chromebox

Samsung is refreshing the Series 5 Chromebook, releasing the Chromebox in Q2

We'll likely never know how many Chromebooks Samsung has sold, but we're guessing it's not a terribly impressive figure. No matter. Sammy is refreshing its first-gen Series 5 with a new model, along with that Chromebox Google first teased last spring. Starting with the Chromebook, it trades its slick cover for something muted, with more discreet logo placement, though that matte, 12.1-inch, 300-nit display has made a reappearance. On the inside, meanwhile, it steps up from Atom to Celeron, though it still has 2GB of RAM and 16GB of flash storage. Look for it sometime in the second quarter with some familiar pricing: $399 for the WiFi-only version, and $449 for the 3G model with pay-as-you-go data from Verizon. As for the Chromebox, Samsung is still staying mum on specs, though the company did tell us it comes with a wireless keyboard-and-mouse combo. It also has a handful of ports, including five USB 2.0 sockets, DVI, DisplayPort and a headphone jack. All that'll run you around $400 when it lands sometime in the second quarter. To be honest, it's difficult to imagine consumers choosing this over a Mac mini or HTPC, though Samsung makes a shrewd point when it says this might find a home in K-12 computer labs, where the cost per student would be low and the systems would consume little space. Then again, the same could be said of laptops like this, no? Update: The Chromebox, too, has a dual-core Celeron CPU, 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage -- just like the Chromebook. Edgar Alvarez contributed to this report.