Google Chrome OS CR-48 Notebook User Review

Like many, I requested a Cr-48 from Google not really expecting to get one. But low and behold, one showed up on my doorstep yesterday without any sort of confirmation from Google. It came it a plain brown box and was shipped from Louisville, KY. Inside the box was another box with some nice graphics which I stilt have not quite figured out. In that box was a Cr-48, quick start sheet, and power adapter. That’s it.







Google touted Chrome OS’s easy setup a lot last week. And for good reason. Upon first boot you are asked to connect the WiFi and then agree to Google’s TOC. Chrome OS then downloads the latest updates. The process was not quite as quick as I was expecting due to this step. I am sure this will vary depending how fast your internet connection is and how old your OS build is. In my case while it did not take all that long (5 minutes maybe?) I was getting rather impatient in all the excitement. After updating you are asked to sign into your Google Account and then take a picture with the webcam. It is worth noting that currently there is no way to change your picture once you set it, so you might want to take your time and take a good one unlike I did. After that Chrome OS opens up and it looks just like Chrome. A welcome and getting started guide in beautiful HTML5 meets on first boot and provided you use Chrome all your bookmarks, apps, and extensions will be synced in a minute or two.
Interestingly enough, I found myself bored with Chrome OS in no time at all. And I do not mean that in a bad way. There was nothing setup. Nothing to customize. Nothing geeky to optimize. And while I know people like doing those things--sometimes--not having to do them it a real benefit for those of who will use them as a means of procrastinating.
Sp without further to do, is the Cr-48 usable as a primary notebook? Read on to find out.

Build and Design

The Cr-48 is what you would get if you crossed the a Macbook with a ThinkPad. Many people compare the design of the Cr-48 to the Macbook. Indeed, they have a lot in common, a thin profile, chiclet keyboard, large button-less trackpad, and clean design. But the Cr-48 also takes a few pages out of the ThinkPad playbook with its rubbery matte black finish and plain (boring) design.
It also seems to carry the ThinkPad trait of durability. This is the most solid notebook I have ever owned and I have owned two business class machines (Dell Latitude E6400 being the most recent). Grabbing the Cr-48 from the corner you will not feel any flex or hear any creaking. The hinge also seems pretty solid, though only time will tell. There is not latch to keep the screen closed, but uses a force mechanism like the one found on my Dell XPS M1330.
The bottom of the notebook has removable battery that is it other than a vent. Underneath the battery behind a piece of tape is switch that puts the Cr-48 in developer mode. While I have not tried too hard, I see no friendly way to open this notebook up, so I think it is safe to say Google did not intend to make the Cr-48 user upgradable.





Ports and Features

You thought the original Macbook Air was bad? Well the Cr-48 is no better when it comes to ports. On the right side is a VGA port and on the left side is the power jack, a sole USB port, a headphone jack, and a media card reader. For what it is worth though, even if the Cr-48 had more ports they would not be much good sense Chrome OS does not support any devices beyond a mouse yet.





Despite minimalistic port selection, I have to hand it to Google for going all out on the few ports they did include. For instance, while Google omitted a line-in/mic jack, the headphone jack actually turns out to be TRRS jack which works with earphones that have a in-line mic like those used with smartphones. Another delighful surprise is that the USB is powered even when the notebook is in standby or turned off. This is very useful for charging cellphones and media players. While neither of these are anything new, it is very nice to see them included on a pilot program notebook. I can only hope other manufactures producing Chrome OS notebooks next year will be so generous too.

One of the primary features of the Cr-48 is its 3G connectivity. Google has even gone so far as to team up with Verizon to offer users a 100 MB of free data a month for 2 years. This was a obvious move on Google’s part seeing as how Chrome OS is pretty useless without internet access.
So how does it work? Well, I am not sure yet. You see, 3G did not work out of the box for me. Instead whenever I tried to activate the 3G with Verizon I would get a confirmation email letting know the registration went through, but instead of getting a verification page I would be redirected back the registration page again. After doing a little searching I found out this in a known issue that requires you to call Verizon and have them reset a few things on their end then you have to manually activate 3G using command lines. Simple enough. Except it did not work. After hour on the phone with Verizon they sent me on to the Chrome Notebook Ninjas since everything on their end was right. So about three hours late I get a call from Verizon asking if I had got 3G working yet. They then had me manually reset the modem using command lines and then manually activate the 3G again. Much to my delight is worked this time! The call took about 15 minutes. So all total it took about an hour and fifteen minutes on the phone to get 3G working. I really hope that not all Cr-48’s have to go threw this process to get connected to 3G and that mine was just an exception, but there you have it, that’s why I have not been able to test 3G yet.
Of course the Cr-48 has WiFi and apparently bluetooth too, Google just has not enabled it yet.

Screen and Speaker

After returning to my Dell Latitude E6400 while I worked on the Cr-48’s 3G, my first comment was, “wow, everything is so giant and hideous!” No, the Cr-48 screen is not that good, but after using a WXGA screen on a 12 inch notebook for a day, using a WXGA screen on 14 inch notebook every thing looked so huge and pixelly. Well that and my E6400 screen is just that bad.
But one thing both notebooks have in common is a matte display. I cannot thank Google enough for including a matte screen on the Cr-48. I was afraid they had gone the way of the dodo. I really hope manufactures will take note of this realize super glossy screens are not best for everything.
As far as the actual screen quality goes I really do not know what to say. It is defaintly better than the average screen found in budget computers, but is nothing great either. Viewing angles are average for a laptop display. All in all it gets the job done.

The same can pretty much be said for the speakers. They are located on the front sides of the laptop. They do not get terribly, but loud enough to watch YouTube video with a couple friends. I would be bring a pair of headphones along if you plan on listening to Pandora.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Leave it to Google to reinvent the keyboard. Capslock? Gone. Function keys? Gone. Search button? Hello! Browser buttons? You bet! Google has redesigned the QWERTY keyboard for the web. Capslock is now search and the function keys are now shortcuts. The search key will open a new tab with Google search ready to go. Across the top you will find, back, forward, reload, fullscreen, switch windows, brightness down, brightness up, mute, volume down, volume up, and power.
The actually keyboard follows the chiclet trend. It is very comfort able to type on and has little to no flex.



The trackpad. Historically, button-less trackpads have not work gone over or worked very well (possibly excluding Macbooks). Sadly, the Cr-48 is not an exception. The trackpad is pretty pitiful. And trust me, as someone coming from a Latitude E6400 that is saying something. If being slow and lagging were not enough, right-clicking in near impossible. Theoretically you just tap two fingers to right click, but it usually takes me three of four attempts before I get it right--and I am getting better! Two finger scroll is no better, and I find myself using the arrow keys to scroll most of the time.
The question becomes then is there any hope? That is , is it a driver issue, poor hardware, or both. Who knows. I read somewhere that the Cr-48 uses a Synaptics trackpad. If true that gives me hope new drivers will fix the touchpad down the road. Fingers crossed.

Performance

I honestly would not even have a clue how to go about benchmarking this machine, so consider all the “performance” section to be very unscientific observations.
Boot time is pretty great but standby time is amazing. I timed my Cr-48 at taking 14.4 seconds to get to the login screen. Not bad, but not the 10 seconds Google was aiming for. Coming out of standby though is instant. No joke, I mean it is instant. It is so fast I was skeptical that the machine was even in standby at first. Absolutely amazing.
When it comes to rendering webpages it feels just a little slower than Chrome on my Windows PC. I chalk most of that up to the difference of a Atom vs. Core 2 Duo processor when rendering pages.
Speaking of the processor, Google Chrome has an occasionally hickup, but it rarely feels slow. The one thing that seems to slow it down is Flash. That said, I have not used much Flash sense getting my Cr-48, but the few videos I watched played just fine.

Heat and Noise

Again, this is not very scientific, but the Cr-48 runs fairly cool. I am using it in my lap now without any discomfort. It is just slightly warm on the bottom from being on for two hours straight. The only thing that has caused to heat up even the least is watching Flash videos--

Which also happen to be the only thing so far to cause the fan to kick in. Well, I should say to speed up enough to be noticeable. I believe the fan is actually running now, but I would not know it if it were not for the fact that the area around the vent was cool. It is extremely quiet. Even when playing Flash videos the fan was still quieter than my previous notebooks (Latitude E6400 and XPS M1330) were with the fan on its lowest setting. This is by far the quietest notebook I have ever owned.

Battery Life

As you may have read, it is hard to gage just how good the battery life is on the Cr-48 since you can not run battery tests because it goes into standby after 3 minutes of inactivity. That said, after two hours of constant use, the battery has dropped from 100% to 75%. That puts Google’s estimate of 8 hours spot on. A manufacture giving real life battery times? I know, it is crazy.


Conclusion

When I signed up to request a Cr-48 the last question on the form was whether of not I would use Chrome OS as my primary OS if I received a Cr-48. I said yes. Having used the Cr-48 for 24 hours, I have found little reason to believe that I could not. The only real deal breaker on the hardware front so has been the trackpad. And truth be told, while it is bad, it is not that much worse than the one I have been using on my Latitude E6400. With time I will likely adapt to it and its faults. On the software side, I was already using Chrome for 95% of my computer use. The other 5% being typing papers in Word and syncing my iPod. Seeing has how I have written this whole review in Google Docs on my Cr-48, I clearly do not have to use Word. My iPod however will still require Windows, but honestly I hate syncing my iPod and only do it when ever Apple releases an update. That said, I plan on using Chrome OS and the Cr-48 as my primary computer when I start the spring semester in a few weeks. Will I make it? Time will tell. And if I do not, well Google gave me a free notebook, so I am not going to complain.

Pros

• Well built
• Fast boot

Cons

• Few ports
• Terrible trackpad

Comparison shots:
Dell Latitude E6400 (left), Dell XPS M1330 (right), Cr-48 (bottom)

M1330 & Cr-48



E6400 & Cr-48

 

Thanks for the review. Here are some impressions:

-I like the idea of having full powered usb during power off and standby. Like you said that would be great for charging ipods, etc...
-Too bad that you had that much trouble getting 3G activated.


Good luck using it for the Spring semester. Hope it works out for you and let us know how it works out. And it would be cool if you took some comparison photos with your dell m1330.

 

Can do. I'll try and do a photo shoot in the morning.

 

Added pictures. For what it's worth, I was unable to upload photos from the SD card so I had to use Windows. But Google did have the UI in place for it, it just was not working yet. Hopefully future update will fix that.

 

Those are some good pictures. The laptop looks very simple and doesn't stand out at all. And it's a bit thinner than an m1330. I wonder if the other cr48 users are experiencing the same bugs as you are.

I wonder how you would be able boot up chrome os without a wireless internet connection?

 

The Cr-48 comes in at .9 inches and the M1330 at .87 at its thinnest, so yeah they are roughly the same (although the M1330 has a wedge shape so it is 1.3 inches at it's thickest).

I am curious about that myself. Based on the reaction of the Verizon tech, most of the people stuck in the "3G loop," as they were calling it, only have to manually activate the modem, not manually reset and activate.

Simply put, you cannot. I remember reading that was one of the complaints in the early reviews of the Cr-48. Also, having running a few Chromium OS builds on various laptops before getting the Cr-48 I discovered there was no way to get past the connect wireless screen on setup which proved a problem since my wireless drivers were not supported. But, it is only the setup that requires wireless connection before boot, so it should only be a one time issue.

 

Anti-glare is a good call for a wireless device. If they want you to use it outdoors, glossy would be a no-go. I like the WXGA on a 12" screen: that's what my m3200 had. Have you tried the VGA to see if it can run a higher resolution?

ZD-Net has a complete tear-down with specs included.

 

Forgot to mention that in my review. Setting up an external display in Chrome OS maybe the simplest of any OS I have ever used. Plug in the cable and press control + full screen and bam, you're setup. Best I could tell Chrome OS had detected the right resolution and everything (it was a SXGA, so yes you can go higher than WXGA). The downside though is the lack of control over external displays. As far as I know there is no display settings, so if Chrome OS doesn't get it right you're stuck. Also there is not extend desktop (yet). But to be a very early beta and to be so simple to setup I was very impressed.

 

I didn't get one from Google, so I purchased one on ebay, wasn't cheap for a free laptop anyways.

I actually really like the minimal design and lack of branding. I was wondering if anyone knew who manufactured these laptops?

Also, will the laptop continue to be supported in the future? I assume it'll get updated as the Chrome OS is updated?

 

It was made by Inventec, one of the major ODMs that manufactures many HP and Toshiba, and Acer laptops, among others.

 

I never noticed this thread down here! I received my CR-48 almost a year to the day. I love it and think the machine is sexy as hell. Soft touch finish throughout, great keyboard, nice matte screen. Left her on standby,unplugged. Flew to Germany and back. Walked in my home, opened the cover and boom, i'm surfing...so cool. Google has been hooking me up! This free lappy and the awesome free google music cloud storage. I have almost 8,000 songs on their cloud and i am at less than 40% capacity. All this for a grand total of zero dollars. Whats next google!?