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Buying kids a computer for any reason can be stressful, but parents become even more acutely aware of how much gadgets cost when kids become students—and that’s where a Chromebook comes in. When it comes to a student’s laptop, you must consider whether it has all the capability and compatibility a kid needs now and whether it could get them through graduation in a few years. Plus, you have to consider how much you want to spend on something that might, OK, that will experience wear and tear. A Chromebook laptop offers an affordable way to give kids enough computing power to tackle their online assignments in form factors they tend to understand intuitively. They can be an excellent school tool for younger users who don’t need top-of-the-line laptop specs and their parents who don’t want to pay those prices. Here’s our guide for choosing Chromebooks for students, as well as help navigating processing and storage specs and how they translate versus traditional laptops.
How we selected the best Chromebooks for students
We pulled together this list based on hands-on testing performed by the PopSci staff and extensive research of consumer feedback. We then reviewed that through our skeptical spectacles, formed by our collective parenting experience of buying, replacing, repairing, recycling, and swearing about a graveyard of gadgets and computers that went through our kids’ hands. They may have tried valiantly to care for them, but this skill requires practice and failure like any other.
The best Chromebooks for students: Reviews & Recommendations
First things first: What is a Chromebook? Chromebooks look like laptops and feel like laptops, but think of them as a unique category of computing devices. Chromebooks are internet-viewing devices with full-sized keyboards and decent-sized screens. They are defined by…
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