Samsung's Galaxy Chromebook Go goes on sale for under $300

[Shawn Knight]

In brief: Samsung last month quietly announced its Galaxy Chromebook Go, a low-cost alternative to some of the more premium Chromebooks that have surfaced as of late. Starting today, the system is available to purchase directly from Samsung at an affordable price point.

The Galaxy Chromebook Go features a 14.0-inch LED display operating at a resolution of 1,366 x 768 with 220 nits of brightness. It's powered by an Intel Celeron N4500 processor clocked at 1GHz (Turbo Boost up to 2.8GHz) and supported by 4GB of LPDDR4X memory.

The Go additionally includes 32GB of onboard eMMC storage, Intel UHD graphics, dual 1.5 watt speakers, a 720p HD webcam, Wi-Fi 6 (Gig+) 802.11 ax 2x2 networking, a combination headphone / mic jack and a microSD card reader. In terms of connectivity, you get two USB Type-C ports and a single USB 3.2 port.

The system measures 12.88 inches x 8.88 inches x 0.63 inches and weighs 3.2 pounds. A single charge is reportedly good for up to 12 hours.

As you can tell from the modest specs, this isn’t a world-beater. But, that’s reflected in the price. The Galaxy Chromebook Go starts at just $299.99 for the Wi-Fi only model. Samsung will have an LTE variant ready soon, but we don’t yet know what sort of premium that model will carry.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/90441-samsung-galaxy-chromebook-go-goes-sale-under-300.html

 

[VitalyT]

When you think of it as a device that has worse performance and practicality than a mobile phone, then suddenly even $300 is too much.

Pairing a mobile phone with a TV + keyboard will produce a better result, and it is cheaper. Newer phones even let you pair them with an external mouse.

In fact, things are getting even easier, you can get a docking station for your phone, which will recharge, provide HDMI + Blutooth + Audio connectivity with external devices. And those are not expensive at all.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

OMG a 768p display in 2021. Maybe it's for third world countries only.

 

[maxxcool7421]

OMG a 768p display in 2021. Maybe it's for third world countries only.

Atrocious ....

 

[scavengerspc]

I bought a Chromebook a few years ago. Had it 2 months. I gave it away.
I would have paid someone to take it. I actually wanted to punch it.

 

[seeprime]

I bought a Chromebook a few years ago. Had it 2 months. I gave it away.
I would have paid someone to take it. I actually wanted to punch it.

I presume you fully tested the model you purchased in advance of buying it. There are some things they just won't do. We bought a $270 14" Acer with 1080p display, 4GB RAM, and quad-core Celeron processor, 32GB eMMC and SD card. It runs better than we expected. It replaced a 7 year old Google Nexus 7 tablet that took a dump. It's used for checking recipes in the kitchen and also for my wife to check Gmail. Android Outlook and Opera apps were added to allow more to be done on it. It's not a Windows PC. But it sure is faster at what it does do than a Core i5 with twice the RAM and a faster SSD is.

 

[scavengerspc]

I presume you fully tested the model you purchased in advance of buying it. There are some things they just won't do. We bought a $270 14" Acer with 1080p display, 4GB RAM, and quad-core Celeron processor, 32GB eMMC and SD card. It runs better than we expected. It replaced a 7 year old Google Nexus 7 tablet that took a dump. It's used for checking recipes in the kitchen and also for my wife to check Gmail. Android Outlook and Opera apps were added to allow more to be done on it. It's not a Windows PC. But it sure is faster at what it does do than a Core i5 with twice the RAM and a faster SSD is.

No, no test drive. I was curious, so I bought one. An Acer CB3-532.
I did give it every chance though. But it was slow and the display was horrible, even though it was considered one of the better Chromebook displays.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Kinda makes you wonder how they can justify selling a phone for >$1000 when they can sell this for $300, eh? I'm willing to bet that this costs AT LEAST as much to make as a Galaxy S10.

 

[Farkinell]

You'd be better off spending $50 on mid 2000s era Netbook off Craigslist and the rest on beers. Exact same functionality, but now you've also got a load of beers. Double-win.

 

[Lew Zealand]

Kinda makes you wonder how they can justify selling a phone for >$1000 when they can sell this for $300, eh? I'm willing to bet that this costs AT LEAST as much to make as a Galaxy S10.

Look at the specs. This is a bargain basement product with everything being as cheap, slow and low quality as possible. The S10 is none of those things.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Look at the specs. This is a bargain basement product with everything being as cheap, slow and low quality as possible. The S10 is none of those things.

I'm talking about the amount of materials needed to make it. This is far larger than a phone.

 

[Lew Zealand]

I'm talking about the amount of materials needed to make it. This is far larger than a phone.

Amount of materials is irrelevant to cost. The type of materials and their cost to manufacture are what's relevant. If it was just amount, then a 14nm processor would cost 1/4 of a 28nm processor, which would cost 1/4 of a 55nm processor, and so on.

Clearly that's not the case.

 

[Avro Arrow]

Amount of materials is irrelevant to cost. The type of materials and their cost to manufacture are what's relevant. If it was just amount, then a 14nm processor would cost 1/4 of a 28nm processor, which would cost 1/4 of a 55nm processor, and so on.

Clearly that's not the case.

Actually, to some degree, that IS the case because companies like TSMC buy silicon by the tonne which means that the larger a CPU is by process node, the fewer that they can put on a wafer and the more wafers that they need to buy to satisfy demand. That amount of materials IS NOT irrelvant to cost. That's why Ryzen was so revolutionary. With the chiplet design, AMD managed to reach near 100% usage of the wafers. Everything costs but a lot of things just have their prices jacked up to insane levels because the manufacturer knows that the consumers will pay it no matter what. How do you think that Apple got so rich? It sure as hell wasn't from sales volume alone.