CES 2012: Next-Gen Samsung Chromebooks Ditch Atom for Celeron

Chromebooks failed to become as popular as Google wanted, but Samsung won’t give up on this concept and at this year’s CES fair the Korean company has showcased its next-gen Series 5 Chrome OS-powered notebooks.

On the outside, there’s little to differentiate these next-gen Choromebooks from their current siblings, but on the inside Samsung has made a bold move and decided to ditch that slow Atom N570 processor and replace it with a more powerful Celeron CPU.

While hardly top of the line, the new chip should do a far better job at rendering webpages than its predecessor, which chould help Series 5 Chromebooks gain in popularity.

Otherwise, as engadget reports, most of the specs have remained unaltered compared to the first models meaning that we get the 12.1-inch diagonal screen that features LED back lighting and a 1280x800 resolution.

That anti-reflective coating that should help improve legibility when in direct sunlight was also kept to help the Series 5 display deliver 300-nits of brightness.

Just as the current Samsung Chromebooks, these next-gen models will come with 16GB of storage space, while on their sides Samsung has placed two USB 2.0 ports, a 4-in-1 memory card reader, a headphone out jack, a special port for an optional VGA dongle and a 1MP webcam.

As far as availability is concerned, the next-gen Series 5 Chrome OS notebooks will start shipping in the second quarter of this year, and two models will be available, one sporting WiFi+3G while the other one gets only WiFi connectivity.

Pricing will be set at the same $449 and $399 (353 and 313 EUR), respectively, with a pay-as-you-go data plan from Verizon.

Samsung’s Series 5 Chromebooks started selling in mid-June of 2011, but despite Google’s enthusiasm the devices failed to become popular among computer users.