Say hello to the impossibly thin and light Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus [VIDEO]

I’m so excited to be writing this post, sharing this information, and finally getting to talk about a Chromebook that completely mesmerized me just a week ago in New York. Review units aren’t out and available just yet, so I don’t have one with me as I type these words and that quite literally makes me a little sad. Damn you, customs!

Seriously, though, this new Chromebook Plus from Samsung is so good and so wild in its form factor that I absolutely cannot wait to share all sorts of content with you all about it in the coming days, weeks and months. The ones we spent time with were clearly all demo units in the forced demo mode, so I didn’t really get to dig in and do any real tasks; but I can 100% speak for the quality of the hardware and tell you all about it.

Thin and light and gorgeous

First up, let’s talk about that chassis. I was not prepared for this at all, and even though I’ve stopped by the Samsung area in my local Best Buy to handle the latest Galaxy Book 4 lineup recently, it did not prepare me for how wafer-thin this 15.6-inch Chromebook would be. It really is something you’ll have to go into a Best Buy store and experience for yourself, and you should be able to do that around mid-October.

Holding a 15.6-inch laptop that is 11.8mm thick and only 2.58 pounds (and is still completely rigid) is shocking to say the least. But after you see the incredible thinness on the desk, hold the light weight in your hands, and absorb all of that, you then take note of the color-shifting “Neptune Blue” color on the lid that is both sophisticated and eye-catching.

Finally, the lid opens with a satisfying one-finger lift, and from just this perspective, it’s easy to start absolutely falling in love with the new Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus right away. Trust me, though, there’s more good stuff under the lid.

That OLED screen

And that good stuff starts with the OLED screen. It’s 1080p (I was really hoping for QHD), and it looks fantastic. Here’s the thing on screen resolution at this size: I actually don’t take full advantage of it. Sure, it’s sharper to my eye, but right now on the Acer Chromebook 516 GE I’m using at the moment, I’m scaled to 90% on the ChromeOS resolution settings and that equates to 1778×1111. That’s really close to 1920×1080, so the actual workflow and feel of the Galaxy Chromebook Plus will be quite similar in actual use.

And to get an OLED panel with those inky blacks, wild contrast ratios, and popping colors is totally worth it in my book. With a super-low response time, this display looks incredibly smooth, bright, vibrant, and better than most screens I’ve seen on any laptop across the board.

One turn off for some will be the lack of touch input, and I hear you on that front. Though I’ve learned to live without it for 90% of what I do on a Chromebook, I’d love to have seen Samsung make it work on this device. Speaking directly with them about the Galaxy Chromebook, however, leaving touch out of the equation was part of the process to arriving at the wildly thin, crazy-light build that they landed on, so I’m not torn up about it.

Amazing keyboard and trackpad

Under that screen lies a backlit keyboard and massive, glass track pad. Both feel insanely great, top-notch, and like they belong on a device that costs FAR more than $699. The lack of a touchscreen is always offset quite a bit by an exceptional trackpad with any Chromebook, and from my small amount of time with it, I feel confident in saying the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus absolutely has that.

And the keyboard is the same story. The backlighting isn’t bleeding everywhere, the keys feel solid, stable, and comfortable, and the action of the keyboard feels absolutely high-end all around. And not only does it feel great, it has a few extras that I can’t wait to test out.

As we talked about in our event overview post, there’s a brand-new key on the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus, and it is for the new Quick Insert feature. It sits where the launcher key used to be, and with just one press, you get a pop-up menu that gets you access to AI features, emojis, GIFs, recent links, images, and more. It can be used to insert items throughout the OS, and I really do think it will be a game-changing feature that the Galaxy Chromebook Plus is going to be primed to take full advantage of.

Additionally, there’s a full numeric keypad, a dedicated dictation button, and a dedicated Accessibility button on this new keyboard layout as well. Google says they’ve seen tons of users leveraging Accessibility features across the board, so it made sense to get a device out there that has a quicker access point to it right on the keyboard.

Solid I/O and speedy internals

On the inside, the Galaxy Chromebook Plus comes with internals that should feel speedy and perform very well all around. Powered by the Intel Core 3-100U processor, 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage, there’s plenty of horsepower under the hood here that will more than take care of 99% of Chromebook users out there.

And even though the chassis is slight, Samsung still found a way to squeeze in a full-sized HDMI port, micro SD card slot, 2 USB Type-C ports, a USB Type-A port, and a headphone/mic jack. Again, that’s a ton of I/O on a chassis that looks like it would only be big enough to cram in a couple USB Type-C ports. Well done, there, Samsung.

Battery life for days

Finally, Samsung is claiming 13 hours of battery life on this device, and I’m inclined to believe them. Multiple times I checked out the battery percentage on the demo units at the event and even though they were all constantly running the demo software, they were clocking between 12 and 14 hours of remaining battery on a 90-95% charge. If that holds up under actual use, that will be wildly impressive.

Again, we don’t have our review unit just yet, but I cannot wait for it to arrive. I can’t wait to put it through the normal paces, feel the lightness in my backpack, and utilize the epic screen, keyboard and trackpad Samsung has used in it. I have little doubt about the overall performance, and I’m expecting a great experience from top to bottom.

For those of you eager enough to go get one right away, we should see them go up for pre-order at samsung.com later in the week and expect general availability and in-store devices to start showing up around mid-October. We’ll be keeping a close eye on those availability opportunities as well, so if you want to stay updated, be sure to get signed up for our newsletter or join our Chrome Unboxed Plus community below to discuss this device and all things Chromebook with a bunch of awesome folks who’ve already come on board.