Will we ever see something like a Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Ultra?

The year was 2020; January 2020 to be specific. We were out in the desert at CES 2020 in Las Vegas, and the star of the show (not just from our perspective) was the wildly-ambitious new Galaxy Chromebook from Samsung. With its crazy-thin form factor, 4K OLED screen, high-end internals, included, stowed stylus and bombastic red color, the Galaxy Chromebook was an absolute show-stopper. At first blush, I was absolutely head over heels for it.

And then it shipped. Not long after using it for a bit of time, it became painfully clear that the end result of this aspirational Chromebook wasn’t quite as good as the first impressions would have led us to believe. The battery life was atrocious, the 4K OLED screen suffered from some thatching and contributed heavily to the battery woes when pushed anywhere near the 100% brightness point. The thin chassis overheated regularly and though it was an impressive-looking Chromebook, it quickly became very difficult to recommend.

New year, new steps backwards

The next year followed with a release of the oddly-named Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2 at CES 2021: a device that had the same 10th-gen Intel internals as the previous version, dropped the resolution to 1080p, swapped out the OLED for QLED, replaced much of the chassis with plastic and removed fun features like the stowed pen and fingerprint scanner. Though dubbed the Galaxy Chromebook 2, this felt like a step backwards in most ways.

Then last year at CES 2022, there was no Samsung Chromebook announced or even hinted at. From January of 2021 until now, we’ve only seen the Galaxy Chromebook brand continue to walk in the wrong direction. There was the Galaxy Chrombook Go, built to bring the budget down with slow internals, all-plastic build, and a questionable screen size that put it into a class that was larger than both previous Galaxy Chromebooks; even though the word “Go” in the name would suggest otherwise.

The latest from Samsung is the Galaxy Chromebook 2 360, a device that – once again – has one of the most questionable names we’ve ever seen. There’s already the Galaxy Chromebook 2 that shouldn’t have that number appended to it, and this time around they added “360” to the name, even though the first two Galaxy Chromebooks were already convertible devices. The Galaxy Chromebook 2 360 is once again a low-end device with very slow internals that pairs a sluggish performance with a 12-inch QHD screen that the processor can’t even begin to handle. What is going on??

No Samsung Chromebooks in the pipeline

And that brings us to today, where Samsung just wrapped up their latest Galaxy Unpacked event. Though the new phones were clearly the focus, a new Galaxy Book 3 Ultra was announced that looks just about as stellar as you can get with a laptop in 2023. With an aluminum body, stunning 120Hz AMOLED screen, latest-gen Intel silicon, NVIDIA RTX 4070 GPU, quad-speakers, studio microphones, and 16-inch 16:10 layout, the Galaxy Book Ultra is a drool-worthy reminder that our high-end Chromebooks are still not quite on par with what is being built in the Windows world.

Sure, we’re getting closer with devices like the HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook set to show up pretty soon; but that device is an absolute stand-alone example and no indicator that the Chromebook market is truly ready for the sort of hardware Samsung is shipping in the Galaxy Book 3 Ultra. The Dragonfly Pro will have to prove itself during the course of this year and we’re all rooting for a pretty high adoption rate from the growing ChromeOS community that is looking for great hardware.

And while that is exciting and I can’t wait to see how it all shakes out, I’m a bit bummed by the fact that Samsung can build such beautiful laptop hardware and currently has not a single Chromebook in the pipeline. Not even one. To go from pushing the Chromebook envelope just 3 years ago to nearly a full exit in the ChromeOS space is strange to say the least.

I know they took a big swing with the Galaxy Chromebook and it didn’t quite work, but it isn’t like Samsung to just try once and walk away. Their Windows laptops haven’t been the most successful over the years and their tablets get obliterated by iPad every year as well, but they continue to press forward. Is it so wrong to hope/wish that they would have the same stubbornness with Chromebooks?

I still believe in Samsung Chromebooks

Maybe it’s nostalgia, but I’m still rooting for Samsung in the Chromebook space. And I know many of you out there are as well. One of the first pair of devices we covered when truly beginning here at Chrome Unboxed was the Samsung Chromebook Plus and Pro. There weren’t tons of Chromebooks back then, and those devices were integral in the beginnings of this Chromebook-related blog and YouTube channel.

Back then, if you told me Chromebooks would be growing the way they are here in 2023 and that Samsung would be pretty much uninvolved in that growth, I would never have believed you. But here we are. HP, Lenovo, Acer, and ASUS are the prime players these days, and it doesn’t look likely to change anytime soon. But I still have a deep hope and desire that the folks at Samsung are simply biding their time, waiting to make another big move in Chromebooks.

And the aformentioned HP Dragonfly Pro Chromebook could be a big part of that reality. If that device shows up, catches on, and becomes a legit high-end Chromebook that gains traction in the consumer space, I think that could be the spark that gets Samsung back in the game again. And if they come back on the high end of the market, there’s no reason something like a Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Ultra couldn’t be part of that reality.

We’re a long way from that, however, and at the moment I’m just hoping for a proper Galaxy Chromebook successor. It doesn’t have to be Ultra or anything wild; it just need to exist and be solid. Samsung clearly has what it takes to make some truly inspired laptop hardware. They just need to be reminded that doing so for the Chromebook market can be profitable, too. And if so, I absolutely do think that we could one day see a Galaxy Chromebook Ultra.