Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus Review: Samsung is back! [VIDEO]

We’ve waited a long time for this one. Since 2020 and the debut of the original Samsung Galaxy Chromebook, we’ve only seen diminishing returns from Samsung in the Chromebook space. With each new device, it only became more and more clear that they no longer took Chromebooks seriously.

But with the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus, all that is changing. Gone are the forgettable, cost-cutting, uninspired design choices and slow, outdated internals we’ve gotten over the past 4 years. Samsung is back in a big, big way, and I’m very happy to tell you about how this new Galaxy Chromebook Plus marks a new trajectory for Samsung in the Chromebook space.

The chassis is the star

With most Chromebooks, we start with the chassis as a jumping off point before we talk about all the notable stuff on the inside. But with the Galaxy Chromebook Plus, it’s a massive part of the overall story. Sure, there’s a bunch of good stuff on the inside as well, but I don’t think we’ve ever had a Chromebook with such a striking silhouette that I can remember off the top of my head.

I’m not kidding; every single person I’ve handed this Chromebook to has had a visceral reaction to holding it. The 15.6-inch size married up with the 2.58-pound weight and 11.8mm thickness just feels impossible. Even using this device for a couple weeks now, I still get that same sensation when picking it up; it just feels wild to hold in your hands.

But thin and light Chromebooks only work if they are rigid, and thankfully the Galaxy Chromebook Plus wins in that department as well. You can hold it from a corner with no flex whatsoever, and it feels 100% sturdy in your hand, on a desk, opened and closed. The engineering is amazing, and this is the absolute epitome of well-made. I just can’t stress it enough how much I love the build quality of this Chromebook.

And Samsung didn’t use the excuse of this Chromebook being too thin to skimp on ports, either. You get two USB Type-C ports, a USB Type-A, headphone/mic jack, micro SD card slot and – yes – a full-sized HDMI port. That’s just unbelievable in a device this thin and light.

The screen, keyboard, and trackpad are top-notch

But the good doesn’t stop there. Cracking the Neptune Blue lid open with a perfectly balanced, one-finger lift reveals the gorgeous AMOLED screen, a fantastic keyboard, and one of the best trackpads I’ve used on a Chromebook. When talking about any device, these three items make up the bulk of your interactivity, so when they are done well, it makes for a great overall experience.

And Samsung has delivered on all three. The AMOLED screen is FHD and plenty bright at 400 nits. While I’d love to see a QHD screen and 120Hz, I understand that keeping the price at $699 requires certain trade-offs, and this is a very acceptable one. This display is flat-out awesome, and even though it isn’t 120Hz, there’s no ghosting or artifacting anywhere across the OS, so things still look great with smooth animations, inky blacks, and amazing, punchy colors everywhere you look. It’s a Samsung AMOLED; what did you expect?

It isn’t a touchscreen, however, and for some of you that will be a big turnoff. For me, I’ve become quite used to not leveraging a touchscreen very often and it’s not been an issue at all in my use. That being said, you need to know what you are getting into, and if touch input is a huge deal to you, just know it’s not going to be an option on the Galaxy Chromebook Plus.

Under that beautiful screen is a clicky, backlit keyboard that has pretty short-throw keys that I’ve been very accurate with. On a device this thin, you won’t get massive travel on your keyboard, but the feedback is great, the sound is quiet, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed typing on this keyboard. The layout takes some getting used to, but we’ll come back to that in a minute.

The trackpad under the keyboard is massive, glass, and a pleasure to use. Sure, I’d love to see Samsung put a haptic trackpad in here, but I don’t know that it would fit with the size of this chassis, and I’m sure it wouldn’t help the overall price tag, either. Though this one utilizes a standard trackpad mechanism, it nails the execution and I’ve loved using it. The surface is buttery smooth, the click is solid and confident, and all my gestures work just as expected. No complains here, whatsoever.

Performance that matches those good looks

Under the hood, we have the Intel Core 3 with 8GB of RAM and 256 GB of storage. Make no mistake: this device is very fast. For reference, I got Octane scores in the 90,000+ range and not once has it even come close to breaking a sweat; and if the fans have kicked on, I’ve never noticed.

It never gets hot and battery life has been solid as well. While I’d have to keep the display down to under 40% to get near that 13 hours Samsung claims, I’ve been able to get over 10 hours of use when sticking to around 60% brightness and was even pacing 5-6 hours even with the brightness between 90% and 100% – a level you shouldn’t need to utilize too often.

You do have to remember that OLED screens are battery hogs when really pumping up that brightness, so you’re going to kill that battery faster if you hang out in those top few brightness settings. Stay south of that, and you’ll get all day battery with no issues.

Nothing is perfect

Now, that’s a ton of great stuff we’ve just talked about, right? But it can’t all be good, can it? Of course not, and there are a few quirks with this Chromebook that do frustrate me a bit. The first one is the keyboard layout. The extra keys like the dedicated Accessibility and Dictation buttons are pretty great, and I’m really learning to start leveraging the new Quick Insert key as well. My brain is even beginning to remember to use the launcher key on the bottom row now, and I’m making the mistake of hitting the Quick Insert key instead of that Launcher key less and less.

Those are all things I’ll get used to, so I’m not too flustered by that. My real issue is with the numeric keypad. It’s missing important keys and with that being the case, it’s not really that valuable. Numeric keypads should have a plus, minus, and enter key down the right side. This one doesn’t, and it makes doing calculations without looking down basically impossible. And isn’t that the purpose of adding this section of the keyboard?

And the decision to put in this basically useless keypad means they couldn’t fit in upward-firing speakers. And maybe that would have helped out the audio a bit. As it stands, the downward-facing speakers are mediocre at best and far too quiet to be coming from a 15.6-inch laptop. The tone is decent, but the overall volume is very limiting and pretty disappointing.

And the same goes for the 1080p webcam up top. It’s functional, but there are many webcams that simply do it far better. Samsung cheaped out, here, and it shows. They hit the necessary resolution spec to keep the Chromebook Plus name, but this one is as bad as I’ve seen to this point, unfortunately.

Should you buy one?

But those cut corners are pretty minimal in my book. I can upgrade to a USB webcam if I need to, I don’t listen to a ton of audio directly from any Chromebook, and I don’t actually use a numeric keypad very often. If those things are deal-breakers for you, take note. I don’t point them out just because I’m looking for something to nitpick – they are all legitimately sub-par for a device that is otherwise wonderful to use.

And I really do mean that last bit. For a person like me, this Chromebook simply nails the necessities so well that I can simply overlook the stuff it doesn’t excel at. With this chassis, screen, keyboard, trackpad and performance, the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus has been a real joy to use for me. I love using it at the office, at home, in a coffee shop, or on a plane. It really does marry up a big screen experience with a smaller device’s portability – and it looks amazing while doing so. While I don’t know if it’s the best Chromebook for everyone, I think it is an amazing option for most of you out there. And at $699, you’d be hard-pressed to find a Chromebook experience that can match it.