This is the best sub-$300 Chromebook you can buy right now

Chromebook prices dip and change all the time. You know it, I know it, and across the board, we can see $200 price fluctuations in the span of just 24 hours. That means there are a few Chromebooks that – on a semi-regular basis – tend to drop below the $300 barrier. And that puts them into the ultra-affordable range, making the incentive to pick one up quite high.

But that incentive must be driven by features. There are plenty of sub-$300 Chromebooks out there on a given day, but the vast majority of them should not be purchased. They tend to include years-old processors, poor screens, and bad overall build quality to get the price down.

But today, none of those things are true of the Lenovo Flex 3i Chromebook that is currently on sale for just $269. For this asking price, you are getting the latest small-core Intel SoC (the N100) along with 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. Sure, I’d love to see this device with double the RAM and storage, but the rest of the package is so compelling, it’s tough to argue at this price.

The star of the show on the Flex 3i is the screen. You just don’t expect it on a device this affordable, but the 12.2-inch 16:10 IPS screen looks amazing and hits that coveted 300 nits of brightness. The build quality is firm and reassuring, and the convertible nature means you can take advantage of that screen in tablet mode when you choose.

The keyboard is really great, the trackpad is solid and not a bother, and the I/O is actually fantastic; giving you a full-sized HDMI port, USB Type C port, 2 USB Type A ports, a microSD card slot, headphone/mic jack and a Kensington lock. For a small, affordable device, that’s quite the setup, and it means you won’t need a docking solution if you need to use it on the desk or in a presentation.

And let me tell you, the N100 is up to the task. While it won’t blow away current-gen Intel Core chips, this processor is very capable and worked with my extended display without any issues whatsoever. For a device that is this compact, this affordable, and this flexible, it’s a breath of fresh air to get the full QHD resolution (only at 60Hz, mind you) when I plug in the HDMI cable instead of being capped at 1080p.

Trust me when I tell you, this Chromebook punches far above this current price – and above its MSRP on most days as well. While we’re still waiting on more of these Intel Alder Lake-N devices to show up in the consumer market, it’s easy to recommend this one that’s been around for about a year at this point. It just gets so much right, and for this sort of money, you simply cannot beat it.