Let’s start on a positive note and list the good things about the Samsung Chromebook 4+ ($299.99 as tested). The keyboard’s decent, and the 15.6-inch display offers full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) resolution instead of the lowly 1,366 by 768 pixels that’s tolerable only in 11.6-inch Chromebooks. Past that, there’s just not much, even if we reach: The Chromebook 4+ targets buyers who want a big-screen laptop on a rock-bottom budget, and while it would be all right at $199, it’s no fun at $100 more. In terms of performance, capability, and quality, it’s simply on another planet from our Editors’ Choice winner, the $629 Acer Chromebook Spin 713.
The Big Chromebook Brought Low
The $299.99 model XE350XBA-K01US seen here is the humblest of three Chromebook 4+ configurations, all with a 1080p non-touch screen and dual-core, 1.1GHz Intel Celeron N4000 processor. It has 4GB of memory and a puny 32GB of eMMC flash storage. A $349.99 model increases RAM to 6GB and storage to 64GB of flash, while spending $379.99 shrinks memory back to 4GB but hikes storage to 128GB. (Don’t confuse the 15.6-inch Samsung Chromebook 4+ with the Samsung Chromebook 4, which has a much smaller 11.6-inch display and will be reviewed separately soon.)
The Chromebook 4+ has a silver-gray (Samsung calls it “Platinum Titan”) aluminum lid but a thin plastic bottom. There’s moderate flex if you grasp the screen corners and quite a bit if you press the keyboard deck. The system measures 0.65 by 14.2 by 9.6 inches, which is bulky but a bit more compact than the Acer Chromebook 315 (0.8 by 15 by 10.1 inches), and is a fraction lighter at 3.75 versus 3.97 pounds.
With only 32GB of storage, there’s less than 19GB available for your downloads and personal files, so presumably you’ll be keeping documents in the cloud. The keyboard follows the standard Chromebook layout (with lowercase letters on the keys, the sign of a consumer or classroom rather than business model), with browser and system controls on the top row and a search/menu key in place of Caps Lock. There’s a webcam centered above the screen and a large buttonless touchpad in the palm rest.
The laptop’s left edge holds a 5Gbps USB 3.1 Type-C port (suitable for the compact AC adapter) along with a microSD card slot and an audio jack. A second USB-C port, a USB 3.0 Type-A port, and a security lock slot are on the right. Bluetooth and 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5, not 6) wireless are standard. With no HDMI port, you’ll have to plug in a USB-C DisplayPort dongle to connect an external monitor.
You Can’t Touch This (You Can Barely See It)
Touch screens have rapidly taken off among Chromebooks since the latter gained access to Android apps, but the Chromebook 4+ has a non-touch, anti-glare display. The screen tilts almost all the way back to flat, and the bezels around it are relatively thin, but it’s one of the worst on the market I’ve aid eyes on—the panel uses cheap, antique twisted nematic (TN) instead of in-plane switching (IPS) technology, so its colors are drab, pale, and washed out, with poor off-center viewing angles.
The peak brightness is fair, but contrast is weak, with white backgrounds appearing dingy. Fine details and the edges of letters are reasonably sharp. As with most Chromebooks, you can choose among several “looks like” scaled resolutions if you want screen elements to seem larger than they do at 1,920 by 1,080 (up to a jumbo 960 by 540).
The keyboard is not backlit; it has a vast palm rest and a hollow but acceptably snappy typing feel. Don’t look for Home, End, Page Up, or Page Down keys or a numeric keypad, though there’s arguably room for them. The big touchpad glides and taps smoothly; it takes a firm press for a plasticky click.
The 720p webcam captures images that aren’t too dark but are soft-focus in the Camera app and downright blurry in Google Duo; its colors appear faint, as all photos and videos do on the low-quality screen. Bottom-mounted speakers produce soft but tolerably clear sound; there’s no bass, but you can make out overlapping tracks.
Plodding Through Performance Testing
The Chromebook 4+ is a tepid performer, able to open multiple browser tabs and stream videos but taking two or three seconds to launch an app or open an image. For our benchmark charts, I compared it against four other consumer Chromebooks. The Acer Chromebook Spin 713 is our favorite in the category, though an outlier here due to its higher price and more potent Core i5 processor. The Acer Chromebook 315 is a direct competitor as a low-cost 15.6-inch-screened entry, though it uses an AMD A4-9120C instead of Intel CPU.
To see how the Chromebook 4+ fared against other Celeron systems, I chose two from Lenovo, the 14-inch IdeaPad 3 Chromebook and the 11.6-inch Chromebook 3, the group’s most affordable at $169.99. (See more about how we test laptops.)
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).
The Samsung edged out the AMD A4-based Acer 315, but it was the slowest of the three Celeron laptops and miles behind the Core i5-powered Spin 713.
JetStream 2 is another performance test we use. It combines 64 JavaScript and WebAssembly benchmarks to measure a browser’s (in this case, the default Chrome’s) suitability for advanced web applications.
The outcome was the same with this test, though the Celerons basically finished three abreast. The four economy Chromebooks will get you through everyday productivity and browsing tasks, but they aren’t strong picks for Android games or demanding apps.
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.
We don’t have a PCMark score for the Acer 315, but the others performed predictably, with the Core i5 Acer convertible well ahead of the Celeron systems.
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 and the keyboard backlight 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.
The 15.6-inch Chromebooks will get you through or nearly through a day of work or school, but their unplugged endurance is in a lesser league than the other machines’.
Verdict: Simply Hard to Recommend
The Samsung Chromebook 4+ is a laptop you can live with, but frankly you’ll be far happier if you can scrape up the extra cash for a Chromebook in the $500 to $600 range—and if you can’t, there are smaller-screened models we rate more highly.
For those who insist on a 15.6-inch screen, the Acer Chromebook 315’s is better—it’s definitely economy class, but it’s a touch panel with clearer IPS rather than TN technology—and its slightly slower AMD processor is offset by more storage and a price currently $50 below the Samsung’s.
