Best Chromebook circa £300

ThisIsWeird

Looking for daughter - her laptop has just gone kaput. Price point around the £300 - can go up £50 if justified.

i3 or i5 processor, 11th Gen should be gotable at this price.

8GB & 256GB ideally.

14" screen - 'touch' ain't important. (15" is ok, but not smaller than 14")

As slim and light as poss. (Ideally, but not critical)

The obvious contenders are the Acer Vero 514 i3 12th from £315 (at Tekshop), or the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 i3 11th Gen at £280 (Amazon).

Then there's HP's x360, but haven't looked too far into that yet.

Any thoughts or suggestions?

And, how do you run MS Word on a Chromebook - do you have to pay for an App, or are there suitable alternatives?

Cheers :-)

(Perfectly happy to go for near-new, but - lawdie - they expect virtually the new price. Weird...)

Flugelhorn

I have used Acer chromebooks and they have been fine - have got a 11" not touch screen and a 14" touch screen one.

Looks like you can get MS Word etc apps but I just use google docs etc 

ThisIsWeird

Google docs - fully compatible? And looks similar?

Flugelhorn

ThisIsWeird said:

Google docs - fully compatible? And looks similar?

Honestly don't know - have used MS Word for years, can't really remember what it looks like and can't comment on whether it is fully compatible  - I use google docs and if necessary save documents as docx - can also open MS word docs  sent to me 

john1

Have a look at Pixelbook  Bit old but still updated until Aug 2027 Good reviews on YouTube  CEX have one at £225 Reviews in similar position to you and daughter requirements 

Hermann

Does it have to be a Chromebook?

This Dell Inspiron Windows Intel machine squeezes in £349, sadly the AMD £249 version is showing out of stock but might be worth keeping an eye open for....
https://www.dell.com/en-uk/shop/laptops/intel/spd/inspiron-15-3520-laptop

ThisIsWeird

Thanks everyone.
The Pixelbook - never heard of it!
That's a lot of laptop for the money, Hermann - thanks.
She's looking to go as light and portable as possible, so one of the main reasons to go Chromebook. 
I'll check out 14" screen laptop equivs.
Cheers.

MSE_James

I have got a ridiculous collection of about half a dozen Chromebooks (mostly bought secondhand very cheap) and I bought a Pixelbook Go (different to the Pixelbook linked above) last autumn which is hands down the best one I've tried.

It's been discontinued but is excellent value for the money and still has many years of updates ahead of it.