Core i3 to offer snappier performance (see the benchmark results below), but it’s well into premium consumer-Chromebook territory at $699.
Speaking of premium Chromebook features, the Galaxy 2 has a dimly backlit keyboard, but no privacy shutter for its webcam and no fingerprint reader to let you avoid typing passwords. On the positive side, Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth are standard, and the bright red chassis with black keyboard makes it a visual standout, helped by thin screen bezels (except for the thick bottom bezel). The laptop is plastic with an aluminum lid; there’s not much flex if you grasp the screen corners or press the keyboard deck, though like with many 2-in-1 machines, the screen wobbles when tapped in clamshell-laptop mode.
(Photo: Molly Flores)
With no HDMI port on the edges of this laptop, you’ll need a USB Type-C DisplayPort dongle to connect an external monitor. The Samsung has two USB Type-C ports, one on each side; either can accommodate the compact AC adapter. The left edge also offers a volume rocker, a headphone jack, and a microSD card slot. The power button is on the right side.
(Photo: Molly Flores)
Friendly Features
The QLED touch screen is by far the Galaxy 2’s best asset, with rich, well-saturated colors and wide viewing angles. White backgrounds are pristine instead of dingy, and contrast is sharp, with clear details and no pixelation around the edges of letters.
Brightness is adequate, though I almost always wish for there to be one or two more notches left in reserve after setting a laptop’s screen to its top brightness setting. As with most Chromebooks, if you think the display’s native 1080p resolution makes screen elements and text look too small, you can select from several faux or “looks like” settings. (The default is 1,536 by 864.)
(Photo: Molly Flores)
The keyboard backlighting, as mentioned, isn’t very bright, though it does make the lettering on the keys look more contrasty. The keyboard has a standard Chromebook layout with top-row system and browser controls and a search/menu key in place of Caps Lock. One annoyance: It usually took me executing two or three taps to make the menu bar stay on the screen, instead of it briefly appearing and then retreating again.
(Photo: Molly Flores)
The keyboard has a snappy and comfortable typing feel. Keystrokes are audible but not too loud. The small, buttonless touchpad glides and taps smoothly, with a somewhat stiff click.
The 720p webcam, meanwhile, is par for the low-cost-laptop course. It captures reasonably well-lit and colorful images with a bit of noise or static. The bottom-firing speakers are similarly mid-road: They produce relatively loud, not-too-tinny sound. There’s no bass to speak of, but you can make out overlapping tracks.
Testing the Galaxy Chromebook 2: Parking at the Back of the Chromebook Pack
For our benchmark charts, I compared the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 to four other Chromebooks. The Google Pixelbook Go and the earlier-mentioned Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 Chromebook share its 13.3-inch screen size in clamshell and convertible designs, respectively. The Acer Chromebook Spin 311 is an 11.6-inch convertible. The 2021 edition of the HP Chromebook x2 is an 11-inch detachable or tablet-and-keyboard combo. You can see their basic specs in the table below.
We test Chromebooks with three overall performance benchmark suites—one Chrome OS, one Android, and one online. The first, Principled Technologies’ CrXPRT 2, measures how quickly a system performs everyday tasks in six workloads such as applying photo effects, graphing a stock portfolio, analyzing DNA sequences, and generating 3D shapes using WebGL. The second, UL’s PCMark for Android Work 3.0, performs assorted productivity operations in a smartphone-style window. Finally, Basemark Web 3.0 runs in a browser tab to combine low-level JavaScript calculations with CSS and WebGL content. All three yield numeric scores; higher numbers are better. (See more about how we test laptops.)
The Galaxy 2 held its own against the HP detachable and its Qualcomm ARM processor, but didn’t outshine the Acer (with its older, theoretically slower Celeron) and was blown away by the Lenovo and its 11th Generation Intel Core i3. The Samsung doesn’t feel too sluggish if you limit yourself to just two or three apps or open browser tabs, but it’s a wimp by current Chromebook standards. Even launching the Files app seems ponderous instead of instantaneous.
Two other Android benchmarks focus on the CPU and GPU respectively. Primate Labs’ Geekbench uses all available cores and threads to simulate real-world applications ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning, while GFXBench 5.0 stress-tests both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering that exercises graphics and compute shaders. Geekbench delivers a numeric score while GFXBench counts frames per second (fps).
Finally, to test a Chromebook’s battery, we loop a 720p video file with screen brightness set at 50%, audio volume at 100%, and Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting disabled until the system quits. If there isn’t enough internal storage to hold the video, we play it from an external SSD plugged into a USB port.
Again, we consider the IdeaPad’s Core i3 to be a mainstream Chromebook processor nowadays (several systems boast Core i5 or AMD Ryzen chips that outrun it), but the Samsung musters only one-third or one-quarter the muscle—fine for a $199 or $249 Chromebook, but hard to swallow for a $549 model. Its stamina in our battery rundown was fair but unexceptional, though like the HP and Acer it also had to power the external SSD holding the 70GB video file.
Verdict: Skip the Celeron
Overall, we can’t recommend the Celeron configuration of the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2—you’ll be much happier with the perkier Core i3 model, though its $699 price will buy you any of several quicker, more desirable Chrome OS or Windows laptops. The Samsung’s sleek style and handsome QLED screen have undeniable appeal, but its chassis writes a check that its components can’t cash.
Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2
Pros
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The Bottom Line
Samsung’s QLED-screened Galaxy Chromebook 2 is a smart-looking, sub-3-pound portable, but it’s a 98-pound weakling when it comes to performance.
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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/samsung-galaxy-chromebook-2