Having difficulty choosing which Chromebook fits your lifestyle? Worry no more because we're featuring a common question from our followers: “Which Chromebook should I buy?”
In this video, Peter answers a question from Adam that you all might be thinking of.
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Still not sure if Chromebook is for you? Watch our other feature videos here for Chromebook:
Transcription:
G'day there. Peter Moriarty here, answering a question for Adam today. “Which Chromebook should I buy?” Great question, Adam. Thanks very much. I'm going to post a couple of prerequisites, watching videos, under this, in the comments. I've got one video on, “What's a Chromebook?” And, “Why I returned my $5,000 MacBook Pro”, that I bought brand new. I ended up giving it back and switched to a Chromebook. And a number two, there's another video on, “What is a Chromebox?” And a Chromebox is a desktop version of Chrome or Chrome devices. That's another one you should watch there, just so I'm not repeating myself. But for this one, what kind of Chromebook should I buy? I'm going to give you some information on what are the current kind of Chromebooks that are available for you, that you might be interested in purchasing.
Chromebook started out as like an education device, right? They were cheap, they were shitty and they were kind of similar to netbooks. So if you remember, netbooks, first came out about five or six years ago, and they were very portable buy very low power and very cheap machines. Well, the first Chromebooks were very much like those. They were, lightweight, they were super cheap, like a couple hundred dollars. We're talking Australian dollars obviously. And they didn't really do very much. They were pretty low powered, so they weren't really useful as a business machine. Over time, there have continued to be education-focused, Chromebooks released, and some consumer-focused Chromebooks, but not so many consumer-focused Chromebooks. But now business Chromebooks have been released in the past three or four years, and they've been getting really, really good.
So you want to ask yourself, like with any computer purchase, “What's the result that I want?” Right? What benefit do I want? What result do I want from this device? Is this going to be my core workhorse? Am I going to be using this every day? Do I want this device to be able to be plugged into an external monitor which, you can do with Chromebooks? Or is it something that I just want to use for lightweight use sitting on the couch when I'm home from the office typing away? Do I want to use this just in a boardroom, just for meetings? Or do I want to use this when I'm traveling around, for absolutely everything? Maybe just traveling, and when I'm in the office, I've got a desktop machine that I happen to work with. So you've got different options.
Number one is, as yourself, “What do I want this device for?” In terms of the range of devices that you have available to you, you've got the really basic ones. So some of my JB Hi-Fi still sells Chromebooks books, and very basic ones at that. Now, they don't sell that many of them. I know that they sell the education, the consumer-focused ones, but not really the business-focused ones. That's because JB Hi-Fi are more interested in the higher margins of selling you an HP, or a Mac, or something else. So there aren't really very many good business-focused Chromebooks available in retailers. And the other reason for that is, Google and mostly focusing on incentivizing partners to sell Chromebooks. So that's us. We're an authorized reseller of Chromebooks. There's not, many else, of us, are focused on small businesses in Australia, and so, the best place to buy a business Chromebook is actually through a reseller partner like, itGenius, and obviously there's other partners like us as well.
You've got the very low end of the spectrum, where you can go and buy from a retailer, and that would be something that's education-focused or consumer-focused. I can't recommend any of those models, because they're pretty cheap and pretty shitty. You might buy one of those to use for your kids, or for your oldies, but you probably wouldn't ever buy it for business use. They don't have great warranties. They don't have great value for money either, and poor processors and whatnot. Okay. So which ones do you want to buy? You've got your mid-range, and then you've got the top of the line. So with your mid-range devices, they start around the five, $600 mark. And you can head along to our store, you can go to itgenius.com/store, and you can have a look at some of the devices.
Around the five to $600 mark, you get what we call an entry-level business Chromebook, which is pretty good. And those devices are going to be good for your day-to-day use. What I use to measure how effective a machine is, or how powerful the machine is, is, how many tabs you can have open, right? So, if you have three or four tabs open at a time, and then the machine starts to slow down, that's probably okay for a standard user, who's just going about their day-to-day work, or maybe if you're a trades business, and you've got someone going onsite, and you want them to use a Chromebook as a onsite device, that's going to be okay for that. And those mid-range machines are fine, right? You can run a couple of tabs at the same time. Up to four, five, six tabs, and it's going to run pretty well. It's going to do everything you need to do.
Chromebooks have got all the basics like audio, and Bluetooth, and Wifi and some of the new ones have USB-C. You can plug in Ethernet cables, all that kind of stuff. They all support dual screen, dual monitors, external monitors, all that kind of stuff, right? So all that stuff's fine. It comes down to the power, and then also, how long the battery life lasts. Right? So you've got those mid-range devices. We've got the consumer and education focused ones we're not going to bother with. You've got the mid-range devices which cost a little bit more. And then you've got the higher end. So a higher end starts around the eight, $900 mark and it goes above.
Now there's a couple of great machines around the eight, or $900 mark. One of those is the Asus C302CA, and I'll pop a link to that below the video here. The other one is the Acer R 13. Now, both of those devices, flip right over, and are touch screen, which is great. So you can use your finger, or you can use a stylus. But you can also affectively use them for movies. Now I happen to use my Chromebook quite a lot, because mine is my everyday device when I'm traveling, and I happened to movies on planes and whatnot. Right? So the ones that can flip over are really great for movie mode. But also they're quite powerful too. So they, the kind of machines that you're going to be able to open 10 or maybe 15 tabs at the same time, and it's not going to run out of RAM, or slow down, or burn through the processor.
The other great thing about those mid-range devices is, they actually also … We're getting into more of the higher-end here. These ones have great battery life. So we're talking five, six, seven, sometimes eight hours of battery life. Sometimes even longer, if you're doing something that's not very processor intensive. So they're wonderful. So if you're looking for something that has great battery life, spent a little bit more. Spend more in the eight, $900 range, and get, my recommendation is either the R 13, or the Asus C302. My personal preference is the Asus C302. I bought that before I bought my next Chromebook, which is the final range to talk about. And that's the ridiculously overpriced range.
There's two, in the ridiculously overpriced range. One of those is the HP 13, which is about 12, $1,300, which is completely silly for Chromebook. It doesn't flip over. It doesn't even have a touchscreen, so I don't know why you would buy that. That's just HP being expensive. But also in the $1,300 arena is the Google Pixelbook. And this is a really, really brilliant machine. You can say this one's all stickered up, because I like that. This one's great. So it does the flip over thing. So you can flip it straight over. You can pay an extra hundred bucks, or so, and get a pretty cool stylus for it, which I use to just draw pictures. There's not really that much else, that I use it for, because I'd prefer to type notes, rather than hand write notes. But this is a really, really great machine.
It's a bit more powerful, but you sacrifice battery life. So this one will be able to open in 20, 25 tabs at a time before it starts to slow down I can really, really push it hard, just like I used to do with MacBook Pros. However, the battery life is only about five or six hours. Whereas the mid-range ones that I talked about, the R 13 and the Asus C302, those ones are both going to last eight to 10 hours are on the battery. Whereas the Google Pixelbook, for me, it's only lasting about five or six hours.
That's great for a device that's $1,300, that's fully integrated with the Google ecosystem, that has all the other benefits of chrome devices, which you can check out in the other videos, but you've got a bit of a trade off there. So if you want something that's super simple for the boardroom, or for staff, or for someone out on the road, or if you're buying your very first Chromebook, and you just want to dip your toe in the water, jump on a store, spend five, 600 bucks. Get one of the more basic Chromebooks that will do the basics there. Or, if you'd like some help, you can always chat to our concierge team, and they'll help to recommend a model for you.
If you want one for your day-to-day business work and battery life is absolutely critical for you, if you spending most of your day on the road, then I'd go for the R 13 or the Asus C302. If you want top of the line and you'd really prefer something that's a little bit beefier, maybe you want to use it as your all the time device. So you want to come to the office, stick it into a docking station, plug in your monitor, and just keep working. You don't want to have to switch between multiple machines, then you might consider picking up a pixel book. We don't sell these, unfortunately, so the best place to grab those, is on Amazon. You can only buy those from Google direct, as they are deemed a consumer device by Google, which is completely stupid. But anyway, that's how Google thinks sometimes.
Anyway, any questions pop them below. I'll be very happy to answer them. Adam, I hope this has answered your question, “What is the perfect Chromebook to buy?” If you would like help, choosing a model, please get in touch with our team. Head along into itgenius.com, and just pop in an inquiry there, or you can email our team, [email protected], or you can always message our business Facebook page, or even message these pages, if you want. It all goes through to the team, and they'll be very happy to help you recommend the right Chromebook for you anyway. Until next time, a message me your questions, if you would like, to this page, and make sure you subscribe to PeterMoriarty.tv. I will catch you soon. Take care.
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