Looked at alongside the Samsung Chromebook 4+ we recently reviewed, the Samsung Chromebook 4, with no plus sign, is really minus 4—minus 4 inches, that is. It’s a compact Chromebook with an 11.6-inch screen versus a big 15.6-inch panel in the style of a desktop replacement. Both are bare-bones economy systems, but this Chromebook (starts at $229.99; $242.51 as tested) is a bit more successful than its bigger sibling. Besides being easier to carry, it has better battery life, and its low screen quality is less noticeable at the smaller size. It’s not a delight, but it’s a decent grab-and-go laptop if you’re a student or simply have a strict budget.
Several Memory and Storage Choices
The base model of the Chromebook 4 is $229.99 at Samsung’s online store, though it would be more attractive at $199 (or, better yet, $149). It combines a 1,366-by-768-pixel screen with a dual-core Intel Celeron N4000 processor, 4GB of RAM, and a skimpy 32GB of eMMC flash storage. Our test unit (model XE310XBA-K02US) is a $242.51 Amazon.com configuration with 64GB of storage. The Samsung site offers a version with 6GB of memory and 64GB of flash for $279.99.
The silver-gray laptop (Platinum Titan, if you ask Samsung) measures 0.66 by 11.3 by 8 inches, closely matching the 11.6-inch Lenovo Chromebook 3‘s 0.71 by 11.3 by 8.1 inches. The Samsung is slightly heavier (2.6 versus 2.42 pounds), but both are easy to toss into a bag, a backpack, or a briefcase. The Chromebook 4’s plastic construction feels fairly hardy, without too much flex when you grasp the screen corners or press the keyboard deck.
Thick bezels surround the 11.6-inch, anti-reflective display, with a webcam centered in the top border. The keyboard spans the full width of the system. The screen tilts almost all the way back, though its narrow viewing angles turn it into a color-shifted photo negative if you push it too far. You won’t find luxuries like a backlit keyboard or a fingerprint reader.
The port loadout is minimal: one USB-C port, an audio jack, and a microSD card slot on the left edge, and one USB 3.0 Type-A port (plus a security lock slot) on the right. The supplied AC adapter plugs into the USB-C port, which means you can’t have both the power plug and an external monitor (via DisplayPort adapter) connected at the same time. Bluetooth 4.0 and Wi-Fi 5 (the older 802.11ac standard, not 802.11ax Wi-Fi 6) handle wireless communications.
Screen and Sound: Barely Getting By
Acceptable laptop screens graduated to 1,920-by-1,080-pixel or higher resolutions years ago, but you can still find 1,366-by-768 panels in the 11.6-inch segment. Such a low pixel count means the Samsung won’t show fine details, and letters look faintly fuzzy. (As with most Chromebooks, you can dial in lower “looks like” resolution scaling if you want icons or screen elements to appear larger.) Also, the Chromebook 4’s antique twisted-nematic (TN), rather than in-plane-switching (IPS), panel technology translates to narrow viewing angles and dishwater-murky colors.
The display’s low brightness gives you images that manage to look pale and dingy at the same time, with weak contrast. All that said, the screen’s petite size makes it appear sharper and more bearable than the 15.6-inch expanse of the Samsung Chromebook 4+. It’s subpar, but not horrid. Browsing websites and batting out emails feels cheap and compromised, but not like a punishment, in the way that the big, and literally bad, 15.6-inch panel did.
The keyboard follows the familiar Chromebook layout, with browser and system command shortcuts along the top row and a search/menu key in place of Caps Lock. It has a somewhat flat but pleasant typing feel, with adequate travel and tactile feedback. The slightly off-center buttonless touchpad glides and taps smoothly and clicks stiffly.
Sound from the bottom-mounted speakers seems muted or muffled even with volume cranked to the max, with just a hint of bass and barely audible overlapping tracks. The 720p webcam captures dim, barely tinted (instead of colorful) images in the Camera app and murky blurs in Google Duo.
Testing the Chromebook 4: Patience Is a Virtue
For our benchmark charts, I stacked up the Samsung Chromebook 4 against three other coat-pocket-size Chromebooks: the Lenovo Chromebook 3 and the 12-inch convertible HP Chromebook x360 12b, which (like the Samsung) have Intel Celeron power, and the Lenovo Chromebook Duet, a 10.1-inch detachable tablet and keyboard combo that relies on a MediaTek ARM processor.
That left one slot, which (as in my Samsung Chromebook 4+ review) I filled with a much better-equipped and more expensive ($629) mainstream model: our consumer Chromebook Editors’ Choice winner, the Intel Core i5-based Acer Chromebook Spin 713. (See more about how we test laptops and Chromebooks.)
The first objective benchmarks we use are Principled Technologies’ venerable CrXPRT (a suite of simulated Chrome OS productivity apps) and more recent WebXPRT 3 (a browser-based test of HTML and JavaScript throughput).
In our experience, Chromebooks with ARM processors are significantly slower than those with x86 chips, so it’s no surprise that Lenovo’s Duet trailed the field, while the Core i5 Acer raced ahead. The Celeron systems landed in between.
JetStream 2 is another of our stock performance tests. It combines 64 JavaScript and WebAssembly benchmarks to measure a browser’s (in this case, the default Chrome’s) suitability for advanced web applications.
History repeated itself. The Samsung placed in the middle of the Celeron trio.
We’ve added UL’s PCMark for Android Work 2.0 test to our Chromebook regimen. This test suite runs in a small smartphone-style window and mimics productivity operations ranging from text and image editing to data charting and video playback.
The Duet was more competitive in this test, while the Acer Spin 713 dominated again. The Samsung performed solidly, though Android apps are awkward without a touch screen.
Finally, to test a laptop’s battery life, we loop a 720p video file with screen brightness set at 50%, audio volume at 100%, and Wi-Fi disabled until the system quits. If the Chromebook’s internal storage isn’t big enough to hold the video, we play it from an external SSD plugged into a USB-C port.
Any of these Chromebooks will get you through a full day of work or school, though their screens (except for the 13.5-inch Acer’s) are too small to use comfortably for that long. The Walmart-exclusive Lenovo Chromebook 3 made a strong case for itself by lasting almost eight hours longer than the Samsung Chromebook 4 and costing $70 less.
The Lowest Common Denominator
They may be clinging to life at the bottom of the laptop ladder, but 11.6-inch compacts still fill a niche as ultra-low-budget ultraportables. (Plus, Chrome OS works tolerably on humble hardware, whereas the last 11.6-inch Windows notebook we tried and tested was simply pitiful.)
The Samsung Chromebook 4 gets the job done, but in the manner of a space-saver spare tire instead of a high-performance radial. If you can afford a higher-priced and better-equipped laptop, you’ll have a much more enjoyable ride.
