Asus chromebook vs HP chromebook?

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Lots of chromebooks available these days. My last MacBook crashed 1.5+ years ago and I haven’t taken it into Apple to see if they can revive it again. (took all day last time, it’s from ~2009 and was given to me for free.) Only has my phone since.

Might buy a chromebook.

With a coupon and a couple cash back offers this one is $282cdn if I order it from Costco by tomorrow:

https://www.costco.ca/asus-c523na-cb01t ... 58467.html

This one is on sale for $299:

https://www.staples.ca/products/2975876 ... -chrome-os


Similar price, fair bit different. Not sure if touch screen is a “must have,” for a laptop or of I’d never use it - never had a touch screen laptop, only phones. The non touchscreen version is $50 cheaper.

The HP has a bit smaller screen but twice the storage space and way better speakers - and the better audio is a bit appealing.

Not really sure how the displays/screen resolution compare tbh. Not really a thing I know about.

My uses would be pretty basic:

Browsing, email, streaming, possibly some word documents and spreadsheets. I haven’t used an optical drive for several years. Only time I can foresee maybe having to is if I were to take a course and some material came on discs - then I’d probably have to go buy a different machine I guess. Just doesn’t appeal to me to spend a couple thousand dollars on an Apple product (which I like, they’re just a Lot of money) and don’t want to buy a windows OS laptop because that’s just paying money to frustrate yourself with junk that doesn’t work.

Biggest reason one is even on my radar is that I have a $50 coupon for costco.ca. IF I decided to buy one from there it’s an extra 5% cash back tmw.

Blah blah. Pros cons tough call. Is there a clear winner you would choose and why? I’ve never owned any chromebook and have no idea if any of them have reputations as garbage and others as amazing. Between the two would you go Asus or HP? And if neither, is there a different one entirely at a comparable price point that you’d recommend?

And maybe I won’t end up buying one at all for now. But thinking about it at the moment.

TLDR I guess, eh?

Kinda wish all of these models were available side by side to test out in person.

From feedback from others touchscreen doesn’t seem too necessary. Could go non touch for $235. BUT, if the speakers sound awful compared to the one for $299 sounding great wellll that’s a difference maker.

Ah well, it’s not a thing I Need Right Now - it’s just that Today Only I could get an additional 5% back from Costco. BUT if in the end I decide to buy something elsewhere it’s moot anyways.

Maybe I’ll shift gears and spend my time outside getting exercise and revisit purchasing something like this when the weather turns to rain every day in the Fall/Winter.

Do they floor models? In cheap laptops I would fear getting a sh***y keyboard, I would definitely try out a floor model first. Some cheap laptop keyboards can have a lot of flex and mushy feel to that would turn me off, but you never know just by looking at a picture. If there is a good return policy I guess that could be okay if you found the speakers or keyboard were s**t. I wouldn't care about a touch screen personally.

Some, but not all for Costco. The location I was at had a couple different ones (Lenovo and something else I forget) which are not on their website. And the coupon I have is for online shopping only - which if we don’t use them for bigger ticket items (must spend at least $250 to get $50 off) we’ll just use them both for food/clothes/gifts etc.

No idea which ones they have on display at staples as I haven’t been there for anything in years.

I liked that I could put my hands on the couple models at Costco and see how the size/scale of the keyboards felt. A slight bit squishy for the 11.x” models they have in store - probably more comfortable and natural feeling for someone with smaller hands. Not sure if 14” screen models have larger keyboards or not - like the one I linked above for example, it might not have any bigger keyboard due to speakers being top facing beside the keys.

Would be ideal to try them all out in store But I think most/all of these places have decent return policies. I suppose if there comes a time when I must buy one I could also go to Best Buy and try out several of them, too.

And yeah, I think a touch screen might not be that useful to me/I’d probably never use it. I use my iPhone every single day, but the few times I’ve borrowed and used an iPad it just didn’t feel natural at all - kinda weird. Can’t really type with thumbs quickly on it like a phone. It just feels kinda awkward vs intuitive and convenient so I never use it. So chances are even if a chromebook has a hinge that folded it into a touchscreen tablet I’d probably never use it like that anyways and paying for such a feature would be a waste of money And just over complicate things with components that could fail for no good reason.

I grew wary of only having my iPhone 6 as a series-of-tubes (credit: dubya) connected device and bought the hp one today. It’s been like 2 years with only my iPhone and no larger screen or full keyboard.

Saw a Staples in the parking lot so went in to check out cheapie chromebooks and they still had this HP one on sale for $299 - but only had the display model left at that location so rather than drive elsewhere I bought it for an additional 10% off. ($303.xx after tax) They’re going to wipe the store model security software off of it and phone me later today for pickup.

Talked about limitations of chromebooks for apps and such - like it can’t run iTunes so I still can’t backup my phone if I wanted to (oh well, can’t now, not worth 2-3x the price MINIMUM just to be able to do that), and one old dude tried to tell me the processor was too slow for streaming.. I doubt it - video streaming has been around for a couple decades and even my phone can do that. Tested out a few YouTube videos and there was no lagging, graphics are Ok for the price, sound is Ok - would be nice if it was a bit louder but still not bad And apparently better and louder sound than other chromebooks so w/e it’ll do just fine.

If there comes a point where I Need a more powerful machine for something, then I guess I’ll have to buy one at that point.

Seems a bit odd that some reviewers say this thing is only suitable for elementary school students To Me seeing as ms office apps & google docs etc all work fine on it And it’s more powerful than full blown desktop pc’s used to be. If you’re not gaming or rendering animations or something and basically only web browsing, word processing/emailing, and maybe building simple spreadsheets I see no reason to spend $$$$ on a full blown laptop or MacBook. There are a lot better uses for $, imo. Savings, investments, drugs, alcohol etc. ;p