14 DAY TRIAL // 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.
