Chromebook Reviews

Two posts in a day–we’re on a roll! This is my first official Chromebook and my first official Chromebook review. Therefore I’ll also include my impressions of ChromeOS as it runs on this device.

After messing up my Surface Go 2 M3 (admittedly a great little machine by Microsoft), I needed an emergency machine for my work calls. My Thinkpad A485 worked as a backup, but it has a weird issue of not recognizing my camera when running on battery (I suspect it might be a hardware issue). Anyway, it was a perfect excuse to hop onto Amazon and get a device that would straight-to-the-point just work.

I got this device refurbished–I mean, “renewed”–for a cool $75.

Let’s roll out the (potato) specs:

• 11.6 inch HD screen (no touch screen, but we have to be humble at $75)
• 720p HD webcam
• 4 GB of RAM
• 32 GB eMMC of local storage (16 GB available to user)
• An ARM-based Octa-Core 2 GHz MediaTek Kompanio 500 (MT8183) processor
• Ports: 1 USB-C charging port, 1 USB-A port, a 3.5 mm headphone jack, and a Kensington-lock slot
• Connectivity: Bluetooth 4.1 and WiFi 802.11ac
• Automatic Update Expiration (AUE) date: June 2030 (points for sustainability!)

Some notes about the specs: Amazon listing inaccurately advertised my unit as an 8173c Quad-Core Mediatek when it’s an Octa-Core 8183 Mediatek.

The unit arrived in good condition and it looks like it was definitely designed for the education sector because of its spill-proof keyboard (up to 1 cup, don’t go crazy with a beer growler or the whole lemonade pitcher) and rugged edges that look like they can take a slip and fall. However, since I needed this for work, I wasn’t about to play stupid games.

Performance

First of all, a disclaimer: These are a civilian’s anecdotal impressions based on real-world use and I don’t yet have the vocabulary to run nor interpret full Geekbench specs.

My main concern was the 4 GB of RAM. 4 GB of RAM? Really, in 2024? Yes, this unit is two generations old, but mainstream Chromebooks can’t let go of this cheap 4 GB standard, even if ChromeOS is more efficiently light as it is. Google is ameliorating that by creating a “Chromebook Plus” category that requires at least 8 GB of RAM (plus other hardware requirements), but 8 GB should just be ChromeOS standard and not in the realm of full workstation prices.

However, I was pleasantly surprised by how much of a small footprint ChromeOS has. The unit booted up in about 10 seconds and I got quickly set up once I entered my Google account.

Browser performance was good, even with multiple (10+) tabs open and playing a YouTube video in the background. My video calls were also smooth and glitch-free, easily connecting to my Beats Bluetooth headphones.

Where the performance starts to suffer is when you enable Android and/or Linux apps on the device. It technically has the capability to run Android and Linux apps, but because they run in background containers (think of mini-sandboxes, at least in my understanding), the performance is noticeably slow. I opted to disable both the Google Play store and the Linux container since I wanted to see how much I could get by on ChromeOS alone. This made a significant difference in increasing performance.

Battery Life

I was aware that this Chromebook has an ARM-based Mediatek processor, and it’s precisely why I chose it. If I wanted cooked body parts, I could easily rely on my AMD Ryzen Thinkpad for that or many other Intel processors. And like I said in my first post, I’m an advocate for the underdog, and third-party options wherever they exist.

While I anticipated the Mediatek processor wouldn’t be as powerful as a recent generation Intel or AMD chip (Celeron is still the devil, and I will choose anything over it), having a fanless design and a 10-hour battery life has been absolutely worth it. I find myself using this little device more often than my larger laptop because I don’t always have to be hunting for an outlet.

Perks

Even though this unit was a refurbished device, it still came with the offer of a free one-year trial of Google One with 100 GB of Cloud storage which I was able to activate.

Because one of my jobs as an adjunct is fully integrated with Google Suite, I find ChromeOS has made my workflow so much easier. I’m less distracted by other apps when I’m doing work and I don’t have to keep redundantly logging in to other accounts since you can be logged into several Google mailboxes in one device (without having to log out of the device or browser for each one).

Apps

Literally the only app on here is the Google Chrome browser. Ok, review over (argh).

ChromeOS is designed to run web apps either in tabs or as their own PWAs (progressive web apps, which is basically the tab turned into its own app-like window).

Web apps have become more powerful and mainstream, which has helped the ChromeOS platform. However, many versions of these web apps have their limitations, so ymmv.

My experience:

• Zoom: The web app runs smoothly for 1:1 meetings, though it’s missing features like being able to see video thumbnails during share-mode as well as the ability to make annotations (Zoom srsly? I thought the education market was part of your bread and butter). Whiteboard and breakout rooms are one of the few “extras” that work. The verdict is still out for whether it will be able to handle my 20-student classroom, though it has handled a 10-person colleague meeting well, as well as smooth screen sharing with a video playing (during a 1:1).
  
• Discord: I don’t use this for work, but use the chat servers to keep up with friends and different online communities. Since Discord started as a web app, it runs well.
  
• Whatsapp: The web app is useful for when I want to type on a keyboard versus a phone and it easily syncs up my messages to my phone. However, no video calls can be done from it.
  
• Microsoft Office: The online version can be a little laggy (especially One Note), so I mostly stay within Google Docs and Keep. There is a setting to add your One Drive and Microsoft account to the Files app, which is useful. However, the Files app can be slow as it is (eMMC storage is basically a glorified SD card), so I have tried to minimize how much I tax it with synching up more accounts.

Final Thoughts

This $75 potato probably won’t be my forever device, but it has been a good “gateway drog” (drogs are bad mmm’kay?) into the ChromeOS ecosystem. I’m not ashamed to lug around thicc bezel-boi in a sea of high-income bracket coffee shop Macbooks.

What I am walking away with is the enjoyment of a minimalist computing aesthetic, the joy of long battery life to read and write, and the hopefully not short-lived plan I have to make this my blogging niche.

Part of my experiment will be to use only Chromebooks for work and general work, relegating my Thinkpad to just Steam duties. Let’s see how it goes.

Check out the sub-$100 Lenovo 100e on Amazon (Full disclosure: I bought the device with my own money, but earn a small commission for any purchase through my links).