Chromebook’s back — welcome the Series 5

Like the headline says, Chromebook is back in action. Mighty Google, together with Samsung, has unleashed the Series 5 Chromebook on the world.

There’s a wrinkle though. There’s not just a Chromebook, but a Chromebox as well. Google is saying that these cute little numbers are a fully three times faster than last year’s über-expensive efforts. Maybe it’s the built-in graphics accelerator and the new “more responsive” touchpad.

The Chromebabies certainly aren’t going to blow us away with CPU speed. The internet hungry-devices will run Intel’s Celeron CPUs, with a 16GB SSD and 4GB RAM. But then again, these aren’t devices meant for Diablo III, these are internet-only devices which turn into expensive paperweights when the bandwidth runs dry.

Thanks to the magic of Google, files, content and mails resting in the cloud will instantly spring into action when the Chromebook is turned on. Even though the internet giant promises that many of its apps will work in the offline environment, it’s better, in our opinion, to keep this sucker in an internet environment.

Is there updated hardware, you ask? Sure, there’s the Beta of Chrome remote desktop and a better photo/video editor. And that as they say, is that.

Here’s the bitter pill: the price. Samsung’s Wi-Fi and 3G enabled Series 5 Chromebook comes in at an astonishing US$550. It’s US$450 for the Wi-Fi-only version and US$330 for the Chromebox. For a laptop/desktop at this price, we expect a lot more. Let’s see if Samsung and Google can pull a rabbit out the hat this time.

Interested? Visit Samsung’s store and snap it up from here.