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Notebooks Any Chromebook fans here?

Discussion in 'Hardware' started by tristanperry, 27 Dec 2020.

  1. tristanperry

    tristanperry Minimodder

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    Hi all,

    I'm looking to buy a Chromebook since I'm increasingly just using my PCSpecialist (aka Clevo/Sager) laptop for web browsing (Chrome) and Google Docs/Sheets, but it has horrible battery life.

    So ideally I'd be looking for a 11-14" Chromebook with 10+ hours of battery life, but I was wondering whether the sub-£250 ones are any good?

    As in, the last thing I'd want is to have loads of lag/slowness like you have with £250 Windows laptops (clicking to launch Word and waiting 30 seconds, for example).

    Also it's hard to find up to date information on Chromebooks. Are there any big new releases due, or any pitfalls to avoid (particularly bad makes or CPUs etc)?

    Thanks!
    Tristan
     
    tristanperry, 27 Dec 2020
    #1
  2. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    I've got an Asus C202, which cost me £179. Great battery life, clear screen, responsive, reasonable keyboard, and it's spill-proof and drop-proof. The only complaint is turning on Bluetooth drops the Wi-Fi throughput to dial-up levels - a common complaint on devices costing five times the price, and avoidable by just not using Bluetooth.
     
    Gareth Halfacree, 27 Dec 2020
    #2
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  3. sandys

    sandys Multimodder

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    I think if you have simple needs you'll be fine, I'll qualify that with the fact that I am using a w10 laptop with a dual core celeron N3350, a Coda Spirit and it runs full office with no bother, 1080p IPS screen, it cost less than £100 and is less powerful than most recent chromebooks, its only upgrade from me was an SSD, some tweaking of windows services and choosing lightweight browser with blockers for all the tracking. If it was a chromeOS I'm sure it'd be even faster, ran most media stuff on it netflix etc no bother particularly when using brave browser, only media that struggle was Sky as it uses DRM that is a bit heavy for CPU, so would have to kill every other process for that one.

    If it had a couple more threads I reckon it would be even better, spends a lot of its time with cores maxxed out.

    Windows update takes a lifetime as the CPU is so lame.
     
    sandys, 27 Dec 2020
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  4. tristanperry

    tristanperry Minimodder

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    Thanks both, looks like I'll get a Chromebook then. They do seem perfect for what I'm looking to do on them.
     
    tristanperry, 28 Dec 2020
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  5. wyx087

    wyx087 Multimodder

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    On similar topic, I've been wondering.......

    How does a Chromebook compare against old ultrabooks like my ageing 2013 Macbook Air 11inch with just 4GB of RAM and 7 years old battery?
    https://www.anandtech.com/show/7085/the-2013-macbook-air-review-13inch

    Much longer battery life? But can I run Lightroom on Chromebooks?

    I mainly only use a portable computer for web browsing, on-location quick Lightroom edits + backups and some home automation coding.
     
    wyx087, 28 Dec 2020
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