Samsung’s new Chromebook Pro and Chromebook Plus look great on the outside, and after torture testing the Chromebook Plus for a bit, a faculty member at Riverdale Country School opened up both models to show that the insides look pretty good as well. The two are very much alike, with a number of small differences on the surface. While the Chromebook Pro is designed with efficient cooling for the powerful x86 processor in mind, the Chromebook Plus favors a more compact and stout design. This can be seen most prominently in the heat sinks directly above the two Chromebooks’ large batteries, as well as how the two circuit boards inside of them are secured and linked.
Both Chromebooks feature left and right boards, with the right being the mainboard. On those mainboards, you’ll find a few ribbon cables, but mostly everything is concealed beneath the heat sinks. Sadly, the video does not go under the heat sinks. The Chromebook Pro is the one on the left, and it’s not terribly hard to tell; the heat sink takes up a larger surface area. It’s only natural, of course, that an x86 system would have a bigger main space and more cooling than an ARM based system. The Chromebook Pro uses an Intel Core M processor, while the Chromebook Plus uses one of Samsung’s own Exynos processors. It is quite likely that the similarities between the two systems end underneath those heat sinks.
Another thing that’s pretty likely is that the Chromebook Pro would handle the torture test that the person behind the video put the Chromebook Plus through a bit differently because of its different build. The educator not only gave the Chromebook Plus a drop test in multiple configurations and from multiple angles, but torture tested it by walking on the closed lid, taking care to dig his heel into the center of the upper enclosure for the screen. The Chromebook Plus passed with flying colors; the screen survived, and the user-facing parts of the chassis suffered almost no damage. There was minimal chipping and scuffing elsewhere. While the Samsung Chromebook Plus is not marketed as being rugged, it can certainly take a beating, and it owes at least part of that to the clever internal arrangement shown in this video. No such testing was conducted on the Samsung Chromebook Pro, but similar performance could likely be expected when it comes to outer damage. Inner components acting up due to damaged or loosened connections, however, may be a different story.