Pre-orders for Samsung’s $249 ARM-powered Chromebook kick off today at 3PM Eastern.
The ARM-based iteration of the Chromebook features an 11.6 inch display, a Samsung Exynos 5 dual core ARM-based processor (Cortex-A15) and approximately 6.5 hours of battery life.
The new Chromebook is about $200 cheaper than the (x86) Samsung Chromebook 550 which launched earlier this summer. Battery life is slightly better than the x86 version, although somewhat surprisingly, not by all that much.
In any case, the ARM-based model weighs in at 2.5 pounds and measures 0.8 inches thick while the Chromebook 550 clocks in at 3.3 pounds.
Additional specs for the ARM Chromebook include 802.11n/WiFi, Bluetooth 3.0, a USB 3.0 port, a USB 2.0 port, HDMI output, a VGA camera, 16GB of storage, 2GB of RAM, 10 second boot time and instant resume from sleep.
Samsung’s $249 Chromebook has already received mixed reviews from analysts, with Jack Gold telling ComputerWorld he doesn’t see really “any benefit” in purchasing a Chromebook.
“The new device is basically a netbook with a Web-based OS on it. Why not just buy an Android device and actually be able to use plenty of apps?” he asked rhetorically. “For another $100 or so, you can get a full laptop running Windows. That’s a much better deal.”
Chrome OS can best be described as a Linux-based operating system designed to work exclusively with web applications and Mountain View’s cloud-based Google Drive.
The operating system was announced on July 7, 2009, with the first Intel-based Chromebooks shipping on June 15, 2011.
