The gap between the best Chromebooks and our favorite cheap laptops is more of a crevice than a canyon. For users with simple workloads, especially those who rely heavily on the Google Workspace suite, a competent Chromebook can provide just what you need at a very reasonable price.
When it comes to choosing the very best Chromebook for your specific budget and use case(s), most shoppers won't be forced to make a terribly difficult or dicey decision: Google has introduced a new "Chromebook Plus" label to identify models with guaranteed performance standards and added software support. It's also extended the lifespan of recent models (those released in 2021 or after) by offering a full decade of automatic updates. Still, it helps to have a nudge in the right direction if you don't have your eye on a specific model yet.
With that in mind, we've overhauled this guide to the best Chromebooks for 2024 with new standards and freshly hands-on tested picks. We'll continue to revisit it in the coming months with additional recommendations and new Chromebook reviews, so expect it to further evolve in the near future. (Next in our pipeline is the $399 ASUS Chromebook Plus CX34.)
