LAS VEGAS—In addition to its slate of PC announcements, Samsung today also revealed two brand-new Chromebooks here at CES.
The Samsung Chromebook Pro and Chromebook Plus are designed to run Google Play, allowing you access to a huge swath of apps on ChromeOS, a feature that started rolling out to select Chromebooks in mid-2016.
The systems boast 360-degree hinges, 12.3-inch quad-HD touch displays, and digitizer pens for greater control and writing. Google's predictive technology will translate your handwriting; the system will start to guess your next pen strokes as you write based on Google's cloud writing data.
The pen is included and stored in the side of the notebook, and is optimized for the pre-installed Google Keep for note-taking and Samsung ArtCanvas for drawing.
As for differences between the Pro and Plus, the former utilizes a Core m3 Skylake processor, while the latter is equipped with an ARM processor. They are otherwise identical; both come in silver, include two USB-C ports, have the same dimensions and weigh 2.38 pounds. Both also include 4GB of memory, Bluetooth 4.0, 802.11ac wireless, an accelerometer and gyro sensor, and integrated graphics.
The addition of Google Play compatibility is a huge boon. In my time with the system at CES, I was indeed able to launch the Google Play store straight off the taskbar and use its apps. A useful instance of this feature is Netflix's recent addition of offline viewing. PCs running Netflix in a browser or Windows app are unable to download episodes, but it is available via the Netflix Android app, and therefore works on these Chromebooks.
Features like this greatly expand the utility of Chromebooks beyond just Chrome apps, and with such a nice light build, these new machines are looking like an attractive proposition. Both will be available this year, with the Plus starting at $449; pricing for the Pro has not been announced.
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