14" Chromebooks - recommendations

[BlueSkies]

Hi there,

 

I am on the lookout for 14" Chromebooks - either new, or more likely due to budget constraints - refurbished. 

 

I can find loads of 11.6" refurbished but am struggling to find any with bigger screens - would anyone have any recommendations of where to look?

 

Also, the subject of touchscreen Chromebooks has been raised ... does anyone have experience of these (good or bad!).  Is it something that works well, or should I avoid the idea altogether!

 

Thanks in advance for any advice/suggestions.

[TheHyperTechie]

Personally, I have always avoided touchscreen chromebooks for our 1:1 scheme - I see it as another component that can go wrong. However, I can see the benefits of having them.

 

In terms of devices, we purchased a batch of Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3s a while ago and they are performing well. From memory they were about £150 per unit. Can't comment on refurbished models though.

[BlueSkies]

1 minute ago, HyperTech said:

Personally, I have always avoided touchscreen chromebooks for our 1:1 scheme - I see it as another component that can go wrong. However, I can see the benefits of having them.

 

In terms of devices, we purchased a batch of Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3s a while ago and they are performing well. From memory they were about £150 per unit. Can't comment on refurbished models though.

 

Thanks, that's useful info.  These would be used as a class set, so not 1:1 - but I'm not sure if that's a better or worse situation! 

 

My gut feeling is that they would need to be quite sturdy and perhaps those two words "sturdy" and "touchscreen" don't go so well together!

 

Would you be happy to share details of the supplier you used for the Lenovos?  

[TheHyperTechie]

7 minutes ago, BlueSkies said:

 

Thanks, that's useful info.  These would be used as a class set, so not 1:1 - but I'm not sure if that's a better or worse situation! 

 

My gut feeling is that they would need to be quite sturdy and perhaps those two words "sturdy" and "touchscreen" don't go so well together!

 

Would you be happy to share details of the supplier you used for the Lenovos?  

No worries, yeah that has always been my thought process.

 

Just dug out the old quote, we actually only paid £129 per unit. NSOptimum were the supplier 🙂

Edited April 22, 2025 by HyperTech

[PotNoodleTech]

I do not go near touchscreen chroembooks wth a barge pole as you can not get replacement screens for them easily, and if you can get them they're stupid money (50-100% of the price of a new CB).

 

So for a 1:1 deployment,  touchscreen is a really bad idea unlesss you like throwing large piles of unrepairable chromebooks out.

Edited April 23, 2025 by PotNoodleTech

[Tester2000]

Some come with dual USB C charging ports, which is a boon when it comes to broken charge ports since both students and staff alike love to rag them in/out of the charging trolleys.

Refer to this list for any Chromebooks you find/get quoted for: https://support.google.com/chrome/a/answer/6220366?hl=en Some will not have long left to live.

 

I'd also not recommend touchscreens in secondary schools, with them being harder to swap out a simple panel, as well as being dearer.  You'll also find touch screen ones are typically heavier, which matters quite a bit when staff or especially students offer to carry 5+ to/from a trolley.  We do however only install touchscreen ones in our primaries, as a much larger number of students than you'd think have never typed on a physical keyboard or used a trackpad before that point.  We find the touch panels help them ease into using Chromebooks.  Malicious damage in primaries is also far less common than in secondary's, just make sure they've got good drainage channels!

 

In terms of other general advice, you want the keys as hard to pick off as possible.  That's the biggest annoyance we have here, not really hinges or screens, but students ripping the key caps, supports and buttons off the keyboards.  They are mostly repairable with a bottle of superglue and a number of sacrificial Chromebooks.

[Hoyt]

One thing we've noticed is just like PCs chromebooks get slower as the OS is updated.  That's a danger when considering used.  When Google got sued to extend the AUE administration here used that as an excuse not to swap out older units.  As a result they are now so slow that they hang when trying to load TestNav and the batteries are swelling up so bad they are bulging the palm rests.

 

As far as touch screens go they did order some for the lower grades and we have found that they seem to fail easier than the non touch screens do.  I'm not talking breakage, weird black lines running across the screens that we do not see in the non touch models.  Also we have gotten several new replacement touch screens from HP that will display a good image but the touch function doesn't work and we wind up having to replace that screen with another new one to get it working.  It's been a real pain.

 

Due to various reasons we use the HP 14" models they specifically design for school use.  The keys aren't too easy to pluck off and if they do pick some off I have been able to swap them over from donor keyboards with a pair of magnifying glasses pretty easily.  I haven't used a lot of other brands myself but we hired a tech from across the state line who had to work with Dells and he said he doesn't think they were as robust as the HPs we are using.

[BlueSkies]

Thanks for all your advice and suggestions so far.

 

Does anyone have Lenovo 300e touchscreen Chromebooks?  If so I'd be interested to hear how they are holding up "in the wild" ...

 

🙂

[PotNoodleTech]

On 09/05/2025 at 17:31, BlueSkies said:

Thanks for all your advice and suggestions so far.

 

Does anyone have Lenovo 300e touchscreen Chromebooks?  If so I'd be interested to hear how they are holding up "in the wild" ...

 

🙂

I've got a few hundred.  Wish they were 100e's to be honest as any screen damage = the chromebook written off as you cant get cheap spare touchscreen screens.

 

Like I said above, avoid touchscreen.

[simpsonj]

To echo a point made, a replacement touchscreen will cost around £100-130, a non touchscreen is around £20-30.

 

For our students on our 1:1 device scheme they all have touchscreens with a repair warranty as the pedsagogical benefits of having a touchscreen is worth the extra cost. Any Chromebooks we buy as spares are all non-touchscreen. 

[Chris_Cook]

We've got probably about 400 across 2 secondary's in our 1-2-1 scheme, and maybe some more in the primary's in shared trolleys.

 

We go through a lot of screens. I think we get them from PSA Parts. Not cheap though, but less than a new one. I think we pay less than £100 for one when brought in bulk.

 

The edge to edge glass is a weak point of any device I think. But then a lot of our damage is on the football field or basket ball courts and nothings going to survive that. We get some that are pens being caught between the screen and keyboard when in the bag.

 

Unfortunately everyone wants the shiny stuff...

[PotNoodleTech]

Pegagogy or not the choice here comes down you you either have a non touch screen chromebook or you don't have any chromebook at all.

 

I've had to make tough choices to keep the 1:1 going here after covid as costs have spiralled.  We're no longer getting chromebooks for £135 a pop.  Touch screens were one of those tough choices.  Frankly everyone wants a touch screen but no one really uses it that much apart from some edge cases (art etc).

 

Don't be like some schools I know  - we need touch screen we must have all touch screen blah blah, won't someone think of the pedagogogogooggy etc - ignored me completely bought a fleet of 300/500e's at great cost - and now they've got hundreds of chromebooks in cuboards in bits and gone back to chalk and talk in 75% of lessons wheras we are keeping hundreds of 100es up and running with £20 screens 

Edited May 12, 2025 by PotNoodleTech
typo

[Hoyt]

On 12/05/2025 at 04:59, PotNoodleTech said:

we need touch screen we must have all touch screen blah blah

 

It has been amusing to me to watch the correlated increase in technology use here with the decrease in actual test scores.  Staring at a screen is a very poor form of retention, but you can't tell that to someone that wants to look good in front of the TV cameras.  They have created a generation of kids that have no fine motor skills at all due to the insistence that EVERYTHING must be done on chromebooks.  It's a sad thing to see.

 

My Wife had a high school student that didn't even know how to tie a bow (Velcro sneakers FTW).

 

It's a long shot when ordering new chromebooks to get them to match up but we have been able to rob some screens out of older 14" chromebooks to replace broken ones of similar models that are still technically "supported".