Samsung’s upcoming Galaxy Chromebook finally has an official release date. You’ll be able to buy it at Samsung and Best Buy next Monday, April 6th, starting at $999.
The device comes in Mercury Gray, or the bolder Fiesta Red that looks bright orange in some settings. It’s the first Chromebook to sport a 13.3-inch 4K OLED display. It also has a more powerful processor than most Chromebooks, an Intel 10th-generation chip. It includes 8GB of RAM (LPDDR3) and a 256GB SSD as well.
When we first saw the device back in January, Samsung indicated that there’d be additional configurations available, featuring up to 16GB RAM and a 1TB SSD. The company seems to have killed those models, however; the base model is now the only variant available.
Verge executive editor Dieter Bohn was impressed with the Chromebook’s build quality and the hardware in our first look, calling it “one of the nicest pieces of laptop hardware I’ve touched in a very long time.” Samsung has made a few unique design choices: there’s a camera built into the keyboard deck to take photos when the device is in tablet mode, and there’s an included stylus that lives in a silo on the side.
There also aren’t many companies who have tried to sell Chromebooks at this price point. Only Google has attempted Chrome OS devices at the $999 mark, and both the 2017 Pixelbook and the 2018 Pixel Slate were seen as halo devices for Chrome OS. Neither product got a refresh at the same price; the Pixelbook Go, released last fall, starts at $649.
Samsung’s device will be a lot more expensive than excellent competitors like Asus’ $549 Chromebook Flip C434, not to mention a number of perfectly fine Windows ultrabooks. In the past, affordability has been one of the strongest arguments for buying a Chromebook. So while it’s certainly a picturesque device with high-end hardware inside, it’ll need to be an excellent machine to justify that price.
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