Best Prime Day Chromebook Deals 2021

As millions of us continue to learn and work from home, Prime Day deals will make a great time to replace your aging desktop or add another Chromebook to your family’s collection. Most of the best Chromebooks have been available for over a year now, which means that deals are much more likely this year than they were last year — when we were also in the midst of the 2020 Chromebook shortage.

Part of why Chromebooks have (almost) always had great deals on Prime Day is that mid-range Chromebooks come down to budget prices, and budget Chromebooks come down to impulse-buy prices. Considering that Chrome OS is designed to run on more affordable hardware to begin with, and that means that Prime Day is the best time to get a laptop, especially a budget laptop.

No matter your budget this Prime Day, Google has durability and usability standards for almost all Chromebooks — because most models are designed for chaotic classrooms or unforgiving businesses — that make Chromebooks ideal for younger and less tech-savvy users. All this adds up to Chromebooks being great investments for families looking for a computer that won’t break the bank and won’t die the second you breathe on it wrong.

Best Chromebook

Lenovo Chromebook Flex 5 | $400 at Amazon

$400 at Amazon

Lenovo gives you everything you could need in a wonderfully compact 13.3-inch Chromebook with the Flex 5: a 1080p touchscreen that’s compatible with USI styli, a full-size backlit keyboard with up-facing speakers on each side of it, a 10th Gen i3 processor and all-day battery life. Even before Prime Day’s deep discounts, the value here is incredible.

Best Prime Day Chromebook Deals for Work

Chromebooks are excellent for getting things done — I’ve worked full-time from one for four years — and when you want to really get down to business on a Chromebook, you’ll want some extra power and a little extra style to help your Chromebook fit in with all the Macbooks and ultrabooks. I recommend going with an Intel M3 or higher, at least 64GB of internal storage for accommodating lots of Android apps or Linux apps. While 4GB will be perfectly okay for lighter workloads, if you tend to keep dozens and dozens of tabs open at a time while video conferencing, you’ll want to spring for the 8GB of RAM on something like the Pixelbook Go.

There are several higher-end Chromebooks that might see significant price cuts on Prime Day — the two-year-old Pixelbook Go and about to be replaced Acer Chromebook 713 — but another excellent choice, especially for business is the ASUS Chromebook C434. It may be a couple years old now, but it still offers the best blend of power and value alongside its beautiful 14-inch touchscreen, and now that its successors are starting to become available.

Best Compact Prime Day Chromebook Deals

As someone who fully embraces the #HaveChromebookWillTravel lifestyle, compact Chromebooks are my favorites to use on the couch and around the country. 11.6-inch Chromebooks make up a significant portion of the Chromebook market, and for good reason: they’re the ideal size for students and for on-the-go users.

Unfortunately, the compact Chromebook market is fraught with older, outdated models, especially on Amazon where sellers tend to call everything the “latest” “2021” model even if the Chromebook in question is actually two years old. Ignore the marketing terms and look at the specs in order to determine how new and worthy a Chromebook deal is.

Both the Acer Spin 311 (2W) and Samsung Chromebook 4 use the same Celeron N4000 processor and 4GB of storage as my favorite compact Chromebook, the Lenovo Chromebook C340-11 that spent most of the last year sold-out amid the 2020 Chromebook crunch, but others use the MediaTek 8183 or similar versions. In particular, the 10.1-inch Lenovo Chromebook Duet uses one, and when paired with that nice 1080p screen and detachable keyboard and kickstand, it makes the Duet one of the best Chromebooks on the market, let alone one of the best compact ones, and now that the Duet’s been out a year, it’s time for it to get some deals.

With the Acer Spin 311, you get plenty of ports and a handy 2-in-1 form factor but only 32GB of storage. The Samsung is almost painfully light on ports and is a non-touchscreen clamshell laptop, but it comes with 64GB of storage. Both Chromebooks will get Chrome OS updates until June 2026, so they should last you a good long while.

Whatever you grab, I highly suggest a touchscreen for three reasons: it’ll make interacting with Android apps easier, it really doesn’t cost more, and it’s just more fun!

Best Prime Day Chromebook Deals for Students

While price and performance are always important on a Chromebook, when buying one for a kid durability is equally important. After all, it doesn’t matter how cheap a Chromebook is if your kid breaks it less than a month later. Unfortunately, the Best Chromebook for Students — the ASUS Chromebook Flip C214 — can be hard to find these days, so I recommend grabbing the Acer Spin 311 instead, which is still a hearty little Chromebook even when not covered in rubberized plastic. If you kid wants a bigger screen for gaming and YouTube — I mean homework! — the HP Chromebook X360 14b is also a great pick for a nice, big touchscreen 2-in-1.

All of the current student Chromebook models are now two years old, but none of the new models announced in January are available outside B2B channels yet. This means that you can pick up these older models on deeper discount rather than waiting for new models that aren’t any more powerful that the C214.

What you need to look for when buying a Prime Day Chromebook deals

There’s always a ton of specs and features you typically need to juggle when shopping for a laptop, but for Chromebooks, the buyer’s guide can be summed up pretty well into four points:

1. Get a touchscreen. — Unless you’re anti-fun, there’s no reason not to get a touchscreen model; they do not cost that much more and it’s always worth it. Touchscreens make it easier to interact with Android apps as well as making it easier to do things like sign documents or zoom in precisely.
2. Pick your screen size first. Decide right now if you want something compact (11.6-inches), mid-size (12.5-13.5-inches) or large (14-15.6-inches). Processors and storage are pretty standard across each size category, so size is one of the defining features you’ll want to sort out early.
3. 4GB of RAM is good, 8GB is better. — Most Chromebooks sold today come with 4GB of RAM, and 4GB is perfectly fine for running a video call plus a dozen or so tabs in Chrome. More RAM is always better, but 4GB is fine. If it says it has 2GB of RAM — or 16GB of internal storage — close the tab and walk away.
4. Check the expiration date!!! — Yes, Chromebooks come with expiration dates, after which they are no longer guaranteed to receive Chrome OS updates. It’s called the AUE date, and they’re listed for every single Chromebook model on Google’s support page, so before you move that Lightning Deal Chromebook from your cart to the checkout, take ten seconds and look it up on this page. The shorter a time before a Chromebook’s AUE date, the less time you have to enjoy the full benefits of your Chromebook — and it also means your Chromebook is a couple years old, as most Chromebooks launched in 2019 have 6 years of support and most 2020/2021 models have 8 years of support ahead of them.