Chromebooks may not be the most powerful laptops on the market, but they’re excellent options for students, casual home users, and mobile professionals. With Chrome OS, you can run Android apps, as well as access GSuite programs like Docs, Sheets, and Google Drive to save your projects automatically to the cloud.
And even though Chromebooks are some of the most affordable laptops available, we’ve still scoured the internet for discounts, bundles, and trade-in deals to help you save even more.
We picked models from top brands like Samsung, HP, and Acer to help you find a Chromebook that fits both your budget and needs, especially with the holiday season upon us.
Black Friday and Cyber Monday were great times to pick up a deals on Chromebooks, but we searched the web to find the best bargains and deals still available now during the holidays.
Latest Chromebook holiday deals
Best Chromebook holiday deals
There are many different kinds of Chromebook out there that could be the perfect machine for you. Now that holiday deals are in full force, steep discounts means that you can snag a bargain on a new Chromebook.
Our top picks and the best holiday deals available are below.
- Current price: $100
- Original price: $550
Samsung is offering the Galaxy Chromebook 2 360 for just with an eligible trade-in. And if you’re an educator, first responder, government employee, or active or former military, you can save an extra 10% with Samsung’s Offer Programs.
The Chromebook features a 13.3-inch FHD QLED display and is equipped with an Intel Celeron processor, 64GB of storage, and either 4GB or 8GB RAM. While it probably won’t replace your work machine, it’s still got plenty of power and space for everyday tasks.
The 13-hour battery also lets you stream, web browse, and work all day without needing to recharge.
- Current price: $299
- Original price: $429
Before Black Friday, this Chromebook was selling for its original price of $429. But since the biggest sales day of the year, the price has fluctuated to its current price of $299 — that’s $130 off.
The Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i doubles as a tablet and a laptop with its 13-inch FHD touchscreen. With 8GB of RAM memory and an Intel Core i3 processor, speed won’t be an issue while you polish up school work and stream your favorite shows.
- Current Price: $129
- Original Price: $250
The Asus Chromebook C203XA has a 48% discount this holiday season, so you can get it for just $129. The 11.6-inch HD display with anti-glare is more than enough for you to have multiple tabs open at once. Additionally, the laptop’s rugged design is perfect for student slinging it around in a backpack everyday.
This Chromebook rarely sees a price as low as this, and the last time it did, the deal only lasted a week. So, make sure you take advantage of this deal for 48% off before it ends.
- Current price: $186
- Original price: $250
The Acer Chromebook 311 is an excellent choice for students and professionals working from home, especially if you’re looking for a convertible machine.
While you can’t upgrade the 64GB storage drive yourself, you can expand your internal storage with microSD cards for working on larger files like photos and videos. The Chromebook also has 2 USB-C ports for faster data transfers than USB 3.0 and for charging the laptop, an Intel Celeron processor, and 4GB RAM.
But with the 10-hour battery life, you won’t be worrying about topping up your laptop throughout the day. It even has Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity for setting up wireless peripherals like headsets, mice, and speakers.
More Chromebook holiday deals
Other Chromebook options include:
The main difference between the two is what kind of operating system it runs. A Chromebook uses the ChromeOS, developed by Google, while most other laptops run either Windows or MacOS, though there are some models that are capable of running Linux.
Chromebooks are also capable of running Windows if you’re willing to do a little work yourself, but they’re really at their best when left running ChromeOS.
You should keep in mind that the ChromeOS app ecosystem, by design, is limited. Therefore, if you need to run specific software on your new Chromebook, you should check that it is compatible first.
That is a solid “no.” Chromebooks are built to be used for everyday tasks like word processing and web browsing. They simply don’t have the correct components (like a discrete GPU and tons of RAM) to support any sort of gaming.
If you’re looking for an affordable gaming laptop, you can check out our list of the best cheap gaming laptops available.
The biggest disadvantage of Chromebooks compared to other kinds of laptops is their low RAM and storage capacities. Most cap out at maybe 16GB of RAM (which is soldered in place so you can’t upgrade it yourself) and at 128GB of storage. Though many Chromebooks have permanently installed 32 or 64GB eMMC storage cards, it is possible to find models equipped with a 128GB SSD; but since their processors aren’t very powerful either, 128GB is about all they can support for storage, so you can’t really upgrade the hard drive yourself either.
However, if you’re looking for a laptop your kids can use for schoolwork or just something to be able to watch Netflix and browse the web on, they’re a perfectly suitable option.
ZDNET scoured holiday sales to find the best deals this year:
Our experts split out the best deals by retailer, brand, and category, which you can see below.
Holiday deals by retailer
Holiday deals by brand
Holiday deals by category
Here are some of the cheapest deals we found:
Cyber Monday live blog deals still available
Finally, if you’d like to see the Cyber Monday deals from our live blog:
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