Samsung's latest Chromebooks come wrapped in faux-leather, on sale next month for $320 and up

It's been over a year since Samsung released a new
Chromebook, and since then the competition has been
heating up: Dell, HP, Lenovo and Toshiba all sell
Chrome OS devices now, as does Acer, which has been
at it from day one. Accordingly, Samsung is refreshing
its lineup: the company just announced the
Chromebook 2, which comes in 11- and 13-inch screen
sizes, and will ship next month starting at $320 for the
smaller version (the bigger one costs $400).

Perhaps even more interesting than any of the spec
bumps, though, is the new design. Confirming some
leaked photos that began circulating two days ago, the
Chromebook 2 sports a faux-leather lid with a soft,
rubbery finish and fake stitching at the edges -- yep,
just like the Galaxy Note III, Note Pro 12.2 and other
recent Samsung devices. In-hand, it actually feels quite
nice, and might even be easier for children to grip,
assuming this ends up in classrooms. It also has a thin
silhouette, which we're told was modeled after the
ATIV Book 9 Plus (formerly called the Series 9
Ultrabook). It's generally a pleasing design, although
the plain plastic underside makes for a mullet sort of
look: premium on top, bargain-basement on the bottom.
If you wanna save money, the last-gen (safer-looking)
model will still be around for $249, but you might
choose to splurge anyway: the 13-inch Chromebook 2
steps up to a 1,920 x 1,080, 250-nit screen, with both
sizes promising improved performance. In particular,
they make use of an eight-core processor similar to the
one found in a variant of Samsung's new Galaxy S5
smartphone. As with the GS5, "octo-core" will
sometimes mean running all eight cores simultaneously
and other times just running a quad-core setup, with
either the four powerful cores or the four weaker,
energy-saving cores being used at one time, depending
on the task. Largely thanks to that, Samsung is rating
battery life at eight hours on the smaller 11-inch model,
and 8.5 hours on the 13-inch version. Whichever model
you choose, you'll get 4GB of RAM (twice the
allotment of the last-gen model) plus 16GB of local
storage.

On the software side, these are also the first
Chromebooks certified for Google Hangout, though
really, any Chrome OS device can use Hangouts, not
just these. Samsung also threw in a year of AirDroid
service, which lets you wirelessly transfer files between
your Android phone and Chromebook. Oh, and this isn't
a software tweak, but the Chromebook 2 now has
Bluetooth 4.0, not 3.0. Also nice to have. In any event,
it will ship sometime next month, priced at $320 for the
11-inch version (available in black and white), and
$400 for the 13-inch model ("Titan Gray" only). We'll
be back with a review but for now, enjoy the hands-on
photos.

Via: Engadget