While it might have pulled out of the European notebook market, Samsung is definitely serious about Chromebooks as it has announced a new version of its Chromebook 2, the Samsung Chromebook 2 XE500, will feature a fanless Intel Celeron chip.


While the original Chromebook 2 was based on Samsung's own Exynos 5 Octa SoC and available in 11.6-inch and 13-inch sizes, and will be still available, Samsung has decided to update the 11.6-inch version with Intel's fanless dual-core Celeron N2840 Bay Trail-M SoC, based on 22nm Silvermont architecture. This chip works at 2167MHz, Turbo up to 2580MHz, has 1MB of L2 cache, lacks Hyper-threading and features Intel HD graphics, but should be enough to keep the 11.6-inch 1366x768 Chrome OS based notebook well powered.




The rest of the specifications include 2GB of RAM, 16GB of internal flash storage, 802.11ac WiFi, USB 3.0 port and a battery that should keep it running for around 9 hours, according to Samsung.

What is more important is that Samsung has cut down US $50 for the Chromebook 2 XE500 powered by Intel Celeron chip. Although octa-core Exynos 5 powered XE503 model does come with 4GB of RAM, Intel's chip might be a better option for a 11.6-inch small Chromebook notebook.



Source: Samsung.com.