r/chromeos • u/AutomaticWar2640 • 7d ago

Buying Advice Best Chromebook to buy right now??

Hey everyone,
I’m looking to pick up a Chromebook but there’s so many out there that I’m not sure which one is actually worth it. I don’t need anything crazy, just something that runs smooth for school, work, and maybe some Netflix on the side.

Are there certain models that stand out as the best Chromebook to buy? I’ve seen everything from Lenovo to Acer to Dell, but it’s hard to figure out which one gives the best value.

Any advice or recs would be very helpful! If you’ve bought one recently, what’s been your experience?

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u/AutomaticWar2640 7d ago

Thanks! I don’t have much savings, so I just want to make sure I buy something that’s really worth it and good value for money.

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u/jader242 7d ago edited 7d ago

Hey as somebody else who doesn’t have much savings, you’re going to find a lot of people recommending 8gb ram devices that cost $400+ (which is crazy for a Chromebook in my opinion, you can get a used thinkpad for less and it will do so much more). What my broke ass ended up doing was waiting for a Best Buy sale and I picked up a brand new acer cb315 (n6000 model 4gb/128gb) for $120 out the door. It only having 4gb of ram only impacts the android side of things tbh, which was pretty unusable. Also the Google play services were eating up 50-75% of the ram at all times, even when idle, which lead to all around performance being pretty bad (I think this is where everyone gets the idea that 4gb models are unusable). But after turning off Google play the ram usage is comfortably around 15% when idle, and stays with around 1gb free when doing heavy tasks (multiple tabs, YouTube video in background, multiple Linux apps running) and the performance is solid. I also dual boot Linux mint when I need to get stuff done that’s not possible on chromeos and even that side of things runs great