Have all the chromebook deals dried up? I recall there being 1080p IPS ones for like $120 when the first batch of them over saturated the market. So, what should I aim for if I want a mediocre one?
I have been waiting for so long for a good deal on a chromebook for my kids. It has taken to long. I ended up finding an HP Stream 11 display model on the clearance table at Wal-Mart for $100. I hate windows 8. It didn’t come with a cord (found on ebay) and I had to factory reset it. It works great, but has a poor low-end display. But for what my young kids use it for they love it.
Just wish the really good chromebook deals didn’t dry up.
Have either of you checked Slickdeals? I think I’ve seen some mentions there recently. Be sure to search.
If you don’t see them now, you will shortly. Graduation deals and Memorial Day deals. So give it a few weeks.
After I discovered I loved my chromebook so much more than I loved any winbox I’ve owned this century, given my nasty habit of keeping like 1000’s of tabs open at a time, I decided to go for a high-end one.
I found a 2015 Pixel Chromebook and an HP G1 13" M7 intel chip one, both on Ebay. The 2015 Pixels are now collector’s items, and are way overpriced, but they are gorgeous to use. I think you can get the 2013 Pixel chromebooks for a reasonable amount of money, but I think the battery life sux in comparison to the 2015’s, and there may be other ways in which they are lacking.
The HP one doesn’t have a touchscreen, which isn’t a big deal to me. They keyboard on it is ok but I’m not in love with it - I make far more typing errors on it for some reason than I do on the Pixel, but perhaps I’m just not used to it yet.
Both of them have real chips, not cripplechips. Both of them perform like champs, even under my level of abuse.
One of the HP;'s can be had reasonably right now, here:
Tech Outlet Mall sold one to a friend who tried mine and loved it. The one he got from them was fine. And also a joy to use.
The one has:
Core m5-6Y57 Processor (1.1 GHz, 4MB Cache), 8GB, 1866 on MB, 32GB eMMC, 13.3 WLED QHD+ BV, UMA: HD 515, No Optical, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2x2); BT 4.2, TPM 1.2, TV HD webcam, Chrome OS, 3-Cell 45Whr, 1/1/0
And it runs like a real computer.
If I bought this, and I had kids in the house, I think they’d never touch it. I’d guard it jealously for me.
One extension that helps my bad habits:
Tab Suspender 0.4.8.2
It suspends inactive tabs after a certain time - perhaps 15 min or so? - so that all that background nonsense doesn’t eat up the processor.
For all I know, this extension also steals all my data - since I haven’t checked, don’t know how to particularly, and am not running a sniffer or anything. WTF. That would involve work. So can’t vouch for safety. But it does what it says it does - suspends 100’s of inactive tabs.
Google discontinued the Pixel on March 1, but it’s still a heck of a machine. You can pick them up for about $350 as retailers work through their remaining inventory.
@stickscalhoun
You can pick up the 2013 Pixel Chromebook for around that price. If you want a 2015 it’s a whole different story, everywhere I’ve looked for them.
If you know a retailer who has a 2015 in stock for less than $700, please tell us. Often these go for way over $1K.
BTW, if you find one of these 2015’s on Amazon from a storefront, for less than $700, check the storefront. If it’s a storefront with no or almost no sales ratings from previous buyers, or if it’s a storefront that wants you to “contact us first before you purchase” or similar, it’s almost certainly a scam seller. Amazon pulls these listings, but new ones keep popping up.
On Ebay expect a 2015 pixel is decent shape to go for between $800-$1600, depending on specs and how many bidders the listing gets (which varies depending on how many are listed at a given time).
What are your criteria? I’ve been shopping for Chromebooks lately and have found a lot of great deals. Don’t think I’ve seen 1080p/IPS ones worth buying for $120 though, FWIW.
I would avoid the N3050/N3060 or anything under 4gb of RAM (as a rule, but you might not care lol)
@f00l Yeah np, it’s come in pretty handy for weeding out all of the low-spect machines
I also didn’t realize how nice the new Pixel LS was until I saw this either… was hoping it’d be down to like $400 since it’s so old, but they’re still going for like $800+ on ebay haha
There’s also an enterprising individual [trying to sell] a C720/i3 for $999
@f00l Hey sorry, I never check my email so I just now saw this lol. Yeah that one is amazing from what I’ve heard, the one downside is it’s actually fairly old, so the battery isn’t quite on par with newer ones - they just spec’d the shit out of it on release, so it’s still one of the nicer ones around. Also it’s an HP lol
Right now the best current high-end Chromebooks to my knowledge are the Asus Flip C302 and the Samsung Chromebook PRO. Beautiful formfactors, great screens, good processors, amazing battery life, etc.
Here’s a video comparing the two:
The Samsung PRO isn’t out yet, they only have the underpowered ARM “plus” model currently. There are some other models worth considering if you can find them for the right price though. I’d jump on a Pixel LS in a second if it wasn’t stupid expensive.
The best of the cheap deals right now at acerrecertified ( imho ) is this 14" scratch & dent one for $170. I bought this at $130 earlier this year. The one I bought has a 1cm scrape in the finish on the bottom of the aluminum chassis.
There is a $98 15.6" one. That is the cheapest chromebook there now. Acer also sells on ebay. I haven’t checked there recently.
@sligett I ended up buying it, it just makes me sad that I missed an even better deal. I would have ended up buying a shittier one for the same price if you hadn’t posted that, but you know, it still feels like a loss.
@Fen_Star I definitely understand that feeling. Acer had a tiny desktop listed at $80 that I almost bought. Then it went up to $90, and I thought “$90, no way!” It would have been a fun system to play with at either price, but once I saw it at $80, I wouldn’t consider it at anything higher. Not that I need another computer to play with…
I absolutely love my Chromebook, it is my primary device at this point. All I basically do is surf the internet, anything for work or school I do in office 365. I bought one of those “heavy duty” ones they made for school use on eBay years ago for $110, and have used it daily ever since.
My Toshiba Chromebook 2 from Meh is still going strong as my daily driver, but my next upgrade is probably gonna be an ASUS Chromebook Flip in the same price range, since they’re much less utilitarian and plasticky.
I wish HP would put out a refresh of the original Chromebook 11 design, that’s still the most beautiful laptop I’ve ever used, but the performance couldn’t keep up.
It has a real processor, and has gotten some great reviews. Right now it’s hard to find one at a discount, but I hope within 6 months that will be more common? Perhaps $300-400 then?
I read somewhere a while back that new Chromebooks (or the new Chrome OS, reall) would be able to run most Android apps out of the box. I’m waiting for that to happen. I want a touchscreen chromebook that will run must of my android apps in addition to the chrome webstore apps.
@medz (unrelated to my orignal post) I have been thinking about the Samsung Chromebook pro as a replacement for my note 10.1 2014 which get only about an hour battery life at this point. (My original note 10.1 still gets good battery life) I was going to go for the tab S3, but it does not have a place to store the stylus. Anyway, I personally love the digitizer for a bazillion reasons. The Pro should get Android apps eventually.
Although, the Plus uses ARM, and the Pro uses Intel. The Pro is 2x as fast or something, but if you want android apps I don’t know if there will be x86 compatibility issues.
The Plus was released in Jan or Feb this year I think? In multiple reviews it was said to run apps well. But if this is a deal-breaker for you, check the reviews to be sure it’s “out of the box”, no tweaking.
Incidentally, Samsung is due soon to release a similar machine with a better processor, called the Chromebook Pro. Last Feb some reviewers got the Plus, other reviewers got the Pro. The Pro was still a bit not quite ready and a bit beta-ish and did not run android apps as smoothly as the Plus, which was already in stores. (The diff in running apps supposedly due to the need for more customization of the application base code to the processor.)
You can prob try out one of these Plus machines on display at a Best Buy.
No firm release date in the Pro. Some sites say April, but we don’t have much of April left. Some sites say Spring 2017. I expect Best Buy to push deals on the Pro hard when it finally shows up. Best Buy clearly has a big promo partnership w Samsung.
If you are getting something for your kids (not college), any decent chromebook will do.
The best source of info on deals and the quality of a given machine will prob be on slickdeals. Just run a daily search for chromebook. Read the comments. 2/3 of them are throwaways, but many can be quite informative.
If you come across as a good sale price on one, then run a search on slickdeals for that exact model. If you can find topic threads on that model, the comments may have much more info.
Re Slickdeals: there are always a few jerks. Most comments are decent.
If you are getting one for you, as a serious machine, so that you only have to boot WinSlop or other OS’s when you absolutely need to, look for chromebooks that have i- or m- processors. Such as the i3, i5, i7, m3, m5, m7. You will get a huge performance boost. Right now these exist from Acer, Lenovo, Dell, Asus, HP, Google Pixel (wonderful but not to be updated), and just about every other significant manufacturer.
Also look for 8gb or 16gb ram and at least 32gb storage, if you want a chromebook as a main machine and are concerned about it being laggy.
Then check for touchscreen and android apps if you care.
Getting that “suspend tab” extension I mentioned earlier will help a lot w performance, if you choose to trust it.
I have a touchscreen on the Pixel. So far I never use it. The pixel is from 2015. I haven’t messed w android apps on it.
The HP 13" g1 series are very nice, but no touchscreen and dunno re android apps.
I’m not running android apps on my chromebooks at present - little desire to when I have a phablet right there next to me. Eventually it might be nice.
@f00l My kid just turned 4 and she has had almost as many tablets as I have ever had. Samsung Galaxy Tab 3? Kids Edition (now dead), Kindle Fire Kids Edition, Samsung Galaxy Tab E 9.6", some crappy Leapfrog thing, a couple of cheap bag of crap tablets that didn’t last long, and it feels like 1 or 2 I’m forgetting… Need to check the charging station when I get home. We’ve shared a Windows touchscreen laptop as well as two different non-touch Chromebooks.
The Kindle Fire Kids Edition is great because there are tons of games included with the 1 year free of Amazon Freetime (or whatever) and the OS is limited to what she can get to. Enough functionality without opening it up to her to break stuff or get in trouble. The Samsung tab is great for real Google Play store apps and watching non-Amazon movies and shows. The Chromebooks have so far been a way to introduce a real keyboard and watch videos. We played a couple of games that involved the track pad and arrow keys, but nothing has been super fun for her.
I used to have a HP Touchpad with Android and Web OS, but it finally crapped out…I’ve never really bought a tablet just for me after that. I do have an Kindle Fire HD, but I really only use that for videos and watching security cameras. My work issued me a laptop as my main PC, so I no longer had a work need for tablet. (mostly taking notes and remote desktop-ing from meetings)
Wife has a kindle fire or two plus an ipad. Plus we have our Pixel phones which are the go-to for most things anyway.
The child isn’t great with the laptop track pad yet nor using a traditional mouse which is why I would like our next chromebook to be a touchscreen. I would like it to run android apps without having to do any emulator haxor stuff because there are some stupid games she likes and some productivity apps I’d like to have on the laptop.
We’re pretty saturated with gadgets, however, so I’m not looking to spend over $200. I can wait until they come down some.
I have been waiting for so long for a good deal on a chromebook for my kids. It has taken to long. I ended up finding an HP Stream 11 display model on the clearance table at Wal-Mart for $100. I hate windows 8. It didn’t come with a cord (found on ebay) and I had to factory reset it. It works great, but has a poor low-end display. But for what my young kids use it for they love it.
Just wish the really good chromebook deals didn’t dry up.
Have either of you checked Slickdeals? I think I’ve seen some mentions there recently. Be sure to search.
If you don’t see them now, you will shortly. Graduation deals and Memorial Day deals. So give it a few weeks.
After I discovered I loved my chromebook so much more than I loved any winbox I’ve owned this century, given my nasty habit of keeping like 1000’s of tabs open at a time, I decided to go for a high-end one.
I found a 2015 Pixel Chromebook and an HP G1 13" M7 intel chip one, both on Ebay. The 2015 Pixels are now collector’s items, and are way overpriced, but they are gorgeous to use. I think you can get the 2013 Pixel chromebooks for a reasonable amount of money, but I think the battery life sux in comparison to the 2015’s, and there may be other ways in which they are lacking.
The HP one doesn’t have a touchscreen, which isn’t a big deal to me. They keyboard on it is ok but I’m not in love with it - I make far more typing errors on it for some reason than I do on the Pixel, but perhaps I’m just not used to it yet.
Both of them have real chips, not cripplechips. Both of them perform like champs, even under my level of abuse.
One of the HP;'s can be had reasonably right now, here:
https://smile.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/B01EYGSM2I/ref=sr_1_3_olp?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1492992472&sr=1-3&keywords=hp+chromebook+g1+13
About $400 plus tax.
Tech Outlet Mall sold one to a friend who tried mine and loved it. The one he got from them was fine. And also a joy to use.
The one has:
Core m5-6Y57 Processor (1.1 GHz, 4MB Cache), 8GB, 1866 on MB, 32GB eMMC, 13.3 WLED QHD+ BV, UMA: HD 515, No Optical, 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac (2x2); BT 4.2, TPM 1.2, TV HD webcam, Chrome OS, 3-Cell 45Whr, 1/1/0
And it runs like a real computer.
If I bought this, and I had kids in the house, I think they’d never touch it. I’d guard it jealously for me.
One extension that helps my bad habits:
Tab Suspender 0.4.8.2
It suspends inactive tabs after a certain time - perhaps 15 min or so? - so that all that background nonsense doesn’t eat up the processor.
For all I know, this extension also steals all my data - since I haven’t checked, don’t know how to particularly, and am not running a sniffer or anything. WTF. That would involve work. So can’t vouch for safety. But it does what it says it does - suspends 100’s of inactive tabs.
Google discontinued the Pixel on March 1, but it’s still a heck of a machine. You can pick them up for about $350 as retailers work through their remaining inventory.
@stickscalhoun
You can pick up the 2013 Pixel Chromebook for around that price. If you want a 2015 it’s a whole different story, everywhere I’ve looked for them.
If you know a retailer who has a 2015 in stock for less than $700, please tell us. Often these go for way over $1K.
BTW, if you find one of these 2015’s on Amazon from a storefront, for less than $700, check the storefront. If it’s a storefront with no or almost no sales ratings from previous buyers, or if it’s a storefront that wants you to “contact us first before you purchase” or similar, it’s almost certainly a scam seller. Amazon pulls these listings, but new ones keep popping up.
On Ebay expect a 2015 pixel is decent shape to go for between $800-$1600, depending on specs and how many bidders the listing gets (which varies depending on how many are listed at a given time).
The 1080 model was for $160 It was the lower res that went for 125 (I bought both).
What are your criteria? I’ve been shopping for Chromebooks lately and have found a lot of great deals. Don’t think I’ve seen 1080p/IPS ones worth buying for $120 though, FWIW.
I would avoid the N3050/N3060 or anything under 4gb of RAM (as a rule, but you might not care lol)
Here’s a great list that I’ve been using:
https://zipso.net/chromebook-specs-comparison-table/
If you’re cool with buying from China, you can get some nicely spec’d machines for cheap from places like http://www.gearbest.com/4gb-laptop-_gear/
@Chops
Thanks for the space chart. That’s great.
@f00l Yeah np, it’s come in pretty handy for weeding out all of the low-spect machines
I also didn’t realize how nice the new Pixel LS was until I saw this either… was hoping it’d be down to like $400 since it’s so old, but they’re still going for like $800+ on ebay haha
There’s also an enterprising individual [trying to sell] a C720/i3 for $999
@Chops
Take a look at the one I mentioned in I think the 2nd post in the thread.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/ol/B01EYGSM2I/ref=mw_dp_olp?ie=UTF8&condition=all
Hp
M5
8gb
No touchscreen
? Android apps
$400. Plus tax
Tech outlet mall has been reliable so far.
@f00l Hey sorry, I never check my email so I just now saw this lol. Yeah that one is amazing from what I’ve heard, the one downside is it’s actually fairly old, so the battery isn’t quite on par with newer ones - they just spec’d the shit out of it on release, so it’s still one of the nicer ones around. Also it’s an HP lol
Right now the best current high-end Chromebooks to my knowledge are the Asus Flip C302 and the Samsung Chromebook PRO. Beautiful formfactors, great screens, good processors, amazing battery life, etc.
Here’s a video comparing the two:
The Samsung PRO isn’t out yet, they only have the underpowered ARM “plus” model currently. There are some other models worth considering if you can find them for the right price though. I’d jump on a Pixel LS in a second if it wasn’t stupid expensive.
@Chops
You can get current chromebooks with m7’s or i7’s that may well run away from both the Pro and the C302 Flip.
Dunno. Am hoping that the higher-spec’d chromebooks will start to be a “thing”, and will get way more common and way cheaper.
The best of the cheap deals right now at acerrecertified ( imho ) is this 14" scratch & dent one for $170. I bought this at $130 earlier this year. The one I bought has a 1cm scrape in the finish on the bottom of the aluminum chassis.
There is a $98 15.6" one. That is the cheapest chromebook there now. Acer also sells on ebay. I haven’t checked there recently.
@sligett That looks good, but if you bought it at $130 then I have a hard time paying $170.
@Fen_Star So if I hadn’t said that would you buy it? I have also bought at $170, and maybe at $200.
@sligett I ended up buying it, it just makes me sad that I missed an even better deal. I would have ended up buying a shittier one for the same price if you hadn’t posted that, but you know, it still feels like a loss.
@Fen_Star I definitely understand that feeling. Acer had a tiny desktop listed at $80 that I almost bought. Then it went up to $90, and I thought “$90, no way!” It would have been a fun system to play with at either price, but once I saw it at $80, I wouldn’t consider it at anything higher. Not that I need another computer to play with…
@Fen_Star Good news. I was just going thru some paperwork and - the best price I bought that model Chromebook at was $170. I totally misremembered.
I absolutely love my Chromebook, it is my primary device at this point. All I basically do is surf the internet, anything for work or school I do in office 365. I bought one of those “heavy duty” ones they made for school use on eBay years ago for $110, and have used it daily ever since.
@Fen_Star at wOOt right now.
http://computers.woot.com/plus/chromebooks-14?ref=w_gh_cp_3_wp_3
@mfladd I find those deals mostly meh.
My Toshiba Chromebook 2 from Meh is still going strong as my daily driver, but my next upgrade is probably gonna be an ASUS Chromebook Flip in the same price range, since they’re much less utilitarian and plasticky.
I wish HP would put out a refresh of the original Chromebook 11 design, that’s still the most beautiful laptop I’ve ever used, but the performance couldn’t keep up.
@trisk
Bit more $ but look at the flip c302.
It has a real processor, and has gotten some great reviews. Right now it’s hard to find one at a discount, but I hope within 6 months that will be more common? Perhaps $300-400 then?
I read somewhere a while back that new Chromebooks (or the new Chrome OS, reall) would be able to run most Android apps out of the box. I’m waiting for that to happen. I want a touchscreen chromebook that will run must of my android apps in addition to the chrome webstore apps.
@medz
You might look at Samsung’s Chromebook Plus. It does all that.
$369 at Best Buy if you have an .edu email address handy.
Otherwise close to $500.
https://slickdeals.net/f/10013064-samsung-chromebook-plus-369-tax-bestbuy-student-deals-fs?src=SiteSearchV2Algo1
@f00l How do you know if it runs android apps? is that what the “plus” means?
@medz (unrelated to my orignal post) I have been thinking about the Samsung Chromebook pro as a replacement for my note 10.1 2014 which get only about an hour battery life at this point. (My original note 10.1 still gets good battery life) I was going to go for the tab S3, but it does not have a place to store the stylus. Anyway, I personally love the digitizer for a bazillion reasons. The Pro should get Android apps eventually.
@medz I think this is the list. https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/chrome-os-systems-supporting-android-apps
Although, the Plus uses ARM, and the Pro uses Intel. The Pro is 2x as fast or something, but if you want android apps I don’t know if there will be x86 compatibility issues.
@medz
@Fen_Star
The Plus was released in Jan or Feb this year I think? In multiple reviews it was said to run apps well. But if this is a deal-breaker for you, check the reviews to be sure it’s “out of the box”, no tweaking.
Incidentally, Samsung is due soon to release a similar machine with a better processor, called the Chromebook Pro. Last Feb some reviewers got the Plus, other reviewers got the Pro. The Pro was still a bit not quite ready and a bit beta-ish and did not run android apps as smoothly as the Plus, which was already in stores. (The diff in running apps supposedly due to the need for more customization of the application base code to the processor.)
You can prob try out one of these Plus machines on display at a Best Buy.
No firm release date in the Pro. Some sites say April, but we don’t have much of April left. Some sites say Spring 2017. I expect Best Buy to push deals on the Pro hard when it finally shows up. Best Buy clearly has a big promo partnership w Samsung.
@f00l Yea, I am looking at the Pro for me and/or my mom. The cheap(ish) one was for my dad.
@Fen_Star @f00l Thanks for the info, chums. $370 is still too steep for me for another chromebook. I’ll keep that list handy for future deal sightings.
@medz
If you are getting something for your kids (not college), any decent chromebook will do.
The best source of info on deals and the quality of a given machine will prob be on slickdeals. Just run a daily search for chromebook. Read the comments. 2/3 of them are throwaways, but many can be quite informative.
If you come across as a good sale price on one, then run a search on slickdeals for that exact model. If you can find topic threads on that model, the comments may have much more info.
Re Slickdeals: there are always a few jerks. Most comments are decent.
If you are getting one for you, as a serious machine, so that you only have to boot WinSlop or other OS’s when you absolutely need to, look for chromebooks that have i- or m- processors. Such as the i3, i5, i7, m3, m5, m7. You will get a huge performance boost. Right now these exist from Acer, Lenovo, Dell, Asus, HP, Google Pixel (wonderful but not to be updated), and just about every other significant manufacturer.
Also look for 8gb or 16gb ram and at least 32gb storage, if you want a chromebook as a main machine and are concerned about it being laggy.
Then check for touchscreen and android apps if you care.
Getting that “suspend tab” extension I mentioned earlier will help a lot w performance, if you choose to trust it.
I have a touchscreen on the Pixel. So far I never use it. The pixel is from 2015. I haven’t messed w android apps on it.
The HP 13" g1 series are very nice, but no touchscreen and dunno re android apps.
I’m not running android apps on my chromebooks at present - little desire to when I have a phablet right there next to me. Eventually it might be nice.
@f00l @medz
Chrome OS Systems Supporting Android Apps.
@f00l My kid just turned 4 and she has had almost as many tablets as I have ever had. Samsung Galaxy Tab 3? Kids Edition (now dead), Kindle Fire Kids Edition, Samsung Galaxy Tab E 9.6", some crappy Leapfrog thing, a couple of cheap bag of crap tablets that didn’t last long, and it feels like 1 or 2 I’m forgetting… Need to check the charging station when I get home. We’ve shared a Windows touchscreen laptop as well as two different non-touch Chromebooks.
The Kindle Fire Kids Edition is great because there are tons of games included with the 1 year free of Amazon Freetime (or whatever) and the OS is limited to what she can get to. Enough functionality without opening it up to her to break stuff or get in trouble. The Samsung tab is great for real Google Play store apps and watching non-Amazon movies and shows. The Chromebooks have so far been a way to introduce a real keyboard and watch videos. We played a couple of games that involved the track pad and arrow keys, but nothing has been super fun for her.
I used to have a HP Touchpad with Android and Web OS, but it finally crapped out…I’ve never really bought a tablet just for me after that. I do have an Kindle Fire HD, but I really only use that for videos and watching security cameras. My work issued me a laptop as my main PC, so I no longer had a work need for tablet. (mostly taking notes and remote desktop-ing from meetings)
Wife has a kindle fire or two plus an ipad. Plus we have our Pixel phones which are the go-to for most things anyway.
The child isn’t great with the laptop track pad yet nor using a traditional mouse which is why I would like our next chromebook to be a touchscreen. I would like it to run android apps without having to do any emulator haxor stuff because there are some stupid games she likes and some productivity apps I’d like to have on the laptop.
We’re pretty saturated with gadgets, however, so I’m not looking to spend over $200. I can wait until they come down some.
@PlacidPenguin
Yeah I’ve seen that. As long as it’s mostly “pending”, I’m “pending” too.
@f00l
They’ve updated some things.
@PlacidPenguin
Have you tried it? How well does it do without a touchscreen?
@f00l
I meant they updated the list.