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.