Ubuntu Powered Samsung A15 Chromebook Shows Impressive Performance

With the recent introduction of upgraded and lower priced Chromebooks from Samsung ($249) and Acer ($199), the platform may finally live up to its potential, especially now that netbooks have fallen by the wayside. Some (us included) would argue that these are the price points Chromebooks should have been selling at all along. But what about performance?

A user got his mitts on Samsung's new ARM-based A15 Chromebook, stripped it of Chrome OS, and loaded it up with Ubuntu. In doing so, he essentially unlocked a relative powerhouse in the Linux space. Before we get to some of the benchmarks, let's quickly run down the specs.


Samsung infused its 11-inch (1366x768) Chromebook with its ARM-based Exynos 5 SoC, which itself sports a 1.7GHz dual-core Cortex-A15 chip and ARM Mali-T604 graphics. Other specs include 2GB of DDR3L system memory, 16GB solid state drive (SSD), 0.3MP webcam, 3W stereo speakers, 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi, USB 3.0 and 2.0 ports, 3-in-1 memory card reader, and various other tidbits. Now, onto the fun stuff.

After the Ubuntu makeover, the user referenced above put the Chromebook through its paces using the Phoronix Test Suite. What happened next is that the Chromebook wiped the floor with the x86 and ARM comparison hardware. It slapped around a quad-core 1.4GHz Calxeda server based on ARM's Cortex A9 architecture and handily outpaced a dual-core Intel Atom D525 system.


Michael Larabel at Phoronix say he intends to run his own set of tests in the near future with "results that contain more extensive data along with power consumption metrics." In the meantime, Samsung's low-priced Chromebook looks awfully impressive.