Chromebook

UPDATE: I took the panel off the bottom to have a look, and the 64gb storage is indeed a normal 42mm long m.2 ssd. So it is removable and replaceable.Continue previous review:The other previous reviewer is correct, this is the Flex 5i, 8gb ram 11th gen i3 (not 10th) unit. Mine came with the advertised 64gb of storage. The description portion of this listing is the old 5, but the worded lower description is correct with the current 5i information.This is a great 2 in 1 chromebook. I have never owned one before, and did a ton of research for months before getting this one for business. I have a pixel 3xl, and (with some occasional issues) am able to link and utilize the phone and its data connection, conversations, etc. For 450 bucks, this is a snappy unit. The i3 may not be as powerful as the more expensive i5 cpu's, but it is plenty for this device.Flipping it into tablet mode works as expected. I haven't bothered to get a pen for it, as I don't do drawing or really need to write very often. I may eventually pick up on designed for chromebooks like this. (the lenovo brand pen seems to have some flaws, based on reviews). The touch screen seems nice as-is.NOTE: if you are a single person business owner, and have google workspace as your email and google system, then you will have to pay google even more just to use this chromebook with your business address, and then learn how to enable all of the settings through the admin console online. It's stupid, but what can you do if you want to use your business email address as the user on a chromebook. You could use a gmail account but then it isn't linked to your Workspace system on an OS level.Also note, you can install linux through the chrome OS as a container in the settings options. It's fairly straight-forward. I have installed Steam through that, and the flex 5i does surprisingly well as a light-gaming unit. (currently you can turn on Proton mode in steam's settings to play more windows based games). You can also flip it into tablet mode and play Slay the Spire or Mini Motorways in touch-mode. I have not tried to push the system, so I'm not sure what it can handle, but 2D games like those or Dead Cells run really great. HOWEVER: Until Valve releases an official chromebook OS app with Proton, game controllers simply do not work right now. Chrome just doesn't handle any game input currently. So controllers are out until then.The keyboard is pretty decent. It has a backlight. Useful shortcut keys up top.The front webcam is pretty terrible. Not sure what I expected, but it works. It has a privacy shield, which is great.Lastly, When you flip it into tablet mode, and want to set it down, there's no rubber feet to protect the keyboard-side-surface of the laptop that will now be on a table or whatnot. It's just the smooth surface, so don't set it down anywhere you might scratch it up. I may eventually add tiny little pieces of rubber just to give it a fraction of a mm of clearance off a surface and keep it from slipping.

Thing works great! I'm super pleased with the performance for the price!Note: I don't really use the touchscreen (except on accident) and for the couple times I folded it in half to try out tablet-mode; which I found to be a bit unwieldy due to it's size.I specifically bought this because I've always had a high-end frame of mind for pc performance. So this is the wimpiest processor I've every bought in a device. I typically spend big and then keep the device for a decade. Ex the dell xps 17" I bought in 2012, is still wildly faster than my work laptop with the cheapest i5 money can buy. I absolutely loathe that on my work Lenovo i5 8GB RAM, I can barely use accuweather.com or weather.com because of all the ads. The fan spins up and usually the pages will crash. <- obviously a distraction from THIS device, but wanted to give context, these experiences mean I'd never consider a machine with an i5, let alone a lowly i3.Fast forward to a few months ago, spent a few weeks trying to recover as much as I could from my grandpa's failing disk. I was working on fixing it, restoring the image I collected from the spinning disk to SSD etc. After fighting with the unbearably slow hardware I decided that I was going to gather the troops (grandkids) and solicit donations to replace it for him. Ended up with a 17" Acer (or maybe Asus, idr) but the thing that stuck out was the i3 1115g4 that was in it. I thought this thing was going to work at a snail's pace, and I was pleasantly surprised that a not-top-end, heck not-even-middle-grade processor, could be so snappy (thanks NVMe's!!!). I worked with it a bit setting it up for him and thought it was great.So I bought this Chromebook because a) Wirecutter recommended it b) it had the same processor as "Papa's" Windows 11 laptop. I figured with ChromeOS being super lightweight, this processor would have no issues keeping up with a bunch of chrome windows and tabs. It keeps right up, I hear the fan spin up only rarely, and really only when I have lots of tabs open. Honestly it only gets choked up when you visit a website riddled with ads, I'm looking at you weather sites, MSN (exclusively for testing if adblockers work ;-)).Grain of Salt: I DO have a network level ad-blocker that I installed over the summer, so a lot of ads are blocked, and everything seems snappier when a majority of ads can't load.Cons:I find it irritating that the keyboard lacks F keys, though there's a setting you can set to replace the fn buttons with typical f-key actions. There's also no home/end, page-up/down keys for easily selecting a line of text, but the right combinations of the shift/ctrl/alt keys + arrow keys somewhat reproduce this.Just OK:I have 1440p monitors, so falling back to 1080 on this leaves me desiring a little more screen real estate. Camera is just ok, but I love the built in slider for blocking it.Overall, fantastic, would 100% buy again, I happily paid $365 for it on sale, but today it's $317.99, and I once almost ordered one for my wife (maybe pre-prime sale?) for $279 but I took a few hours to "think about it" and they were out of stock.

Would be 5 stars but it's a Chromebook and internet sites get jammed with very annoying ads. Makes me use it less for web searching. Otherwise very sturdy tablet. Love the exterior, doesn't slip from hands, and the magnets that link the keyboard to the tablet are great.

Quick and responsive Chromebook, replaced a $150 Acer 11" Chromebook that was about 6 years old and now out of updates, OMG what a night and day difference, glad i made the purchase.Screen is definitely a step up from the ones you'll see on entry level Chromebooks like the one i upgraded from, fit and finish seem decent so far after a month of owning it. Battery life will run for about 7-8 hours with screen at 75% brightness while doing normal stuff from full battery charge. Keyboard is alright, I like clicky ones on my desktop, but i realize your not going to get that experience out of a 3 lb Chromebook. Don't use the touch screen much but it seems decent in the couple of times I've played with it, I plan on giving one of these to my digital art loving daughter at Christmas and we'll see what she says about the touch screen. It doesn't scream premium like the $1,000 Chromebooks but at this price $300 I don't have to worry about something happening to it and I get 75% of the performance of those high end machines at 30% of the price. Reports updates until June 2029.