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Samsung Chromebook Pro Wrap Up

By 15 Comments

by Robby Payne
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samsungchromebookproIn a rush to get the news out to everyone as quickly as possible yesterday, I overlooked some details by making an assumption that others were anticipating the Samsung Chromebook Pro as much as we were.

After all, we have a ton of articles on ‘Kevin’ (the Chromebook Pro’s codename), so I just assumed everyone had read them.

Well, I was clearly wrong, so I want to wrap up everything about the Samsung Chromebook Pro in one concise post.




First, the specs

I’ll link any of these to the articles that contain more details if you want to dig deeper.




One thing many readers have pointed out is the lack of backlighting on the keyboard.  While this is not totally confirmed, we have no evidence pointing to a backlit keyboard and nothing on the (now-removed) product page confirmed this either.

Overall, though, it goes without saying that we here at Chrome Unboxed are insanely excited about the Samsung Chromebook Pro.

So When Can I Get One?

That’s not a question we can answer at this particular time.  We will say this: just 2 days before the Pixel and Pixel XL were announced, product pages leaked out and were pulled within 24 hours.  I’m not saying this is the case with the Chromebook Pro, I’m just saying it feels like an announcement may come sooner than later.

If the short-lived B&H listing we spoke about in the original Chromebook Pro article is any indication, availability would begin on October 24th. That, however, is all we really know at this point.

We’ll obviously be getting one in the office ASAP to unbox and review.  Until then, we wait.

  • How about performance? Will it get the job done?

    • Konstantinos

      Octane V2 score is around 10,000. That is the fastest ARM CPU on Chromebook (together with the MT8173C on Acer R13) so far and faster than the Intel Braswell Celerons. No problems at all with Chrome and Android Apps.

      • Muhammad Alhabash

        Does it have the same CPU that Acer C301 has?

      • Thanks so much for the benchmark, I’m considering the Samsung, R13 or HP.

      • ChrisG

        The time of the broadly marketable ARM based Chromebook is fast approaching but I think the RK3399 represents a less than optimal solution for Chromebooks in performance terms. The Geekbench numbers for the RockChip SoC are in the same ballpark as the Atom X7-Z8700 (the single core score for the RockChip SoC is higher and the multi-core score lower when compared to the Atom). And, the mentioned Atom chip – the only low power Atom to survive the recent cull by Intel – is really quite ordinary. The Rockchip does beat the Intel chip in the Octane V2 benchmark – the Atom scores around 8,200 – but the Apple A9X in the iPad Pro scores around 20,000, double that of the RockChip, in the same benchmark.

        I haven’t seen any GPU numbers for the RockChip SoC but I imagine it fares well enough.

        I see the RK3399 as entry level only. I don’t want to suggest that it is a bad part but I wouldn’t anticipate any radical shift towards ARM on Chromebooks until we see licensable ARM cores or off the shelf parts from a vendor that offers performance similar to that available from the Apple A9X (or A10X) or Core M. Also, the RK3399 is not without ARM based rivals. It is not obvious to me that the RK3399 represents an improvement on the Tegra M1 (or even Tegra K1, 64 bit) which offers excellent graphics performance.

  • Muhammad Alhabash

    Let’s hope it has gyroscope & accelerometer, it’ll move from excellent to perfect.

  • I think you can write in:
    12.3″ Sharp IGZO Display

    IGZO is awesome..

    My guess is with having touch it might be glossy and not matte.. Matte would be great..

  • I want the Pro but I wil not buy unless they offer backlit keyboard.

  • Vw

    What does it mean that objects render at 1200×800?

    • Robby Payne

      It means that the size of UI elements and fonts on screen will be the size they are on a 1200×800 display. It is a trick utilized by all hi-res displays from Windows to Macs to Chromebooks. The Pixel has a display of 2560×1700, but if you rendered objects at that resolution, your icons in the tray would be the size of a pea. Fonts would be almost unreadable. So, the software renders everything at half the pixels each way, giving you a 1280×850 effective resolution, but with double the pixels inside those elements. Thus, they looks super-sharp, but are large enough to interact with.

  • Sunny

    Rockchip ARM from China — why is Sammy using it? Considering a lot of Korean business people (not to mention western ones) will be using this device, how safe is it? Does Sammy supervise production or how does it determine there’s no spyware on it (and I mean in the hardware)?

  • no news today?!!

    • Can’t find the news, I was hoping we’d be able to order them today for start shipping tomorrow.. I guess they may release it at a totally different time. Would have been Samsung Chromebook Pro today, new Microsoft Surface tomorrow and new Macbook press conference day after. Would have been good for Samsung. I guess with the bad thing of Note7 maybe they want to make sure that everything goes smoothly with this one..

  • I’ve been waiting for the perfect Chromebook. This was close. But must have a backlit keyboard.

  • Frank Snyder

    I am waiting on this like everyone else. However…should it not come with a backlit keyboard option I will buy the hp G1 that does have it as standard option. Not all of us can crank our 70-80 wpm. Besides I do most of my work in a dimly lit environment which I prefer. I am unhappy that the hp does not have the stylus as I want that also. I’ll just wait and see what we get.