Are Chromebooks good for College students?
Students need a laptop to be able to study correctly today, are Chromebooks good for College? Let’s find out.
College students need a laptop to write on, organize the document and be able to print. Chromebooks can do all of this so yes, they are good to be used by College students. But is it the best choice? I will list to you what kind of computer a student needs and what are Chromebooks’ basic characteristics, depending on your needs you will be able to decide whether or not you can use a Chromebook at College.
What computer does a college student need?
Try to imagine a day at college and how you will use your computer, as the answer to “Are Chromebook good for college?” depends on the kind of study you are doing, you need to imagine your needs with a laptop. Here I will imagine a day at college for students in general, without being specific to each student.
At College, you will need it to write on your computer for many classes during the day. So you want a laptop with a good keyboard but also a good battery, as you might not have the opportunity to be able to charge your laptop before the end of the day. Also, as you will have your laptop with you the whole day, you want to avoid heavy and big computers.
At the end of the year, you will have many documents stored on your laptop, so you also need enough space. But all the jobs done on your laptop will not be that complicated unless you have specific needs according to the classes you will attend, you probably don’t need a powerful computer.
The laptop will not only be used during the day you might also use it during your free time, to watch videos or play games. Again you need to think about it as playing games on Chromebook will not be an easy task depending on the game you play, but there are still many games that you can play on a Chromebook, and you can even record your play with OBS.
Can you use a Chromebook for college?
We now understand what kind of laptop you will need for college, I will also tell you why a Chromebook can be a good choice for students but also its limitations.
Battery
Chromebooks are lightweight computers, so the battery is not that big. But as they are not using too much power, Chromebooks are not using the battery so much. In the end, they can last a whole studying day with full charge. I have a Samsung Chromebook 4, Samsung tells us that you can use the laptop for more than 10 hours with one full charge, from my experience I could at least use it for 7 hours without charging it. It is enough for a day at college, but not every Chromebook has the same battery so you need to look at it.
Lightweight
Chromebooks are not heavy laptops, Google always wanted the Chromebooks to be lightweight computers so almost every Chromebook will be light enough to be used at college. But you also need to look at the size of the Chromebook, there are plenty of Chromebooks with 11.6” displays but also some with 15.6” ones. A small screen will be easier to bring everywhere with you but a bigger one will be more comfortable, only you can know which one to choose.
Cheap
Chromebooks are cheap computers and here is why. The price is important for a student as you might not have the money to buy the last MacBook You will find plenty of Chromebooks costing around $200.
Low storage
As Chromebooks are cheap computers, they do not have so much disk space. Depending on your study, you might need more space than the Chromebook has to store all your documents. Hopefully, they have a USB port so you can buy an external disk or a USB key to make more space on the laptop.
Software compatibility
You need to know that you won’t be able to run all the software on Chromebooks, even if it is possible to run exe files, it’s quite difficult to do so and many applications do not exist on Chromebook, finding an alternative can be a difficult task like using OneNote on Chromebook.
Apart from the storage capacity, Chromebooks have all that a college student needs and therefore can be used for college. They are probably the cheapest laptop you can buy, I will give some alternatives that you can choose if you don’t want a Chromebook.
Chromebook Alternative for a college student
If Chromebooks can be used for college, it might not be the best choice depending on your study. Here are other laptops that are good to use for college.
Macbooks
The best choice but also probably the most expensive one. Macbooks and laptops have all that a student needs. Even if your study requires a powerful laptop, they will have enough power to handle the jobs correctly. The battery will last more than a full day without any charge, and the screen quality is one of the best in the market, you will work smoother and better enjoy watching than with any other laptop. The Macbook air M2 is small and lightweight, the perfect choice for college.
Windows laptops
There are plenty of Windows laptops on the market. You don’t want to buy a heavy laptop as you will have to bring it with you the whole day, I recommend the Lenovo IdeaPad 3i, I already used it and loved it. It’s not as lightweight as other choices but has better performance than Chromebook and is cheaper than Macbooks. Choosing a Windows computer is the best choice you can do if you want to play games with your laptop during your free time.
Author
Maxime Levesque is a technical engineer with more than 5 years of professional experience. He is an expert in computer and phones, mostly on Apple products. Maxime is also the founder of TechBrowser.
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