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Need help choosing a chromebook

WhistlingBadger

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Hey there. I am in the market for a chromebook but a bit baffled by the choices available. I am committed to a chromebook for reasons I won't go into here, so please don't try to convince me to buy a mac or whatever. Planned uses include youtube vids, surfing the fish forums, editing and mixing music with bandlab, and relatively simple video editing with wevideo or similar.

Looking at the options on amazon that are $200 or less. Any help?
 
Not an expert on this, but video editing is generally considered a fairly demanding process on computers. I'm pretty underwhelmed by all these options.

Processor: First option has slowest clock speed (2 GHz), but most cores (8). Second option has middle clock speed (2.1 GHz) and 4 cores. Third option has fastest clock speed (2.6 GHz) and 2 cores. I compared these processors on a benchmark website and the middle option was clearly inferior. The last option is faster single thread, but the extra cores on the first option give it a bit of an edge. However, it says the that first option ships with a 32-bit operating system. The processor is supposed to be 64-bit, but if it's operating as a 32-bit system then you definitely want the last option. 32-bit is like early 2000s technology.

Ram: 4 GB on all, this is on the low end these days, but I guess it could be sufficient?

Memory: All three of these models are somewhat deficient in this category. They have eMMC memory rather than SSD, and they only have 64 GB, 32 GB, and 64GB respectively. SSD would be preferred over eMMC, but that's not an option here. 64 GB is not a lot of space for videos.

Honestly, I wouldn't buy any of these computers, but if push came to shove I would likely get the last option. These are definitely super budget specs. I tried comparing these computers on a benchmark website, and I couldn't even find most of these components. I did find the GPU on the last option and its supposedly in the bottom 1% of GPUs. Combined with the CPU it was in the bottom 2% in terms of it's quality as a computer workstation (e.g. mixing music, video editing). Honestly, my older iPhone SE might outperform these PCs.

I know it's nice to get a budget PC, but these are so budget that if you spent twice as much money you might actually get a 10x better computer. I've never owned a chromebook and I don't do any video editing so you might know more about how it fits your needs.

Edit: the last option is supposedly only 720p resolution. I wouldn't get it. In that case, the first option might be better.
 
I bought a cheap chromebook a year ago. It was very very slow and glitchy. I returned it and invested in a more powerful chromebook with high resolution screen, a faster processor, 8 gb ram, fingerprint reader, touch screen, tablet mode, 128 gb ssd storage . I am very happy with it. It's on sale now at $499 or you could get the open box one for $411 shipped to your door. I consider it well worth it as you'd have it for many years. I think it is supported by google for updates for 8 years but would still work after that but no updates.
This is the one I ended up buying:
 
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Decided to go with this one. It's the same model I've been using the past several years, so I know it will work.
It's good to go with what you know will work.

Honestly though, at that price point a used iPad is a little cheaper and definitely higher performance. This one has an actual SSD vs eMMC and the Apple A13 processor is rated about 200% faster than the Intel Core m3-8100Y Processor on the ASUS. The iPad has less RAM than the chromebook, but there's more to RAM performance than just size anyway. I don't know about app support so I might not work with your chosen applications and it doesn't have a keyboard, but just some food for thought.
 
Hey there. I am in the market for a chromebook but a bit baffled by the choices available. I am committed to a chromebook for reasons I won't go into here, so please don't try to convince me to buy a mac or whatever. Planned uses include youtube vids, surfing the fish forums, editing and mixing music with bandlab, and relatively simple video editing with wevideo or similar.

Looking at the options on amazon that are $200 or less. Any help?
my boyfriend will sell you one that fell off the back of a truck. 😹😹😹
 

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