Are Budget Chromebooks Still Worth It? By Chrome Unboxed

In, the era of pixel slates and pixel books and fancy detachable Chromebooks you'd be forgiven for forgetting all about the low end of the Chromebook market, the affordable, Chromebooks, the ones that are two and three hundred dollars. But we can't forget them because, ultimately, what's really driving Chromebook sales still to this day is the education sector and schools. They have to buy Chromebooks and mass volumes. Hundreds and thousands, even sometimes in a single purchase, they're gonna, be very concerned with how much a Chromebook costs, and they're not going to go buy a six or $700 Chromebook, 100 or 200 or 500 times for students just to beat the snot out of, and so manufacturers continually have to make decent Chromebooks for very little money. And so we want to talk about two of those that are on offer right now, and one is really at the far end of the affordability scale, and that is the Asus Chromebook C 223. And then you have a sirs Chromebook, flip 11, which does come in an education model.

The one we have is the consumer model of the exact same Chromebook. We're going to take a look at both of these devices and just kind of see what they bring to the table for such a little amount of money. So the first one we're going to talk about is the Asus C, 223 and Asus sent this over not too long ago, and it just went on sale, I want to say two months ago, and it's the one we got is kind of interesting, it's red as you can see, and it's its pretty cool looking, and it's really, really light. But really neither one of these devices is too much different from any other apollo like device that we've seen, and we haven't reviewed a ton of them because they kind of all feel the same, and that's kind of the case with this do at this Asus. Now.

The big reason that we want to talk about this one is because of its price I mean it's two hundred and thirty dollars brand-new right now, if you go to Best, Buy I'm sure you'll probably be able to find it on sale, and I'm sure education markets that are buying it and volume are getting it even cheaper than that. Now, that's not to say that it doesn't come across in the use of this device. It's got an ok keyboard and an okay trackpad, and it's kind of flimsy and has big bezels and there's no touchscreen, and it's just a clamshell, but it's light, and it's cheap. It's run in the Apollo Lake 3350. So it's a dual-core processor, four gigs of ram 32 gigs of internal stories.

You've heard all of this stuff before the ports are kind of exactly what you'd expect a couple: USB a USB-C and an SD card slot. None of this is surprising. It's all kind of the same stuff. The only place where the Asus falls apart for me is the display. It's honestly the worst display I've seen on a Chromebook since the Acer c720, which is one of the first Chromebooks honestly, and it is a super cheap panel, so cheap that it even at eleven point six inches 1366 by 768 I couldn't find an angle where it all looked the same color if you're reviewing just like a solid color or something.

So if it was all white or all black on the screen, there was no angle. I could get the device to see the entire screen at the same color. The viewing angles are that narrow. You literally can't see everything the right way in one viewing and while that's a turn-off to general consumers or someone that's going to go, spend a few hundred dollars on a Chromebook. When we start talking about education devices- or you start talking about having your kids around the house- and you just want to give them a beater device that they can.

You know, beat up, and you're not worried about it. This kind of works, it's light. It's super portable you're gonna, get that nice eight nine-hour battery life out of it and honestly, kids, don't really care that much about the screen, and so it gets the job done it moves around as fast as any other Apollo Lake device does, and especially in the red color. It actually kind of looks cool doing it, though the second device we're talking about is the Acer Chromebook spin 11, so there's actually a version of this for the education market. That's got kind of the bumpers and stuff like that on this one's.

Actually, the consumer version of the exact same device same internals here, 3350 Apollo, Lake, four gigs of ram 32, gigs of internal storage, same port selection, all the same stuff again that we've seen countless times on Chromebooks, but this one brings a couple other things to the table, and it's reflected in the price a little. So this one's about 380, bucks right now and so again, you're going to see sales and that kind of stuff on these, and so you may get it for 350 340. Maybe you know like three twenty-five or something like that and there's not a ton of Chromebooks in that price range that bring this much to the table. It's not the best performer it doesn't. It doesn't move along any faster than any other Apollo like Chromebooks, so you're not going to get a ton of speed out of the thing, but what it does bring to the table.

A couple unique things for a device in this price range, so one its convertible. So you can flip it all the way around in tablet mode. Now, don't think it's going to replace the tablet. It's super chunky, and it's in its heavy, and it's an 11.6 inch 16 by 9 1366 by 768 display. However, it is an IPS display, so the viewing angles are pretty good.

In general, the colors aren't that bad, it's a little grainy, because it's a low resolution device and the bezels are pretty huge, but it also comes with this guy in the box. In most places you get. It actually comes with a little case too. So there's a couple little extras you get in there. It's a full size like feels like a pencil stylus, and it works.

It's EMR. Furthermore, it works with any EMR equipped, stylist Chromebook, so any of the Samsung devices or anything that has a garage stylus, is going to work with this pen, and it pretty well feels pretty good the only times it doesn't is when it's blagging a little because of the processors, not that fast. But if you look at this compared to what's on offer from Asus, you get a little better typing experience a little better trackpad a much better screen. You get a convertible form factor, and you get a pen in the box, and so there are some additions here. Internally, speed, wise resolution, wise same exact device same base board, but here you get a 360.

You get a pen, you get some extra stuff in there for your price, it's still affordable. It's still cheaper than almost any other thing that you can get your hands on, and you're going to feel that you're going to see that in the way it looks, but it kind of looks unique: it's not an ugly device and so for the price. It's its a pretty decent, so in the end, specs and form factors and all that kind of stuff it all comes down to. Should you purchase one of these things and, interestingly enough, when we talk about purchasing decisions when we're talking at the high end, it's easier to really break things down and decide? This is good and this is bad and this works, and this doesn't and for you and for you and for you this would be good. This would be bad all that kind of stuff when it's expensive, but when it's cheap, it's just a different conversation, because it's not that much money, and so we could just overlook so many things so with the Asus, and it's terrible screen.

It's not that hard to overlook it at 230 bucks granted with the sir with the spin you get up until a little more money, and so you start thinking well. Is this really worth buying, especially when devices like ASUS is very fantastic? See 302 is available for about a hundred bucks more for about the same price. You can get hold of the Acer r 13, which is an arm powered convertible device that have pen input. The r11 from Acer is $100, cheaper, same screen, pretty much keyboard typing. All that stuff 360 just doesn't have pen input, so is $100 worth pen input.

There's some interesting questions that surround those things, but you also have to ask yourself who you would be buying this thing for, if you're, not an educator, and you're, just looking for a cheap Chromebook? How cheap are you willing to go? How much are you willing to sacrifice, and are you ok with a terrible screen or a terrible keyboard if it's just a device that a 5 or 6-year-olds going to be looking at ABC, Mouse or Disney Channel, or watching some YouTube videos on those questions? I can't answer for you, but I can tell you at their respective price points. Both of these devices are pretty good, buys to be honest with you. I would have a little harder time spending money on the Chromebooks spin at this point, because some older, better devices are coming down in price and some the ones that are below it. Like I said they are 11 are so much lower in price at $100, less I, don't know that missing the stylus input would be that big of a deal to get a very comparable device. So hopefully guys this has helped.

You make a purchasing decision on one of these things. If you liked the video give it a thumbs up, hit that subscribe button down below and until next time, we'll see.

Source : Chrome Unboxed