Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2: Premium at a better price (and better battery life?)

This story is part of THESE, where our editors will bring you the latest news and the hottest gadgets from fully virtual CES 2021.

the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook is a beautiful 13.3 inch Chrome OS two-in-one with a stunning 4K resolution AMOLED display and a powerful Intel Core i5 processor. It’s also $ 1000 and has a relatively short battery life compared to some of its cheaper competition. For its second round, the Galaxy Chromebook 2, Samsung made a few feature changes to reduce the price – and hopefully improve battery life – while still maintaining the same high-end look and feel. than the original.

Announced before CES 2021, the new model will be the first with a 13.3 inch QLED display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, which can be found on a few Samsung Windows 10 laptops. This change alone should improve battery life, but Samsung has also gone for configurations using 10th Gen Intel Core i3-10110U or Celeron 5205U processors.

The Celeron configuration, which also has 4GB of memory and 64GB of storage, is expected to sell for $ 550, while the Core i3 model with twice the memory and storage will cost $ 700. These prices convert to around £ 400 and £ 515 for the UK, and AU $ 710 and AU $ 900 for Australia.

Much of the rest of the package remains the same as the original, including a weight of less than 3 pounds (1.2 kg), a slim aluminum chassis, a backlit keyboard, and a color-matched touchpad. You’ll also find two USB-C ports, a headphone jack, and a microSD card slot.

What you won’t find is one of Samsung’s S pens. While the company’s thin active stylus is included with the first generation model, Samsung has dropped it in favor of USI stylus support. The world-facing camera above the Galaxy Chromebook’s keyboard is also gone. Both seem to be acceptable sacrifices to bring the price down.