Gadgetory

hey everyone this is Jimmy with Jim's review room welcome to another review now we're looking at Samsung's latest the chromebook 2 coming in at thirteen point three inches I just reviewed the 11.6 inch model about two weeks ago and you can watch that video on my channel or by clicking this small video playing currently now this one here is priced at 399 dollars and the 11 inch model is priced at 319 now there are some differences that makes up for the price difference besides just the larger screen so without further ado we'll get started if you're not familiar with Chromebook I suggest watching my video what is a Chromebook for more information on why it's different from Windows and Apple now this is Samsung's first 13-inch Chromebook to hit the market coming in the color of luminous Titan the 13 inch mono Chromebook retains its thinness at 16 and a half millimeters which is practically identical to the 11 inch model the weight is slightly higher compared to the 11 inch coming in a hair over three pounds but to put this into perspective the Apple MacBook Air 13-inch model which is ridiculously thin weighs in at 2.96 pounds it's literally just an ounce and a half difference so yes the Chromebook is light enough for portability and comparable with other manufacturers now if you've watched my review of the 11 inch model from Samsung I mentioned the build quality significantly improves from its previous generation from more than a year ago the construction is much better overall Albia plastic the chassis seems that more stiff and rigid with much less flex the hinge lid is also more secure and overall the quality of the Chromebook is on par with other Chromebook makers on the market and I know this part is subjective but the 13-inch model I'll admit I was not feeling the gray almost silver like color that they used and I really don't mind that Samsung in general and uses the imitation leather and faux stitching on their tablets and Chromebooks but this color and Sheen gives it a more plastic look when compared to black especially on these edges here but moving on here sometimes you get a laptop that's just too sensitive at the touch pad and while typing your palm accidentally hits that touchpad and causing your cursor to move on the screen the touchpad to me seems very well-balanced and those issues mentioned did not occur and although the following feature has been seen on other manufacturers similar to Apple with Chromebooks and in this case Samsung they do provide a good handful of touch pad usefulness like tapping with two fingers for right click hold down with two fingers to scroll a webpage and swiping with two fingers in general to basically go back on a webpage so some small little features like this makes the touchpad a bit more than useful in my opinion now going over its physical ports the left side has a power adapter input USB 3.0 a full HDMI connection two as to your TV or monitor and you can mirror your screen or have a monitor become an extension of your Chromebooks desktop and lastly is a micro SD card slot for physical storage of items rather than using the cloud now going to the right side there is a security slot USB 2.0 and last is a three-and-a-half millimeter headset ports for both microphone and headphones and there's nothing on either the front or the rear of the Chromebook to the webcam gets bumped up to a 720p resolution which is huge when compared to the VGA webcams they were using previously you can see on your screen the left side is the old model and what many competitors have right now and the right side is the Samsung Chromebook 2 in regards to resolution the Acer c720 which is a fabulous Chromebook the HP Chromebook 14 inch and Toshiba scroll model also featured that 768 resolution which is good enough when you're not comparing laptop screens side-by-side but first glance at this 13-inch model which features a 1080 display you'll definitely see the difference this to me is possibly the biggest benefit that Samsung has over the competition everything looks much sharper clearer and it makes this display look and feel in a sense more expensive now moving on internally the 13-inch model does receive a slight boost in performance when compared to the 11 inch model with a different processor the 11 inch model uses the same processor found in some of the more current Samsung tablets and also in the note 3 smartphone from Samsung but this 13 inch model here uses an octa-core exynos 5800 which is more powerful than the aforementioned with 4 cores running at 2 gigahertz and the last four runs at one point 3 gigahertz and Samsung was nice enough to now include 4 gigs of memory as basically being the standard other notable features are bluetooth 4.0 and wireless a B G and n Wi-Fi connections with wireless AC which is the latest and fastest technology soon to be available in a system update / Samsung now I normally don't focus too much on benchmarking but consider these two processors are very close to each other I compared them across three different web-based programs to see on a match level its difference as you can see on the screen the 13-inch model had a 10% 12% in five percent increase respectively in d3 benchmarks performed now with that being said Samsung's performance yielded perfectly fine for everyday average consumer use despite being very laggy when I first fired up the Chromebook which album it was pretty weird but after about maybe 15 minutes or so possibly finishing downloading my profile and apps the Chromebook 2 ran perfectly fine now pulling up email going up to Facebook browsing photos went without a hitch watching youtube videos in high definition wasn't a problem at all and Netflix ran smooth thanks to now the 4 gigs of RAM I can browse the internet with a reasonable amount of chrome tabs open and similar to the 11 inch model I could open 11 standard web pages at the same time before very minor stuttering would occur at 12 or more pages load slightly slower and video became barely possible to watch and Samsung also claims up to eight and a half hours of battery life and through my testing running through what appears to be a typical day of emails web surfing watching a Netflix video etc real-world testing yielded seven hours and a little over 20 minutes of use and while testing the unit remained cool with only warm when leaving this on my lap so the wrap things up Samsung did really increase their prices on these Chromebooks and they're higher than the competitors out there but for this 13-inch model having this resolution and of course a bigger screen size and having the 4 gigs of RAM as being the standard and may justify its price and of course that's subjective though but let me know your thoughts below so hope this video helped you in some way definitely check out the 11 inch review on the screen here if you haven't done so and be sure to find me on Facebook or Google+ this is Jimmy with Jim's review room take everyone by