The 3 Black Friday Chromebook deals I absolutely love
Of all the Black Friday Chromebook deals you’ll see today, these are the three I’d recommend: one for the budget shopper, a midrange Chromebook for most people, and the best premium option for anyone shopping for a Chromebook Plus.
I’ve put together PCWorld’s list of the best Black Friday Chromebook deals for several years now, so I’m familiar with what retailers offer and what they try and hide behind a curtain. Right now, these are my three best Black Friday Chromebook deals: the $149 Lenovo Slim 3 (53% off), the $249 Lenovo Flex 3 (48% off), and the $299 Asus 2-in-1 Chromebook Plus (40% off). Here’s why.
Budget Chromebooks can be bundles of compromises, and there’s no avoiding that the Slim 3 offers just 4GB of RAM, which we normally try to avoid. But virtually all budget Chromebooks do the same, and in our review of the Slim 3 it performed surprisingly well. Battery life was fantastic at 16 hours, the 14-inch 1080p screen was excellent, and the audio was good, too. This is a budget Chromebook with an unfamiliar Mediatek Kompanio 520 processor, but it’s the best of the bunch.
Midrange Chromebooks are what I generally recommend to friends and family: 8GB of RAM, a large 1080p screen, and a processor that can hold up. The Pentium Silver is a quad-core chip, while most Chromebooks are powered by slower, less-capable dual-core chips. Lenovo’s Flex 3 offers a nice, roomy 15.6-inch screen and 8GB of RAM as well as a 360-degree hinge for Android apps. It even has a dedicated number pad. It looks a little plasticy, but it was a killer back-to-school deal and it still is.
Customers love the Asus 14-inch Chromebook Plus, the name given to Google’s premium Chromebook classification. With a Ryzen 7000 chip inside it, it’s going to be fast enough to play Roblox as well as classwork. It also has 8GB of memory, a roomy 128GB SSD, and a 14-inch 1080p display, at a price that’s just $50 more than the midrange Flex 3.
Again, you’re going to find better deals on paper. But with these three Chromebooks, I think you’re going to walk away happy with what you’ve bought — and what you’ve saved during Black Friday.
More great Black Friday tech deals
Amazon tech deals – Black Friday 2023Best Buy tech deals – Black Friday 2023Power bank deals – Black Friday 2023Monitor deals – Black Friday 2023iPad deals – Black Friday 2023Desktop PC deals – Black Friday 2023Chromebook deals – Black Friday 2023Thunderbolt dock deals – Black Friday 2023Laptop deals – Black Friday 2023SSD and storage deals – Black Friday 2023Graphics card deals – Black Friday 2023Windows license deal – Black Friday 2023
Author: Mark Hachman, Senior Editor
As PCWorld’s senior editor, Mark focuses on Microsoft news and chip technology, among other beats. He has formerly written for PCMag, BYTE, Slashdot, eWEEK, and ReadWrite.
Recent stories by Mark Hachman:
Google’s best AI editing tools are coming to Chromebooks, not PCs9 reasons why you should buy a Chromebook over a laptopBest Cyber Monday Chromebook deals