Samsung held an event last night to show off the Series 5 Chromebook, one of the first laptops designed to run Google’s Chrome operating system. I wasn’t able attend, but fortunately my colleagues at Engadget, Gizmodo, TechCrunch and This is my next were all on-hand and they’ve posted some details and a whole lot of photos.

We already knew the basic specs for the Chromebook. It has a 12.1 inch, 1280 x 800 pixel display, a 1.66 GHz Intel Atom N570 dual core processor, a full sized keyboard, an oversized clickpad, and 16GB of storage. But here are a few things I learned reading the hands-on overviews:

  • The keyboard has a dedicated row of keys for browser and system functions, such as controlling the volume and screen brightness, but also refreshing a web page or moving forward or back through web pages.
  • There’s a flap covering a SIM card and a switch you can use to unlock the device for jailbreaking purposes
  • There’s no Ethernet jack.
  • The battery is not user removable.
  • The screen has a matte finish.

Unsurprisingly, the Chromebook can handle 720p HD YouTube video — but not 1080p content. That’s likely a limitation of the Atom N570 processor, which can’t handle 1080p content on Windows either.

The clickable touchpad gets mixed reviews. While Engadget says it’s one of the best available, other journalists had problems with the clicking mechanism.

The Samsung Series 5 Chromebook is expected to go on sale June 15th for $430 and up.

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