The 5 Best Chromebooks of 2025

The best Chromebook we've tested is the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714 (2024). This 2-in-1 convertible feels surprisingly well-built compared to most Chromebooks, and its compact design makes it easy to carry around. It provides a great user experience, sporting a nice FHD+ display, a comfortable keyboard, and an excellent 1440p webcam. The display gets bright enough for good visibility in well-lit settings, and it supports pen input if you want to take handwritten notes or draw. The downside is that it doesn't come with a stylus, and there isn't a place to dock the pen for transport. It has a decent port selection, including two USB-C with Thunderbolt 4 support and a full-size HDMI.

This laptop is available with Intel Meteor Lake CPUs up to a Core Ultra 7 165U. These Intel processors can easily handle anything you'd need to do on a Chromebook, like text processing, web browsing, and video playback. Most people can likely get by with the base Core Ultra 5 model, though we recommend heavy multitaskers to get a model with 16GB of RAM to avoid slowdowns. The battery lasts easily through a typical eight-hour day, and the laptop charges over USB-C, so you don't have to carry around a proprietary charger. If you're new to Chromebooks, know that most applications that run on Windows and macOS don't work on Chrome OS, so you must ensure you can do everything through a Chrome browser or an Android app.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 (2023) is our best budget pick. This affordable 14-inch model feels reasonably well-built and is easy to carry around. It's a good choice for younger students or anyone needing a simple device for light productivity tasks, web browsing, and video playback. You can configure it with an Intel N100, N200, or a Core i3-N305 CPU; we recommend the latter, as the N100 and N200 are much slower and only suitable for extremely light workloads. The Core i3 configuration (with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage) is often on sale for around $400 USD on Lenovo's website.

In addition to better performance, the Core i3 model mentioned above sports a 1080p touch-sensitive IPS panel. The display looks very sharp and gets bright enough to combat glare, which is uncommon in the Chromebook world. The keyboard feels spacious but a bit mushy, and unfortunately, the touchpad is small and not always responsive, so it's best to use a mouse. Battery life is excellent at around 13 hours of light use or 12 hours of local video playback.

If you want to spend as little as possible, consider the Acer Chromebook 315 (2020). This 15-inch device is great for younger students or anyone needing a simple laptop for emails and web browsing. Its compact design makes it easy to carry around, and its battery lasts a full day of light use, so you don't have to worry about bringing a charger. It has a full-size keyboard with a numpad, a reasonably large touchpad, and a decent 720p webcam. Ports include two USB-As, two USB-Cs, and an SD card reader. The USB-Cs support charging and video output.

You can choose between a 720p or 1080p panel for the display (with or without touch input). We recommend the 1080p option, as the 720p resolution just doesn't look that great on a 15.6-inch screen. The 1080p panel looks decently sharp and provides plenty of space for multitasking, but it doesn't get very bright, meaning you might have some visibility issues in well-lit settings. This laptop is only available with Intel Celeron CPUs. They can handle light workloads just fine, but you'll likely experience some slowdowns, more so than on the models we recommend above.

For media consumption, we recommend the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5 (2021), a 13-inch Chrome OS tablet with a kickstand and detachable keyboard. This form factor lets you take the keyboard off when viewing content, which is convenient in tight spaces like an airplane, and it also makes the device easier to hold and use as a tablet. You can pop the keyboard back on when you need to type something out; however, it feels cramped, so there are better options for typing long essays.

The feature that makes this device amazing for viewing media is its OLED display. It's sharp, bright, and colorful, and like all OLEDs, it displays deep, inky blacks. The speakers get reasonably loud. However, they don't have much bass and sound slightly unnatural. The battery lasts around eight hours of video playback or 10 hours of light use, and it charges over USB-C, so you don't have to deal with a proprietary charger. The display supports pen input if you want to take notes or draw, but you must buy the stylus separately.

The best gaming Chromebook we've tested is the Acer Chromebook 516 GE (2024). Chromebooks aren't typically associated with gaming since, aside from Android games on the Google Play Store, most games don't run on Chrome OS. Also, most Chromebooks lack the processing power to drive demanding titles. However, with increasing internet speeds, cloud gaming is a viable option, which is what this device is for. Services like NVIDIA GeForce NOW do all the processing on their servers and stream the image to your device, thus removing the need for powerful hardware. As for the Android games from the Google Play Store, some will run just fine, but some might not, with many lacking keyboard, mouse, or controller support.

The device feels pretty well-built for a Chromebook, and while it's a little bulky, it isn't too heavy. It sports a 16-inch QHD+ display with a 120Hz refresh rate and a good response time, so you get a clear image in fast-paced, movement-heavy games. There's Wi-Fi 6E support and an Ethernet port for a fast and stable internet connection, which is essential for a good cloud gaming experience. By the way, this device comes with a free trial period for NVIDIA GeForce NOW. You can continue to play for free after the trial ends, but you'll have to pay for a monthly subscription if you want longer play sessions and better graphical quality.