Samsung Chromebook Pro review – One of the best

Android Apps Performance

The Chromebook Pro I had to test still isn’t technically a production device, and it’s still running early software. Google told us it’s loaded with similar builds to the M56 Beta Channel. Everything seemed to run just fine, though I did run into the occasional Chrome browser crash, and had a small period of time when the Chromebook Pro wouldn’t recognize Bluetooth devices. It seems some patches have stabilized things over the past couple of weeks, though.

The real focus here is on Android apps, of course. They’re a mixed bag right now. I installed Titan Quest, a game I love playing on my Android smartphone, but it kept crashing if I tried to resize the screen — something that happened with other apps, too. Some, like Spotify and Wunderlist, ran without a hitch.

I remember a couple of months ago, at least the last time I tried it on my ASUS Chromebook Flip, that Bluetooth gaming controllers didn’t quite work properly. They do now, and I was able to play some games with my 8bit retro Nintendo controller, which was pretty fun. It provides a whole new element of gaming on Chromebooks that’s more robust than ever before. Oh, one more thing, there’s also a gyroscope and accelerometer, so you can play games that allow the player to tilt his or her device to steer just as well as you would on a phone or tablet.

Performance in general was just good. This is one of the more powerful Chromebooks on the market with a Core m3 processor, but my aforementioned Chromebook Flip with a low-powered Rockwell processor also cuts through Chrome OS with ease. Still, for and running multiple apps at once, it seemed like the Samsung Chromebook Pro was able to almost everything.

I’m currently drafting this review with 10 Chrome windows open, Spotify music running and Gmail open, and the computer hasn’t hiccuped once. On the other hand, it doesn’t really handle graphics too well. Google showed us a demo Asphalt 8, so I figured I’d test that on my own. It was jittery, which was surprising since that game is a few years old. Titan Quest, when I was able to get it running, was also laggy as I ran my character around the map.

Finally, and I address this because I was curious enough to ask Google – I’m surprised there isn’t Google Assistant support on the Chromebook Pro. I asked Google why it’s not here, and the company said that it wants to bring Google Assistant to as many places as possible but that it doesn’t have anything to announce at this time. Kind of a bummer, since I think it would have been great here.

Article source: https://www.technobuffalo.com/reviews/samsung-chromebook-pro-review/