We’ve been putting in some extra work as of late hunting down the few available Chromebook deals still to be found around the web. With so many working and learning from home, a good deal on a good device is tough to find and this morning, it occurred to me that there’s another option out there that we’ve overlook. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that a Chromebox might very well be the best solution for many users wanting a good Chrome OS experience on very little dime.
If you’ll bear with me a moment while I make my case, I think you may find yourself in agreement and your purchasing decision might get a tad bit easier. Now, I understand that purchasing a Chromebox immediately negates the portability that you would gain from purchasing a Chromebook but the value that comes with buying a small form-factor desktop is arguably higher depending on your use case. For starters, most of us probably already have a perfectly capable 1080P or 4K monitor sitting right in our living rooms. Chromeboxes come equipped with an HDMI port and can connect directly into a standard television’s HDMI interface. Boom, large-screen Chrome OS experience.
For me, I don’t see myself sitting down on the couch to do my work for the day but for a student, that’s a different story. My daughter, like many students, is currently learning from home via NTI or non-traditional instruction. Her teacher uses Google Classroom to send daily lessons and keep track of her progress but multiple times a week, she and other teachers from the school offers extracurricular activities such as storytelling, show and tell and other media-based content to keep students engaged. While this works just fine on a Chromebook, having these interactions up on the big screen is awe-inspiring for the kiddos. The Chromebox makes that simple.
Another advantage of a Chromebox is that its customizable nature makes it somewhat future proof. While you can order prebuilt configurations from most OEMs, devices like CTL’s Chromebox CBX1 can be customized at the time you place your order so that you can get extra RAM and storage without having to do the work yourself. The CBX1 comes stock with a whopping 128GB of storage which is 4X what you get from other manufacturer’s pre-configured devices. Plus, you can upgrade the RAM to 8GB for a measly $27. Now you’ve got yourself a Chromebox that has plenty of horsepower in the U-series Celeron processor and guaranteed updates for more than five years. The CBX1 also supports Linux apps and Android apps so it’s like having three operating systems in one PC.
To add some icing to the cake, a Chromebox makes a great gaming device to boot. If you’re familiar with Google’s Stadia, you probably already know that the streaming games run like butter on most Chrome OS devices. Now, imagine having a tiny Chromebox hidden behind your TV that you can fire up and play titles like FINAL FANTASY XV, GRID, NBA 2K20 and many, many more. A Celeron-powered Chromebox with 8GB of RAM will handle Stadia like a champ and costs a fraction of a powerful gaming laptop. Attach an inexpensive wireless keyboard and mouse combo like you can find from Logitech, and you have a pretty nice game console and workstation all in one.
All of that sounds great but what makes it a value? PRICE, of course. Getting a good Chromebook with a decent processor and screen that isn’t garbage is going to set you back at least $300 and that’s the absolute minimum. You can grab a Chromebox with a Celeron processor, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage for only $275. Oh, and did I mention that you can slap on a custom paint job for only $10? No? CTL offers a handful of custom colors that will make your Chromebox as unique as you. While Chromebooks are hard to find at the moment, CTL is stocked and ready to ship out new Chromeboxes right now and standard shipping is free on orders of $99 or more. If you need it sooner than later, expedited shipping is available for as little as $13. If you are looking to outfit your business or classroom, CTL offers bulk pricing as well as premier GSuite services for qualified accounts. You can find the CTL CBX1 and a ton of other great products from CTL at the link below.
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