What specs to look for when buying a Chromebook on Black Friday
If you're convinced about Chromebooks, there are a few things to keep in mind so you can buy the best one.
🖥 Screen - Most Chromebooks come in 11-inch and 13-inch sizes. This is excellent for portability, but some users might find it a little cramped. There are 15-inch Chromebooks, but anything much bigger than that simply doesn't exist. Of course, beyond screen size, you should also mind the display's specs. 1366x768-pixel resolution is good enough for text, but you'll want to upgrade to a FHD 1920x1080-pixel display if you want sharp images too.
💪 Processor - A Chromebook's processor is generally good enough for simple browsing. The cheaper models usually have Intel Celeron CPUs inside and 2GB or 4GB of RAM inside. However, if you're someone who keeps dozens of tabs open and loves to multitask, you should probably get a faster processor and at least 8GB of RAM. There's nothing more frustrating than a slow computer so spending a little more on the processing power is definitely considerable so your Chromebook never slows down.
🔋 Battery Life - If you're used to Windows laptops, the Chromebook battery life will seem exceptional. Even on the low end, you can usually get around 8hrs of continuous browsing. Some models can even achieve 11 hours, competing with Apple Macbooks which are famous for their great battery life. In any case, if you're going to be using your Chromebook on the go, make sure that you either have access to an outlet or that you have a good enough battery.
💰 Price - One of the things that make Chromebooks so appealing is their low cost. You can get Chromebooks for as cheap as £149. On the other end, some models cost as much as £1,000. In our opinion, it's hard to justify an expensive Chromebook, even if it does come with nice features like a touch-screen, 2-in-1 form factor, and upgraded storage. At that price point, they compete with some very nice Windows and Macbook laptops. We'd advise most people aim for a mid-range Chromebook to get the best value.
💾 Storage - A big HDD or SSD in a Chromebook tends to be overkill. Chrome OS is a lightweight operating system so Chromebooks usually only include about 32GB or 64GB of storage. As previously mentioned, they don't allow file management either. So instead, Chromebook users organize and store files on Google's cloud, known as Google Drive. By default, Google gives people 15GB of free space, but you can upgrade to more storage. It's probably worth saving money on more computer storage and springing for more cloud storage instead.
