Samsung’s Galaxy Chromebook 2 looks set to improve battery life and the price of its predecessor, according to leaked slides from Samsung (via 9to5Google). The previous Galaxy Chromebook was a 2 in 1 with an attractive design that, however, faltered due to the battery life and the high price of $ 999. If we believe in these slides, next year may bring some Chromebooks for hope .
The most important change is the battery life. The slides shared by the pourer WalkingCat say Samsung is targeting 12 hours of battery life in this new model. This is much more than the meager 4 hours and 20 minutes (and the 8 hours that Samsung promised) that we observed in our review of this year’s model.
Samsung’s slides also note that the Galaxy Chromebook 2 will be the first Chromebook with a QLED screen, or quantum dot LED. The company’s previous Chromebook used a 4K AMOLED, a choice that seemed to detract from the device’s battery life. Switching to QLED would correspond to the change Samsung made to its non-Chrome OS laptops in 2020.
The old Galaxy Chromebook featured a 10th generation Intel Core i5 that was more than capable of handling the tasks that Samsung imagined customers would use the device for, but this new Galaxy Chromebook 2 is reportedly switching to a Core i3 10th generation. It is not necessarily a fall for browser-based work on Chrome OS, but it is interesting considering the availability of 11th generation Intel processors in 2021.
All of these changes may have influenced the $ 699 (probably entry-level) price, the final notable detail of the WalkingCat leak. The original Galaxy Chromebook was presented as something “premium” for “professionals” and, at least for the renderings we saw, the Galaxy Chromebook 2 is maintaining that elegant design.
The cheaper price of the Galaxy Chromebook 2 brings you closer to the next generation Chromebooks than to suitable laptops from Apple and others. Switching to a different processor and having a monitor that you already supply to your other laptops can help improve sales, especially when combined with a lower price.
We will have to wait until the release date promised in February 2021 on the slide to find out for sure. But CES 2021 is just around the corner, and with it comes the possibility of some clarity in Samsung’s Chromebook roadmap for next year and beyond.