laptop/chromebook – 13/14yr olds

We really should get a second computer in the house, primarily for the kids to keep up on their google classroom assignments as well as general household stuff.

I’m totally lost though as to what to buy.

a half decent win11 laptop so it’ll do more stuff later, a cheap and cheerful chromebook, or a discounted posh  chromebook (e.g. 375 quid lenovo thinkpad c14 with 12th gen i7, iris xe ips display, etc

any suggestions gratefully received.

I’ve just picked up a Dell Latitude 5440, i5 vpro 1345u (13th Gen), with 16GB and 512Gb NVMe SSD delivered for £330 from eBay.

Not a mark on it, power key still has sticker on it…it’s basically brand new.

eBay seems cheaper than refurbished shops and if you place a few machines in your watch list you’ll get plenty of discounted offers from the already decent buy it now prices.

As I’m in a similar market, how do I find the decent eBay sellers?

If they don’t need a webcam I have a Pixelbook Go i5 /8gb ram / 128gb I could sell (webcam doesn’t work). Even if you don’t want mine they are cracking Chromebooks (great screen and keyboard) at the right price.

Chromebook all the way for that usage. Something like this week be more powerful than they get to use at school https://www.johnlewis.com/asus-chromebook-plus-cx34-laptop-intel-core-i3-processor-8gb-ram-256gb-ssd-14-full-hd-grey/p111159470?s_share=jlappdroid

It’s easy to setup with their own kids Google account to login and then their scholl account as secondary (which classroom app then can be set to use).

The only reason to buy a windows laptop now IMO is a requirement to run software that needs windows. All the core use case apps are more than adequate with the online or chrome app versions.

@BearBack what did you go for in the end?   I’m in exactly the same position (all my old work laptops have gone off to be recylced 🙁  so have to spend money now and im tight)

Still looking, some magical black Friday deal hopefully.

Just got the Asus CX34 plus for our eldest (yr9) based on a recommendation from his school.

@madhouse how is the CX34? I’m looking at this for myself, did you go for the i3 version and are you/your eldest happy with speed? I can get the i5 for £80 more but not sure it is needed/worth it

@rocco it does everything he needs it to do, which is some word processing and completing online homework tasks, none of which need much by way of processing power. He’s certainly happy with it, think he’s most pleased that it lasts the day on one charge so he doesn’t need to worry about sitting near a plug in a lesson.

I needed a simple win 11 laptop to use for live recordings. A search for refurbed in eBay found a real cheapie, 8 gig RAM as Audacity only uses around 1 gig to record, 240gb SSD, win 11 pro, i5 7th gen in a Dell Latitude 14″ which has a few little marks on and, with the above mentioned discount code the whole of eBay instantly bombarded me with,  cost me £156.

The actual listing didn’t specify which chassis you’d get, but I was pretty chuffed with the result. Seller id was Gadgets Express Limited