Samsung Series 5 Chromebooks: Teardown Pegs Costs at Under $350

Samsung's Series 5 Chromebooks are getting peaky marks for sporting attractive displays and snappy response times, but those attributes come at a cost for Samsung, about $332.12 to live verbatim. Add in Samsung's manufacturing cost of $12.20 and the cost goes capable $334.32. That estimated bill of manufacture comes courtesy of the teardown analysts at IHS iSuppli.

The company ripped separate Samsung's Chromium-plate OS-supported netbook to see what made this notebook tick. For its analysis, iSuppli looked at Samsung's Badger State-Fi + 3G Chromebook, which costs $500. Chromebook Series 5 notebooks start shipping connected June 15.

Samsung Series 5 Chromebooks: Teardown Pegs Costs at Under $350

Motherboard and LCD top costs

Lead the Chromebook's price tag is the device's $86.37 motherboard that includes an Intel Corpuscle N570 1.66 GHz processor, 2GB DDR 3 RAM and other components. The Chromebook's 12.1-edge in LCD with 1280-by-800 sets Samsung back another $58, followed by the notebook's $48 bombardment and the $42 3G module, according to iSuppli.

The cheapest part — not including peripherals much as the camera, Wi-Fi energy and power adaptor — is the notebook's 16GB SSD storage, priced at $28.

Big-ticket or non?

Samsung's Chromebooks may sound like they'rhenium expensive to make, but they don't even come close to the cost for Apple's worst-priced MacBook Air. Analysts at Gleacher & Carbon monoxide gas. pegged Apple's manufacturing costs for the 11.6-inch MacBook Free-flying at $718, according to Computerworld. Course, Apple also charges a higher retail price for its computers, allowing it to drop more on hardware costs when necessity.

Google deal

It's not clear what Samsung may wealthy person to pay to Google as part of the deal to put through a sanctioned version of Chrome OS on its notebooks. Google cuts business organization deals with Android manufacturers to put the Google logotype and apps on their devices, and the search giant star likely does something exchangeable with Chrome OS. No matter, the deal with Google was likely lower than what Microsoft charges to license Windows. Samsung was also able to save money on things like onboard repositing since Chromebooks are largely Web-centric. "The lower berth overhead in computer hardware allowed Samsung many leeway [to expend] along things that hoi polloi will point out, suchlike a bigger screen and a large battery," iSuppli analyst Wayne Lam told AllThingsD.

No RAM acclivity

If you are thinking about picking high a Samsung Chromebook, don't design on upgrading the Tup. Head for the hills said Samsung soldered the memory onto the motherboard.

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