According to market researcher NPD, Samsung is by far the most successful seller of computers based on Google’s Chromebook platform in the US, with 60 percent of the market in 2013. But it has more and more company: Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, Toshiba and Google itself all make Chrome machines in a variety of sizes and with varying approaches.
Yesterday’s leaks of new Samsung Chromebooks with the faux leather look of its Galaxy Note 3 phones and tablets appear to be entirely accurate, as the company has just officially announced two new models, complete with that same trim. The Chromebook 2 line consists of an 11.6-inch and a 13.3-inch model. To fill in that bigger screen real estate, the 13.3-inch version also has full HD resolution (1,920×1,080) whereas the smaller notebook has a resolution of 1,366×768. They feature similar specs otherwise, including 4GB of RAM, 16GB of solid-state storage, and Samsung’s own Exynos 5 Octa processor. (The 13.3-inch Chromebook 2 gets a 2.1GHz CPU, whereas the 11.6-inch model includes a 1.9GHz version.)