how to find out what chromebook i have
How to buy a Chromebook: find the correct Chrome OS laptop for your needs
Chromebooks are not bad – then long as y'all purchase the right i
(Image: © Future)
Knowing how to purchase a Chromebook is more of import than ever now that the lightweight and more often than not budget-friendly laptops are seeing a huge surge in popularity.
As they accept matured, the best Chromebooks have started to really differentiate themselves depending on your needs and come loaded with some of the best processors and other hardware from industry heavyweights like Intel and AMD. You tin even find some really premium Chromebook configurations that can cost as much every bit the best Windows laptops and fifty-fifty some lower-spec MacBook models.
A Chromebook isn't right for everyone's needs and there are things that even the all-time Chromebook won't exist able to do thanks to the limitations of Chrome Bone. Whether or not you should buy a Chromebook at all is the most important question you need to inquire yourself. Just, assuming you've compared Chromebooks versus laptops and have come around to giving a Chromebook a shot, your piece of work is merely just offset.
At present the question is how do y'all know which Chromebook is right for you lot? Don't worry, we're here to evidence you how to buy a Chromebook that all-time suits your specific situation so you can get the all-time value for your investment while getting the level of operation y'all need.
- Go set up for school with the all-time pupil Chromebooks of 2021
- Check out our listing of the best 2-in-1 laptops for all our favorite convertible
- Or, you can see if one of the best laptops of 2021 is a better fit for your needs
How to buy a Chromebook: start by assessing your needs
The first step in knowing how to buy a Chromebook is to appraise what you need a Chromebook for.
If yous're a student who needs a highly portable Chromebook to take to class for note-taking or to the library for research and homework, you probable aren't going to need the almost powerful Chromebook out there, merely you're even so going to need some very specific features.
For note-takers or design students who need to take hand-written notes or sketch out work on the go, the best 2-in-1 Chromebooks will have you covered, even if they aren't the most powerful laptops around.
If you're non really all that interested in taking hand-written notes, but y'all need a larger Chromebook that'south powerful enough to multitask several browser windows at one time while typing up a newspaper in Google Docs, yous should definitely opt for Chromebooks powered by Intel Core and AMD Ryzen processors with enough memory to handle several Chrome instances at in one case.
If you're looking for a Chromebook for a young child to use for uncomplicated or middle school classwork, your main concerns will likely be price, immovability (kids can destroy just about anything with the ease and grace of Godzilla), and security features that can help yous keep them safety online.
Meanwhile, figuring out how to buy a Chromebook for business organization use is even more complicated, since y'all take well-nigh all of these same concerns just you're also going to demand it to be powerful plenty to keep everything moving efficiently considering time is money (or so I'yard told).
One time you've figured out what you demand, the chase for the right Chromebook really begins.
How much does a Chromebook cost?
Figuring out your upkeep for a Chromebook has gotten more complicated in recent years now that more than high-end products like the Samsung Milky way Chromebook ii and the Goggle Pixelbook take brought some pretty powerful hardware, flashier designs, and better quality structure to the table.
Chromebooks take historically been amongst the cheapest laptops yous could buy, and that's nevertheless the case today, but now you'll need to figure out if the Chromebook you lot want is in line with your budget, much more so than in the early years of Chromebook development when even the best models were priced on the lower end.
Yous can nevertheless notice plenty of fantabulous Chromebooks for less than $300/£300/AU$500, but the all-time Chromebooks are now edging towards $ane,000 / £1,000 / AU$one,500, which would accept been unheard of six or 7 years ago.
Picking the right processor for your Chromebook
One of the benefits of the Chrome OS is that information technology's relatively lightweight from a organization resource perspective. This means that yous tin get something approaching desktop Os levels of performance and functionality from less powerful – and generally cheaper – CPUs like those from Qualcomm or MediaTek based on ARM architecture, or Intel'south more light-duty Celeron processors.
These are still underpowered chips relative to the more than heavyweight Intel Core- or AMD Ryzen-branded processors, and even though Chrome OS does not have the kind of system overhead or app requirements that would necessitate these beefier chips, having that actress ability at your control definitely helps.
If you lot don't need that actress digital horsepower though, y'all can save a lot of coin past going with these more light-duty CPUs, which will be more than enough for web browsing, basic video streaming, and lite productivity piece of work like word processing and working with spreadsheets.
How much storage should you get?
One of the large advantages of Chrome OS is its Google Drive integration, which makes storing documents and files to the cloud much easier and without whatsoever extensive setup.
Y'all can fifty-fifty accept your Chromebook automatically salvage everything to your linked Bulldoze account and then you'll never actually have to worry about losing a document or file over again.
This also means that most Chromebooks don't prioritize storage capacity, so it'southward non unusual to see 128GB or fifty-fifty 64GB of eMMC storage on lower-finish models, which is essentially just an internal USB flash drive plugged directly into the Chromebook's motherboard.
This kind of memory isn't specially fast and it fills up quick if you're not paying attending to the size of the apps you're downloading from the Google Play shop or y'all're taking a lot of high definition photos and videos on your phone and syncing this data to the same Google Bulldoze account used by the Chromebook.
You lot do take some control over what yous sync and copy over from Google Bulldoze to your local storage, so if you're fine with managing your deject storage account and downloading things as you need them, then this much lower storage capacity might be perfectly workable.
Many midrange Chromebook models and definitely those at the higher end of the toll spectrum are definitely going to have more storage available, often going every bit high as 1TB, which for a Chromebook is more than space than only about anyone is always actually going to need.
How much retentiveness does your Chromebook demand?
Much like the quality of processor you'll need for your new Chromebook, the amount of memory is as well going to be dependent on what yous need your Chromebook to practise.
If you're looking to employ a Chromebook for bones web browsing, video streaming, and light productivity and general computing tasks, 4GB isn't unreasonable. When memory is this low in a laptop, it typically means it's soldered directly into the motherboard, and then it probably won't be expandable down the road if your apps kickoff to hang unexpectedly, if it takes also long to load upwards large documents, or if trying to do too many things at once slows your Chromebook to a crawl.
Unless y'all know you'll never need your Chromebook for more than checking your email or reading the latest TechRadar news and review on the bus in the mornings, y'all should almost always get for 8GB RAM. It normally won't toll that much more and information technology volition salvage y'all a potentially larger headache down the road.
Other considerations to consider when buying a Chromebook
Other than the issues discussed above, at that place volition exist other considerations when shopping for a new Chromebook. If you opt for a 2-in-1 Chromebook, a docked stylus is always a nice feature to accept, as is a 3:ii screen ratio.
Nearly smaller Chromebooks, those with 13- or 14-inch displays, aren't fifty-fifty going to exist full HD, instead, they'll have resolutions topping out somewhere between 720p and 1080p.
On smaller screens, you actually aren't going to be able to tell the departure, no matter what you tell yourself. With larger 15-inch or 17-inch displays, however, that lower resolution is non going to look groovy. You lot'll save money, but it might expect and feel like y'all only bought a netbook out of the early 2010s rather than a new, modern laptop.
Finally, most Chromebooks are going to be power efficient, which should translate into decent battery life. Merely Lithium-ion batteries are not cheap, broadly speaking, and then yous won't accept particularly high-capacity batteries in budget to midrange Chromebooks. You should expect half dozen to seven hours of useful battery life out of all but the nigh premium Chromebooks, then make sure y'all bring a charger along with you, just in case.
- These are the all-time Chromebooks for kids of the year so far
John (He/Him) is a Computing Staff Writer here at TechRadar and is also a programmer, gamer, activist, and Brooklyn College alum currently living in Brooklyn, NY. Named by the CTA as a CES 2020 Media Trailblazer for his scientific discipline and technology reporting, John specializes in all areas of computer science, including manufacture news, hardware reviews, PC gaming, as well as general scientific discipline writing and the social impact of the tech industry. You tin can find him online on Twitter at @thisdotjohn Currently playing: EVE Online, Sucker for Love: Offset Appointment, GTFO, Marvel's Guardians of the Milky way.
Source: https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-buy-a-chromebook
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