Top critical review
1.0 out of 5 starsContinuous issues upon issues
Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2017
Update 2:
Ok, so I hate writing reviews. I hate updating reviews. I hate updating updated reviews. So, the fact that I'm compelled to update this review less than a year after I both bought the item and updated it the first time should say something.
I would strongly advise anyone looking for a Chromebook to look elsewhere. While I stand by my assessment that Chrome OS is more than enough OS for most people and that the OS is actually surprisingly developer friendly (I'm compiling C++ on it without issue, so the OS is definitely a capable Linux system), the hardware is utter garbage.
So, as I had mentioned previously, there was a phantom tap issue that was fixed in on of the updates a long time ago. Well, recently the phantom tapping started up again. So, my first thought that it was a bug like last time and that it'd go away after a few updates. However, it did not.
The issue increased in frequency as the last month has gone by. I started getting concerned. Well, it turns out the wiring to the touchscreen itself is actually damaged! Fantastic! Less than a year old and I've now had to disable the touchscreen just for the system to be usable. The singular feature I actually wanted out of this has now been rendered unusable.
The issues don't stop there. Since about 6 months into this adventure, this Chromebook has had nearly daily wifi issues. Generally, after about 24-48 hours of uptime, I have to restart the Chromebook, otherwise, it'll start dropping wifi at an increasing rate. It also appears that Bluetooth has entirely failed in the Chromebook and it always throws a "Cannot connect" error any time you attempt to use Wifi.
Like a good Chrome OS user, I thought maybe a powerwash would fix these issues. Unfortunately, this was not the case. The issues have become so unbearable that I'm having to look for something to replace this "fantastic piece of machinery" with.
Generally bad experiences stick out the most. I don't want to say all Chromebook Pluses are garbage. It's very likely I just lucked out. However, I do advise caution when choosing between this and other Chromebooks.
Update:
So, after giving this little bugger another week (give or take a few days), I've got to say I'm enjoying it far more than I had been that first week. I've found that popping this bad boy into the "Beta Branch" actually produces significant stability improvements. Android apps no longer crash the entire OS now, but are still in a state of near inoperability. The rest of the OS, however, has become extremely stable and hasn't crashed at all since switching branches. On top of the stability, there seems to be at the very least a small improvement to performance. Be warned, though, switching to the beta branch and then switching back to the stable branch WILL erase all of your data on the Chromebook. Keep this in mind before deciding to switch which branch you're using.
I definitely think it's a worth purchasing chromebook for those willing to embrace the beta branch. For those of you who aren't as tech savvy or are only looking for Android support, I would say it's still best to hold off.
Original Review:
I bought this Chromebook as a replacement for an old and quickly dying laptop that had a battery no longer able to hold a charge. As a mostly PHP developer, my first thought was that I didn't need too much power for what I'm doing. If I needed anything more than what the Chromebook had, I could simply remote into my desktop using Chrome Remote Desktop and I'd be golden.
I've definitely made both the right and wrong choice here. So, I'm definitely correct in assuming I don't need as much power as I went for with my last laptop. This Chromebook most definitely does everything I need it to do. I can easily browse the internet in comfort, there are plenty of SSH clients for Chrome that I can use to remote into servers, Chrome Remote Desktop works what I consider shockingly well. As well, I'm loving everything about Chrome OS's UI in comparison to Windows 10.
The Bad (skip this if you're wanting to know what the pros of this device are. This section is bound to change over the next few weeks/if an update fixes the issues found):
You're probably now wondering "why is this individual giving a product they clearly like a 2 out of 5 review!?" Believe me, this is not the score I want to give it. I definitely love the device. In the week I've had it, I've had an extremely pleasant experience with it for the most part. However, there are multiple issues I've encountered that, until fixed, can't allow me to give it a score above 2 stars.
To start with, opening more than 3 or 4 pages with any sort of moderate javascript (here's looking at you, countless banks that seem to think you need to load up 20MB worth of javascript every time you're loaded) will cause lag, so keep this in mind "interweb power users". This is ignorable in most cases and something I expected considering this little beaut is equipped with an ARM CPU. Nothing new there, ARM CPUs aren't powerhouses, they're power savers.
If you get up to the 7 to 8 range, things start to slow down and they slow down substantially. Again, this is to be expected, it's an ARM CPU. The issue here is that things also start to become unstable at that point. Multiple times now the entire OS has locked up on me, requiring a hard reboot, roughly when I hit 9 pages open.
I want to reiterate, I'm well aware of the limitations of ARM CPUs. I don't expect for this to perform just as well with 9 pages open as it does with 3 or 4 pages open. What I do expect, however, is for the OS to gracefully kill processes if it feels that things are getting too overloaded. This is a common task of OSes and something OSes do without issue.
As someone that frequently deals with *nix systems, I'm well aware of how well Linux (what Chromium OS and thus Chrome OS use for their kernel) can perform and how well it can handle issues that might pop up during run time. I've had a web server running BSD stay up for a little over 2 years now without hiccup or issue. *nix OSes are reliable. They're stable. Even on ARM CPUs, they're able to handle even the most abusive tasks. However, Chrome OS seems incapable of handling of this.
I'm not entirely sure if this is an issue with Chrome OS itself or potentially the big.LITTLE ARM package they've opted to use for this Chromebook. While big.LITTLE has been a common steeple of the ARM CPU and mobile device arena for a very long time now (many modern Android phones use big.LITTLE ARM packages) and is supported by the Linux kernel, it's always possible that there's a hardware issue occurring when Chrome OS calls for the big (the high powered CPU) cluster to activate and take on some tasks. This could be due to a defect with my particular unit (this is something I plan to contact Samsung about and, once I've talked to them, my rating may change), or an issue with the current version of Chrome OS's handling of these situations (same as before, if an update for Chrome OS is pushed out that fixes this issue, my rating may change).
Another issue I've had revolves around the trackpad. While not a "horrible" trackpad, it's definitely inferior to pretty much any trackpad I've ever used in the past. It seems to have an issue where randomly it decides I've placed 2 fingers on it even though I've only placed 1 finger on it, causing it to switch into scrolling mode. This seems to be an on and off issue, one that I thought was potentially caused by something sitting on top of the trackpad along with my finger that registered as a finger. However, when this occurs, even wiping off the trackpad doesn't fix the issue.
The Good:
So, with all of the negativity out of the way, here are the things I love about this Chromebook (I bet you didn't see this coming)! First off, the keyboard is extremely enjoyable to use. I'm a huge fan of chicklet keyboards and this one really takes the cake. It's quick to type on and (because I'm relatively weird as many developers are) it makes a super delightful clicky noise as the keys are tapped. I've always been a fan of the noise keys make when being pressed anyway, but this has to be one of my favorite sounding chicklet keyboards.
As well, the touch screen is an absolute godsend. Everything about it is great. It's extremely responsive and feels very natural to use while derping about on websites. The Chromebook is packaged with a fairly simple (though very awesome) drawing app that takes advantage of the screen and pen's pressure sensitivity that really shows off what could be done with this device. While I'm not really an artist, I will definitely say that this app will become a common part of my weekly routine for stress relief. Something about drawing really clears the mind.
Another thing I really love is the Android/Google Play Store app compatibility (I address this further down so, if you're new to Chrome OS, please read the disclaimer further down the review). I've got quite a few apps that I use very frequently on my cellphone such as Andchat (IRC app) and Timely (alarm app). These apps work almost flawlessly in Chrome OS. Timely runs in the background as one would expect, syncing up with my phone's alarms. Andchat is just as buggy as it is on Android itself (it has some issues with crashing when losing focus if it's connecting to a server) but overall is a treat of an experience when used on this Chromebook.
Finally, I can't emphasize how much I love everything about the Chrome apps. Chrome itself has been my browser of choice for years now, and seeing what people can do with apps through HTML5 and Javascript through the Javascript API the OS provides (direct file access, file system access implementations such as mounting SMB shares, Dropbox accounts, Onedrive accounts, etc) is truly amazing. There's so much potential that I'm really looking forward to Chrome OS growing.
The Ugly:
This is separate from the rest of the review so, if you've made it this far and you have experience with Chrome OS, you're free to go!
As a warning to people that want to purchase this Chromebook purely for it's Android app support, it's clearly a very early beta and the Chromium Project (the group responsible for maintaining the open sourced Chromium OS which Chrome OS derives from) explicitly mentions this fact. Do not expect all of your favorite apps to be compatible, there's a good chance they aren't. As well, do not expect all of your apps that claim to be compatible to run correctly or at all. Many of them, especially those that use OpenGL (pretty much anything with "pretty graphics"), can and will cause the Chromebook to lock up.
This is bound to change in the future as the technology advances and improves, but if that's your only reason for wanting this Chromebook, you're far better off just getting an Android tablet.
