We chose the Acer Chromebook Spin 714 due to its fast processor and generous screen size. The table below compares the best work Chromebooks based on screen size, CPU, and battery life: 

It all depends on your budget and purposes. If you input numbers regularly, the Acer Chromebook 715 is a fantastic choice, as its larger screen size and keyboard make typing simple. Meanwhile, if you travel often for work, the Google Pixelbook Go’s lightweight makes it the perfect travel buddy. 

When selecting the best choices, several features came to mind. The first was performance. After all, if it offered plodding processing speeds, it will slow down your productivity. With this in mind, we chose options that delivered excellent performance.

The next consideration was value. Our aim was to provide options that were budget-friendly while giving you the performance and other tools needed. 

Finally, we examined other features, such as touchscreen capabilities, port offerings, and customer reviews. That way, we gained insight into those using the Chromebooks and offered solutions others would recommend too. 

Chromebook laptops are very flexible. They are not just a web browser in a box. Sure, you need the internet to get the most from a Chromebook. But, tell me, when was the last time you did any serious work with a Mac or Windows PC without an internet connection? Back in the 2000s. Sure, if you’re doing video editing, you need a powerful PC. But, for most of us, our work lives and dies with the internet.

Modern high-end Chromebooks, as tech expert Mike Elgan points out, “run more apps without dual- or multi-booting than any other computing platform. Chromebooks can run apps from Android, Linux, and Windows concurrently in the same session.”

Most of you may never need those alternatives. Google’s G Suite may be all the office you need. If you’re wedded to Microsoft Office, Microsoft now supports Office and Microsoft 365 on Chromebook. Need Quickbooks? Run Quickbooks Online. It’s 2020; the vast majority of office applications are now available on the cloud as Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

I also like that Chromebooks update frequently and transparently. Unlike Windows 10 PCs, where lately it seems like every upgrade is an adventure, Chromebooks just take their patches and, when you want them to, reboot in a few seconds and just keep on working.  

Another advantage is that if something goes wrong with your Windows PC, restoring your data to a new PC can be a real pain. It’s especially annoying when you’re stuck at home and your backup is somewhere at the office. With a Chromebook, if you pour a cup of coffee on its keyboard and it goes to that great bityard in the sky, who cares? You just buy a new Chromebook, enter your ID and password and you’re back in business again. No fuss, no muss. 

If you need IT help Google offers Chrome Enterprise. With it, for $50 a device per year, your IT crew gets access to Managed Google Play via an approved Enterprise Mobility Manager EMM for Cisco Meraki; Citrix XenMobile; IBM MaaS360; ManageEngine Mobile Device Manager Plus; or VMware Workspace ONE. It also includes Active Directory (AD) integration.

You can also use Chromebooks with Citrix Workplace. If you’re a VMware shopper, VMware’s equivalent offerings are Horizon Client for Chrome OS and Horizon 7.

Yes, you can use any old Chromebook to get work done. But, for business purposes, you want more than an adequate machine. You want one that will fit your needs. Here’s your decision tree:

• Construction and factory workers: If you want a strong machine for a reasonable price that you can take to the factory floor or a construction site, I recommend Acer’s Chromebook Spin 714.
• Data geeks and math pros: Make your living from number crunching? Then track down an Acer Chromebook 715. You won’t be sorry.
• Power users: If you’re a power-user, then the Dell Latitude 5400 Chromebook Enterprise may be worth your money. You might also want to consider the older, but still fast, Google Pixelbook.
• On-the-go workers: Finally, for those of us who hope to spend a lot of time working from the road rather than from the home, I highly recommend Google’s Pixelbook Go. 

Chromebooks are not just for schools. They’re for serious work as well. 

Besides using Chromebooks for my own work, I benchmark them using Principled Technologies‘ Chromebook-specific, second-generation CrXRPT benchmark. Principled Technologies, a descendant of Ziff-Davis Benchmark Operations, is one of the best private benchmarking and testing companies on the planet. 

This test tells you how fast a Chromebook handles things you do every day. This includes doing work and more fun activities such as playing video games, watching movies, and editing pictures. 

This benchmark consists of six scenario tests:

• Photo Effects: Applies three effects (Sharpen, Emboss, and Glow) to two photos each, a set of six photos total.
• Face Detection: Checks for human faces in a set of five photos (that are low resolution).
• Offline Notes: Measures the time to encrypt, store, and display notes from local storage.
• Stock Portfolio Dashboard: Calculates and displays different graphical views of a stock portfolio.
• DNA Sequence Analysis: Measures the time it takes to process eight DNA sequences for open reading frames and amino acids.
• 3D Shapes with WebGL: Generates equation-based 3D shapes and displays them with WebGL.

The performance test gives you an overall score. With this benchmark, the higher the score, the better. 

CrXPRT includes a battery test. In this test, all six workloads from the performance benchmarks are run, plus realistic periods of wait time and three additional scenarios:

• Video Player: Plays a two-minute 1,080p H.264 video clip in a browser from the local system.
• Music Player: Plays an audio clip for three minutes.
• HTML5-based game: Runs an impact.js-based game for about two minutes.

All tests were run on the above enterprise Chromebook laptop using the latest version of ChromeOS (ChromeOS 83). Wi-Fi was on, but Bluetooth was disabled during the benchmarking. 

We chose a variety of options based on functionality, performance, and pricing. However, if these don’t work for you, here is a worthy alternative: