Hello, I am looking for a new laptop, and I really liked how chromebooks are looking after modding them.
I will be using this for college, and specifically, I will be running a lot of programs like Matlab/Simulink, Spice circuit simulations, and also using it for coding.
My requirements are:
Minimum 16 GB of RAM
New-ish Intel i5 or Ryzen 5 or better
SSD storage 250 GB or more
Ideally lightweight
Ideally with touchscreen / stylus support
Any recommendations? I found some good deals on used/refurbished Acer Chromebook Plus 514, but they come with 8 GB of RAM and I could not find if it could be upgraded.
Chromebooks probably wont be performant enough for that stuff since they only got U-Series CPUs. If you arent in the US you will get better actual laptops probably for cheaper.
Aside from that; I can also tell you from first hand (lol) experience that stylus note taking is more gimmick than useful. I did it for less than 2 weeks before returning to the keyboard.
Powerful is relative. What kind of coding will you be doing on it? “New-ish Intel i5 or Ryzen 5 or better” also has a wide range of CPUs in general, ranging from 15W U-series to 45W H-series CPUs. Also, what OS will you be using?
Matlab/Simulink, Spice are cpu and sometimes gpu intensive tasks. Chromebooks are not apt to these tasks, and also don’t have a dedicated gpu.
For 16GB chromebooks you need to pay a hefty premium.
you want lightweight/touchscreen/stylus
You can find chromebooks in these category, but cheaper more powerful refurbished Windows laptops with 16GB that you can dual boot into ChromeOS.
My recommendation:
do your research whether for you need a dedicated gpu or not
if not, look for a refurbished Windows laptop with above requirements. I think light will be hard to find.
Install on this Windows laptop multi-boot Linux & ChromeOS Brunch. For your school tasks use Linux. For leisure ChromeOS.