How good are cheap Chromebooks?

[Ryab]

Basically, I'm thinking of picking up a Chromebook (~£100-150) because I want a relatively small (11"), relatively light (~1KG/2.2lbs) with half decent battery life (at least 6 hours) that sits somewhere in between my tablet and my laptop which I can also walk around with.

It would only really be used for casual browsing (e.g. typing posts like this, webui stuff when working on something, ssh, following guides, etc.), maybe the odd Android app e.g. MS Office, Ring, watch videos, as well as receive notifications from my Android phone.

The types of machines though are on the lower end, such as this:
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/3200072

For the casual, light stuff would a machine like this be ok? I've never used Chrome OS before so I don't what it's like to actually use and I don't have a spare low end machine to test Flex on.

The alternatives I can think of are a new tablet keyboard case, but the ones I've seen are either too flimsy and/or expensive and weight balance could be an issue.

Alternatively I could pick up something like this:
https://www.argos.co.uk/product/3930823

If necessary, also installing Linux on it, although I'd have to be careful of driver support.

Although the downside is I'd then then have to look at Android emulators like Bluestack if I still want that functionality.

I don't really want to buy an old second hand laptop because of concerns over battery life.

Thank you.

ChromeOS on it's own it really only designed for simple tasks. Such as web browsing and using the google suite of applications.

 

[tech3475]

@tech3475 Most Chromebooks are cheap, I would stay away from them. Personally I would buy a used Lenovo laptop and install Chrome OS. At least you'll get decent specs (8-16gb ram/ssd/i5-i7 cpu) , and better than most Chromebooks out there.

Why I think they are bad?

• emmc storage is slow
• 4gb/8gb ram is way too little
• slow CPUs (Celeron or ARM)

Check out the Chrome OS installer:
https://github.com/sebanc/brunch

You could even setup dual boot Windows - Chrome OS/Linux/Android

I've already gone off the idea of a Chromebook since the Android support is relatively bad and that was the main benefit I saw over just buying a generic x86 laptop and putting Chrome OS Flex (which lacks said Android support) on it or Just running Chrome/Firefox on another Linux distro.

As I said in the OP I don't really want to buy second hand because of concerns over battery life but there's also other issues I've seen with the models I saw within my budget e.g. weight, screen size, condition, etc. although I'm planning on having another look just in case.

I managed to try out an old Atom tablet I installed Mint on when I was visiting my parents with 2GB RAM and I thought even that was good enough for the light tasks I want to use it for.

 

[Kazesama]

I've already gone off the idea of a Chromebook since the Android support is relatively bad and that was the main benefit I saw over just buying a generic x86 laptop and putting Chrome OS Flex (which lacks said Android support) on it or Just running Chrome/Firefox on another Linux distro.

As I said in the OP I don't really want to buy second hand because of concerns over battery life but there's also other issues I've seen with the models I saw within my budget e.g. weight, screen size, condition, etc. although I'm planning on having another look just in case.

I managed to try out an old Atom tablet I installed Mint on when I was visiting my parents with 2GB RAM and I thought even that was good enough for the light tasks I want to use it for.

I see, yes the battery can be an issue if it's not replaceable. Also, the Chrome OS I linked is not the same as Chrome OS Flex. Brunch installs the official Chrome OS image and has Android support OOTB. Although apps compatibility is a hit or miss as most apps are designed for ARM.

 

[Marc_LFD]

I see, yes the battery can be an issue if it's not replaceable. Also, the Chrome OS I linked is not the same as Chrome OS Flex. Brunch installs the official Chrome OS image and has Android support OOTB. Although apps compatibility is a hit or miss as most apps are designed for ARM.

Have you tried Waydroid by any chance?

There's a market for an Android OS and someone has yet to make it since Google doesn't seem to care to make one themselves.

 

[Kazesama]

Have you tried Waydroid by any chance?

There's a market for an Android OS and someone has yet to make it since Google doesn't seem to care to make one themselves.

yea I've tried waydroid, but not extensively though. What do you mean by "Android OS"? Android is an OS. You mean a desktop/pc variant?

 

[Marc_LFD]

yea I've tried waydroid, but not extensively though. What do you mean by "Android OS"? Android is an OS. You mean a desktop/pc variant?

Yep, an Android OS for PC.

 

[tech3475]

So an update, I managed to find a laptop on ebay (Thinkpad X280, i5 8250u, 8GB RAM, FHD screen, 256GB storage) which is light and small enough to be within my tolerances and the seller promised at least 50% battery life (roughly 4+ hours according to some reviews I saw) for about £120 thanks to some discounts/voucher and a returns policy.

Hopefully it does what I want, even has certified Chrome OS Flex support.

Yep, an Android OS for PC.

I know there have been attempts over the years such as Android-x86:
https://www.android-x86.org/

I think there was also a company trying, whom I can't remember the name of, but they gave up or changed their business model or something.

In practice, I doubt we'll see a stable full native port with wide ranging hardware support any time soon due to drivers/

 

[chrisrlink]

save your money get a 64gb steam deck then replace the 64gb with 1tb ssd nuff said

 

[tech3475]

save your money get a 64gb steam deck then replace the 64gb with 1tb ssd nuff said

I know Chrome eats RAM, but I doubt it's enough to warrant a 1TB SSD for a Swap partition and using the on screen keyboard for SSH with the SD's touch screen size sounds like something I'll end up doing in Hell.

 

[XFoxPrower]

Can someone answer me this, as I'm not well-versed in phone operating systems (I'm the guy that didn't know how to answer a call, because it wasn't self-explanatory nor documented in the user manual that you were to 'swipe up' on the green call icon. I tapped it, I held it, nothing).

Maybe Chromebooks are different than Android. I'm wondering if it's possible to do web development completely offline. My understanding so far is that Android apps have sandboxed storage, so you can't create a file in 1 app (a text editor) and open it in another (Chrome). A way in Windows would be to create an HTML file in Notepad (renaming to a .htm file extension) to open in Chrome. I'd hate to have to rely on an online service to upload a file to rename its file extension server-side, then re-download it (Does Android even have such a concept as file extensions?). But I also know Chromebooks are near-helpless offline.

 

[tech3475]

Have you tried Waydroid? That looks interesting.

https://waydro.id/

Windows 11 has Android support (ish), but I'd never recommend that OS to anyone.

For anyone interested, I managed to get Waydroid to install.

The first issue is that it requires Wayland, so I had to run it through weston to get it to run on Cinnamon.

The Play Store then reported that the Ring app wasn't compatible, however, I was able to get it to install by sideloading it and installing an ARM emulator.

However, the app still wouldn't work, so then I tried magisk but all the scripts seem to be outdated and the latter wouldn't install, so I've removed it for now.

That said, I did quickly try Youtube which ran 'ok'. Overall I think the project has potential, but it's simply too limited for my needs.

I'm wondering if it's possible to do web development completely offline. My understanding so far is that Android apps have sandboxed storage, so you can't create a file in 1 app (a text editor) and open it in another (Chrome).

That's a half truth, Android has a shared file system but there are restrictions in place which can make certain things difficult, for example, I was able to create a blank html file in a file manager and open it in chrome but I don't know if you could e.g. have css, etc. files.

There may be something available to do offline development, but I'm not aware of it, since it is hypothetically possible for basic HTML.

Chrome OS does have a linux container mode, but I haven't used it to be able to tell if you could use it for your purposes e.g. install firefox/chrome and a text editor. Probably something for r/chromeos.

That said, personally I'd probably just opt for a generic Linux distro over Chrome OS, since it could provide more flexibility.

 

[mamaunmalik22]

Linux Mint is a good Idea for this Laptop

 

[tech3475]

Linux Mint is a good Idea for this Laptop

Yes and no.

For basic web and video it's running fine, but as I'm now expanding my use of this machine and given my past history with Mint such as the above, I'm also going to be using this machine to experiment with other distros, so I gave it a large ESP for distros like Pop.

 

[ErinCalderon]

Chrome OS is the worst....