New Review: Samsung Chromebook Series 5

While we can wholeheartedly say that the Samsung Chromebook Series 5 has one of the fastest all-around boot times we’ve ever seen in a laptop (a stunningly quick 8 seconds), what you can actually do once you get it up and running is a bit more of a conundrum. The Series 5 does not allow any access to apps off-line, making this laptop a huge liability when an Internet connection is not available.

Besides this significant caveat, the Series 5 does have lots of free apps and an excellent 7 hours and 15 minutes battery life to help soften the blow. Still, we would like to be able to work on our spreadsheets and file management even if we aren’t connected to the Web, and that is just not an option with this laptop.

Here are some highlights of our review of the Samsung Chromebook Series 5:

“A Chromebook is a lightweight notebook—akin to a netbook or ultraportable—that runs Google’s Web-based Chrome operating system. Acer and Samsung are the first manufacturers out the door with Chromebook models, both of which go on sale June 15 at Amazon.com and Best Buy. Acer's Cromia 700 Chromebook models start at $379.99, and Samsung's Chromebook Series 5 units start at $429.99.”

“The Series 5 should appeal to anyone who already spends much of his or her computing time online and is comfortable with the cloud. (Google Docs users are prime candidates.) Quick boot times, long battery life, seamless integration with your Google account, and free limited 3G access make this Web reliance more palatable. But for the rest of us, we can’t help feeling that the Series 5 is missing something, and that something is better offline access to everyday computing capabilities, such as working on spreadsheets, managing files, editing photos, or playing games.”