Best Chromebooks 2022

It’s priced above consumer Chromebooks, but the Lenovo C13 Yoga is every inch a ThinkPad and a terrific 2-in-1 for businesses choosing Google Workspace. Except for being a few ounces overweight, it’s hard to knock Acer’s 14-inch, AMD Ryzen-based Chromebook Spin 514 as a versatile, affordable 2-in-1 laptop. I have been a technology journalist for almost 30 years and have covered just about every kind of computer gear—from the 386SX to 64-core processors—in my long tenure as an editor, a writer, and an advice columnist. For almost a quarter-century, I worked on the seminal, gigantic Computer Shopper magazine , aka the phone book for PC buyers, and the nemesis of every postal delivery person.

HP took all the guesswork out of which color to buy and just made the Dragonfly in the best one. As previously mentioned, the pen can be removed at the point of order if you don’t want it and the power adapter can be upgraded to a 65W unit.

The Best Chromebook Deals This Week*

The Dell XPS 13 is thin and light, and it has long battery life, a great keyboard, a reliable trackpad, and a spacious screen. When we hear a laptop is incredibly thin and light, it makes us worry about how long it will last on a single charge. That’s not the case here, as the 2-pound Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Nano lasted 12 hours on our battery test, which puts it up there against some of the very best laptops on the market today. And that’s quite impressive when you remember that the 2.9-pound XPS 13 is almost a whole pound heavier.

The fact you’re getting a ChromeOS laptop and an Android tablet in one affordable package is just the start really – and yes, the keyboard is included in the price. It looks nice, lasts a decent amount of time and has a good quality display. Full Linux app support https://quickbooks-payroll.org/ means there are a lot of full desktop apps available. A catch here is these Chrome OS laptops come with both ARM-based as well as x96 CPUs. Therefore, some of these apps may not work as expected, or at all, depending upon the CPU architecture used in your device.

What’s the difference between a Chromebook and a laptop?

The 2-in-1 range is called x360 just like HP’s laptop offerings, and HP simply uses the “Detachable” tag for the detachable. Chromebooks have been widely adopted and, as a result, more or less every mainstream PC manufacturer makes them. All the big laptop makers like Asus, HP, Acer, Dell, and Lenovo have their own lineups of Chrome OS laptops. Many companies offer Chrome OS equivalents of some of their laptop offerings as well. There are also Chromebook offerings available from some lesser-known brands, mostly on the lower end of the market. Google itself also has its Pixelbook lineup, in case you want that Pixel-like experience with Chrome OS.

For example, if you’ll be using your device for school, you’ll need to make sure it has plenty of battery life, is budget-friendly, and has enough RAM to power your school-specific apps. If you need one for work, you might be more open to premium Chromebooks that offer better specs. As a result, your main consideration when buying a Chromebook for a child is not how powerful the machine is, but what kind of physical features it has. Somewhat ironically, the younger your child is, the more features he or she might need. That’s because younger students are typically the target audience for augmented reality or drawing apps that require multiple cameras, touch screens, and digital pens.

Best all-around Chromebook

The battery life for video playback is outstanding, lasting long enough to get you through at least a couple of movies and TV show episodes. Unfortunately, the display looks washed out and doesn’t get bright enough to overcome glare in well-lit settings. Also, while the speakers sound decent overall, they don’t get very loud. Many schools use Chromebooks because they are relatively inexpensive and easy to use. Chromebooks also offer a variety of features that can be beneficial for students, such as the ability to access Google apps and tools. Chromebooks are also generally considered to be more durable than other types of laptops, which is another reason why they are often chosen for use in schools. 11.6 inches is the standard size for Chromebooks — education and regular — because it’s small enough to be easily portable while still being big enough to get your work done on.

• All in all, Chromebooks can be a great option for those looking for an affordable and easy-to-use laptop.
• Aside from the flaky touchpad, the biggest disadvantages — only 16GB of SSD storage, an operating system largely limited to Google’s own ecosystem — are part of what makes a Chromebook a Chromebook.
• We’ve evaluated the pros and cons of each laptop based on specs, the comfort and practicality of their keyboard and screen, battery life and also value for money.
• On-processor graphics with shared video memory give you great image quality while surfing the internet, all while handling basic photo editing and casual gaming.
• Huawei delivers that with the MateBook 14s, and a very nice screen it is too.
• You can use Microsoft Word on a Chromebook, but the online version only.
• Both Windows 10 and Chrome are great for working in side-by-side windows.

Nor do you need capacious hard drives to house tons of video files when you’re using Google Docs and streaming multimedia content from the internet. Wildly popular in K-12 21 Pros And Cons Of Chromebook Laptops classrooms, they’ve also made inroads in corporate offices for their easy manageability. We’ve listed some of our favorite Chromebooks in different categories below.

Best Durable Chromebook for Smaller Kids

Chrome OS updates also take just seconds to complete, rather than the minutes or hours you may have to wait formacOSandWindowsto do their update thing. It’s a terrific all-around option for students, families, and kids. Starting at $199, this machine is a well-built PC with solid performance, great sound and a slick purple design. Then, there’s the $219Lenovo Ideapad 120S, which features an attractive 2.4-pound design, a decent keyboard and more than 8 hours of endurance. In the newest version of Chrome OS, the Start-like button sits in the bottom-left corner. When pressed, the launcher pop-up features a Google search bar and a list of your most recently opened apps.

Pressing the Start button reveals the new Start menu, filled with your most used programs and recently installed apps on the left. To the right is a wider panel, where you can pin tiles that are animated with updates.

Chromebooks Gain Video Editing Ability Directly via Google Photos

Chromebooks are popular for their cloud-based options, but you can use them with offline apps. Google Drive can also easily be used offline and will update when you connect again. Other important features include a memory card reader and a plethora of ports including USB-C, DisplayPort, Ethernet, and HDMI. The Google Enterprise plan can also help make sure the important cloud data stays safe regardless of when or where people access it. You can also customize a number of these specs to tailor the Latitude toward specific workplaces or projects you may have in mind. Under the hood, the Asus Chromebook Flip C436 includes a 10th-gen Core i3 processor, which is plenty of power for Chrome OS. The one competitor to this Asus is the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook. It’s even sleeker than the Flip C436, but it upgrades the display up to 4K if you are willing to pay for such an advanced Chrome OS device — we like the Flip’s mix of high-end features with a somewhat lower price.

If you want to treat yourself to a truly premium Windows laptop for writing, then the Surface Laptop Studio fits the bill. The Flip C436 comes with a magnesium-alloy chassis with a dual-tapered design. It also includes a 360-degree hinge that holds the display securely at any angle, making it possible to use it in laptop, tent, stand or tablet mode.

We may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site. Instead, we recommend spending $400 or less on a kid’s Chromebook. That amount should get you at least 4GB of memory and at least 32GB of storage space.

As we touched on earlier, running Windows opens businesses up to nearly all major software packages, should they need specialised software. Windows is the most ubiquitous OS in the world and the best things are often built for the bigger market.

Big-screen convertibles are always overweight for tablet use, but that and a punk webcam are the only things about the Asus we don’t like. It’s a well-equipped, value-priced alternative to a low-end to midrange Windows laptop for older kids. Obviously there are faster and fancier Chromebooks with bigger, better screens (the Dell’s 1,366-by-768-pixel resolution isn’t much). But the 3100’s rugged construction and low cost make it a splendid pick as a child’s first laptop. If your child needs one for schoolwork or playtime, here’s help with the specs, the features, and everything else you need to know before you buy. Sign up for Lab Report to get the latest reviews and top product advice delivered right to your inbox. If you’ll need to give presentations from your Chromebook, look for a video output port, such as HDMI, that matches what displays you will have at your disposal.

Considering that it costs less than $500, the Duet 5’s display puts even Microsoft’s ritzy Surface Pro 8 Windows tablet to shame. It makes up for the facts that its Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU isn’t the fastest and Lenovo charges an extra $33 for a stylus .

Asus Chromebook CX1101: Performance

The HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook is no longer the only Chromebook with a 12th Gen Intel CPU, but the crowd is hardly packed. As such, when I say that we haven’t seen a Chromebook before with this type of performance, it’s really true. Our review unit came with the Intel Core i5-1245U. This is a 10-core CPU made up of two performance cores and eight efficiency cores. It has a base TDP of 15W, but will turbo, and HP’s cooling for it channels air out of the laptop at the back in the hinge area. Most of the time it runs pretty cool and quiet, making the most of those efficiency cores.

We can’t run the GPU compute test because Geekbench doesn’t support the proper graphics API. However, we don’t expect the integrated graphics on either processor to perform well in computational workloads. The colors look good, but darker shades blend together because the image is underexposed. It loses most of the fine details, but they aren’t completely gone. The microphone sounds quiet, with a static-like noise that may be annoying to some. The privacy cover is a physical barrier that covers the camera.