Samsung Chromebox Series 3 a $329 PC
review
·
CNET Editors' Rating
The good: The Samsung Chromebox offers an attractive, low-risk
entry point to the experimental world of Google's Chrome OS.
The bad: Absent features and occasional
software and hardware incompatibilities mar a supposedly simple user experience.
The bottom line: The attractive, fairly priced Samsung Chromebox desktop turns
Google's Web-based Chrome OS into a not entirely unreasonable option for
certain low-cost PC shoppers.
I can think
of a few customers who might consider the attractive, Google Chrome OS-powered
Samsung Chromebox desktop. Schools, libraries, Internet cafes, even a parent
shopping for a child's first computer might reasonably look into this $329 PC
and its locked-down, almost entirely Web-dependent operating system.
I would not
recommend the Chromebox for general-purpose budget computing due to occasional
issues with general hardware and software compatibility. Its minuscule local
storage also prevents the Chromebox from working well as a small home theater
PC. If you follow either Google or operating system news, you will know that
this PC represents Google's first attempt at expanding its Chrome operating
system to the desktop. Given that the Chromebox's laptop counterpart, the
Chromebook, is such a difficult proposition, I was surprised by how much I
actually liked this computer.
Google's
Chrome operating system is the search giant's grand system software experiment,
played out in public since last year's launch of the Samsung Chromebook. A few other PC manufacturers
sold Chrome-powered laptops, but in general they underwhelmed due to high
prices and the need for a persistent Internet connection.
Staying
online all the time can be a challenge for a laptop computer that's supposed to
be mobile. Those devices accompany us during air travel, business meetings and
conferences, and other circumstances with no guarantee of a reliable
connection. Google tries to offset this difficulty by building in cellular data
network support with its laptops. That, of course, comes with an added fee,
throwing off the already dicey Chromebook value proposition.
Desktops,
though, tend to stay put. Service interruptions happen, but in general, if you
can maintain a more-or-less persistent connection to the Web, you take away one
of the big question marks hanging over the Chrome OS.
Samsung
released this PC and a new Chromebook laptop to coincide with a new, public version of Chrome OS. Rather than
turn this into a review of both the computer and the operating system, I'll
refer you to our standalone review of the Chrome OS. You can
also read our review of the new Samsung Chromebook laptop.
·
Among the
most important things to know about the updated Chrome OS is that it has
expanded support for offline document and media files. While most of your
activities with the Chromebook will take place online in either the Chrome Web
browser or through a Chrome-specific application, the operating system does let
you see local files. The Chromebook comes with a 16GB solid-state hard drive
(booting up happens in seconds), and it also supports USB keys and flash media
cards (the latter if you connect a USB card reader). If you have any compatible
files on either the local or connected storage, the Chromebook can open them.
Supported
file types include most Microsoft Office formats (DOC and DOCX, for example),
as well as PDF files, JPEG, GIF, and other common image files, and also various
audio and video types (complete list here). You can't edit those media
files, save for some basic photo manipulation tools, but the fact that you can
consume them offline is a marked improvement over the previous-generation
Chrome operating system.
Otherwise,
the Chrome OS lives on as essentially an expanded version of Google's Chrome
Web browser. The system boots into a familiar log-in screen and desktop
environment, but once you start playing around with the included applications,
or downloading new ones, you will most often find yourself operating within a
traditional Chrome browser.
|
Samsung Chromebox
Series 3
|
|
|
Price
|
$329
|
|
CPU
|
1.9GHz
Intel Celeron B840
|
|
Memory
|
4GB
DDR3 SDRAM
|
|
Graphics
|
Embedded
Intel HD Graphics 1000
|
|
Hard
drives
|
16GB
solid-state hard drive
|
|
Networking
|
Ethernet,
802.11 a/b/g/n
|
|
Operating
system
|
Google
Chrome OS (M19)
|
|
Display
outputs
|
DisplayPort
(2), DVI
|
Even though
most people will have little interest in Google's Chrome OS, for its hardware,
the Samsung Chromebox is a reasonably priced budget computer. The 1.9GHz Intel
Celeron B840 is an up-to-date, dual-core budget CPU. 4GB of system memory is
also appropriate for this price range.
For those of
you looking askance at the Celeron processor (yes, Intel still makes them),
remember that this is a $330 computer that is almost entirely Web-driven. That
doesn't mean the CPU makes no contribution to system performance, but most of
Chrome OS's browser-based interactions are computationally lightweight. Except
for certain downloadable games, which I'll address below, I found no apparent
bottlenecks while using the system. It played 1080p video files from YouTube and
elsewhere with no performance issues. It also opened a large spreadsheet in
Google Docs with no trouble. For basic productivity tasks, general Web
browsing, and light-duty multimedia consumption, the Celeron chip is adequate.
File storage
is a known weakness of Chrome-based PCs, and the Chromebox's 16GB of local
storage capacity is well below the 500GB drives you'll find in most traditional
budget PCs. Then again, those other systems all use standard mechanical hard
drives. The Chromebox comes with a solid-state drive.
Two
DisplayPort outputs on the bottom of the Samsung Chromebook.
Combined
with the lightweight operating system, the solid-state hard drive makes turning
the machine on and off incredibly fast. You arrive at the Chrome OS log-in
screen about 10 seconds after you push the power button. High-end, SSD-assisted Windows PCs are impressive when they only take 35
seconds to boot up. Even better, the Chromebox shuts down in about one second,
or almost as fast as you can press the power button twice (once for standby,
once for shutdown).
The
Chromebox is also uncommon among traditional budget PCs for its variety of
video outputs. The single DVI port is not unexpected. It works well for
traditional monitors, or as a base port to plug in an adapter for a VGA- or
HDMI-based display. Few, if any budget PCs offer a DisplayPort output, though,
let alone two of them.
The
DisplayPort outputs on the Chromebox work similarly to an HDMI-out,
transmitting both video and audio signals over a single cable. The Chromebox
scales up to a maximum resolution of 2,560x1,440 pixels, although the operating
system currently decides on the output resolution via automatic detection, and
there's no apparent way to change the resolution manually (the old
"/usr/bin/xrandr" terminal command no longer works). A Google
spokesperson told me that this auto resolution detection will be in place for
"the next couple of versions of Chrome."
Comments
Post a Comment