I encountered this by surprise at Best Buy. Wound up using it five times at four different stores.
I did a torture test. I had fifteen tabs open, one-third of which were heavy and translated Chinese tech sites. Also Drudge Report, Techmeme, YouTube, this site, PubMed, and Weather Underground with radar animation going.
No stutters. No delays. No freezes. I was very impressed.
But then this happened …
Click = big
That’s a PDF from the PubMed site.
It’s unreadably blurry.
PubMed PDF on the iPad Air 2:
Click = big
Click = big
Crisp and sharp.
Yeah, you could say it’s no fair comparing a non-Retina to a Retina screen, but something else is going on here because I did a Google Books PDF on a Samsung Chromebook and it looked like this:
Click = big
Crisp and sharp.
Go figure.
Anyway, aside from that, this is a really neat little piece of work. Quality build, sturdy, nice keyboard and good trackpad, touchscreen, and can fold over to tablet form with portrait mode screen.
What I wish, though, is that for US$249 (2GB RAM model), the screen was at least 1920 x 1280, instead of just 1280 x 800. It’s almost like looking at a first-generation iPad when in tablet portrait mode. Just not sharp enough text.
Anyone thinking about Chromebooks should give this one a test drive. It doesn’t feel cheap like all of the others.
Here’s a review:
Additional:
Previously here:
Kurtis Scaletta, Chromebook Novelist
Reference: Chromebooks
Google Books PDF Test: Samsung Chromebook
Chromebook Test Post
Best Buy: Kobo And Samsung Chromebook
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