My son started second grade this previous September, and his college issued him an previous, beat-up Chromebook to his backpack as his first laptop computer. Unacceptable! As a tech author, I couldn’t accept what the college was providing. So, I did what any tech nerd dad would do and took my boy searching for a brand new Chromebook.
However as I shortly realized, the world of Chromebooks may be dizzying. If I used to be going to seek out the proper possibility for my child, I’d must test my very own tech data and preferences on the door.
Too many Chromebooks
For starters, there are a whole lot of Chromebooks on the market. I didn’t totally notice simply what number of there have been till I started searching for one.
The primary place I seemed was Amazon. That was a mistake. There are greater than 200 pages of Chromebooks. You get well-known names equivalent to Lenovo, Acer, and Asus. However you’ll additionally get bizarre manufacturers with names like Mighty Skins and VEIKK. I used to be definitely cautious of the Basrdis Chromebook.
Even identified manufacturers have an infinite library of machines. There have been six pages of Chromebooks for Asus, ranging in value from $57 to over $700. Samsung Chromebooks take up 17 pages on Amazon.
My native Finest Purchase had 17 Chromebooks on show.
Okay, Amazon was not understanding for me. With some steerage from our personal Chromebook critiques, I made a decision to take my son to Finest Purchase as a result of absolutely they will need to have a decent vary of first rate Chromebooks to see in individual, proper?
Because it turned out, my native Finest Purchase had 17 Chromebooks on show, straight throughout from the Home windows laptops. That’s a whole lot of Chromebooks. Their costs ranged from $200 to over $1,000. That’s higher than the 200 pages of choices on Amazon, but it surely nonetheless left me a bit overwhelmed by all of the choices.
Specs don’t inform the entire story
I walked the shows at Finest Purchase scratching my head, questioning how my very own experiences with tech would inform our resolution about this new Chromebook.
Intel Celeron! 4GB of RAM! Two-in-one! Have to be a very good deal, proper? Nicely, not essentially.
Chromebooks have the posh of not requiring a whole lot of processing energy to attain most duties, and Chrome runs surprisingly clean on a Chromebook no matter reminiscence. Go determine.
However I realized that you must take a look at the specs of a Chromebook as half of a bigger entire, slightly than as particular person numbers. What I imply is you’ll have first rate efficiency with a baseline Core i3, however what if the machine comes with a 120Hz OLED touchscreen show and no GPU? Do you suppose that tiny Tenth-gen Core i3 goes to energy every little thing you want?
That is the issue I bumped into with my son. At first, we picked up a nominally low cost Samsung Chromebook. Samsung makes various strong Chromebooks, and though this one was a bit older, however I figured it was only for college, proper? It got here with an Intel Celeron CPU, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of storage. It was an improve over the school-issued Chromebooks in seems to be, however as we found, it wasn’t fairly sufficient efficiency.
That poor CPU might barely energy the machine, and my son’s college makes use of some intensive internet pages full with animations and interactive movies. My boy needed to look forward to minutes because the video froze or lagged, whereas his classmates powered forward.
It was again to Finest Purchase for us — and this time, I used to be going to intention for one thing with a bit extra oomph.
You (often) get what you pay for
After returning that slightly ineffective Samsung Chromebook, I held my nostril and purchased a way more costly HP machine for my son. It price over $500, in comparison with the $180 I spent on the Samsung.
HP makes some nice Home windows laptops and I’ve a smooth spot for his or her design aesthetic, which it carries over to its Chromebook line. My son didn’t complain in any respect about it. It got here with an Eleventh-gen Intel i5 processor, 6GB of RAM, and 120GB of storage. The display was a regular 1080p 60Hz LED show, but it surely might fold backward and turn into a pill.
The HP seemed match for a person in a swimsuit, not a child with a Minecraft hat.
I used to be assured that I had lastly landed on the proper machine for my boy, however there was one disadvantage. This HP Chromebook was fragile. It was within the arms of a seven-year-old doing who-knows-what all day lengthy in school, and I used to be not snug with that.
Plus, the HP seemed match for a person in a swimsuit, not a child with a Minecraft hat. One night time I informed my son I needed to take the Chromebook away as a result of it wasn’t working. He shrugged. It was simply one thing he used in school and, subsequently, of no curiosity to him. As a lot because it damage my tech-loving coronary heart, it pressured me to appreciate that my hunt for the proper Chromebook for him might have been misguided from the outset.
The lesson I realized
I by no means returned the HP Chromebook. I saved it for myself. In spite of everything, I favored the machine, and Chrome OS is a pleasure to make use of on a very good laptop with first rate specs. In case you’re searching for a Chromebook, make certain to get one thing with an honest processor and sufficient RAM to deal with what you throw at it. These computer systems have come a good distance, and our expectations of them have grown.
However my son was pleased sufficient to return to utilizing the school-provided Chromebook. It’s rugged, simple for him to make use of, and will get the job accomplished. And when it comes all the way down to it, that’s actually all it must be. As a lot as we would prefer to scoff at these cumbersome, plastic laptops, possibly these college directors know what they’re doing.
I’m positive there’ll come a day when he’ll need one thing a bit extra refined — one thing that he truly enjoys utilizing. However for now, the college Chromebook is all he wanted.
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