Laptop or Chromebook

[Philbleasy]

Hi everyone after some advice. I’m sure there are some tech experts on here. We are thinking of getting my daughter a laptop she is 9. I’m definitely not an expert in this field. Not looking to spend silly amounts probably £400 tops. After having a brief look I was wondering what chrome books are like? So after any advice about which is best and why.

 

[Rooter]

Chromebooks are great if you use them properly, ie you need to only store stuff in the cloud. they don't have much storage on them and get clogged up easily.

My experience with my kids though, I would be to get them a tablet over a laptop at that age.

 

[GreiginFife]

What would be the general usage? Browsing, Youtube, Social Media etc? Each has it's merits and pitfalls. Chromebooks, for me are just glorified tablets. Whilst I wouldn't instantly recommend a tablet over anything, I would suggest that between Chromebook and tablet, you would see least difference than to a, even halfway, decent spec laptop.
Like you, my son is 9, he has a gaming PC that is pretty much Minecraft and Fortnight dominated, but he also has am i3 based laptop that he uses for homework, research and also watching Youtube whilst gaming as he gets ideas from it or uses tutorials for building stuff in Minecraft. Tablet would be too awkward for his use and Chromebook would fill up too fast and being reliant on the cloud makes you reliant on connectivity.

As I say, each option has merits but it's best to come at it from "what will I do with it" rather than listen to everyone's opinion on which is best in general.

 

[Philbleasy]

It’s more for homework really. She has an iPad already for general searching the web, watching stuff etc

 

[GreiginFife]

If storage and connectivity are not issues then a Chromebook would probably suffice. Its one of those things though, if you change your usage after you buy it, you can't really ""upgrade" them or increase on-board storage easily. The frustrating insistence on eMMC storage over M.2 NVMe is what gets me.

Getting one with a decent processor at a reasonable price is the real challenge IMO.

 

[Lord Tyrion]

I've posted before on this. When my son was in 6th form, he is now at University, the school had a chromebook buying scheme. He bought one and still uses it now. The school did all of it's work via Google, docs etc, all past papers were accessed via the cloud, homework was done and then 'shared' with the appropriate teacher etc. He downloaded nothing. University is the same and when we offered to buy him a newer computer he turned us down, 'no need, it's still fast'. This is 3yrs on now.

He uses it to watch Netflix and Amazon, streamed still so only the app is downloaded.

Check if the school work via Google or equivalent. If they do then it will be ideal. If your daughter needs to download things then avoid a Chromebook, it really is about being cloud based.

 

[Philbleasy]

Yes we where thinking of checking with school. At the moment can’t access the maths on iPad or Mac as it doesn’t support Adobe and can’t use my work laptop as the maths is sometimes games and my laptop blocks them.