Deal alert: the best Chromebook ever made is a whopping $400 off right now

Just a few weeks ago, I was lamenting a pretty frustrating reality in the Chromebook ecosystem. The Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14, a device I have unapologetically called the best Chromebook ever made, saw a staggering price hike up to $999. At just under a grand, it became a pretty tough sell for the average consumer, regardless of how much I adore the hardware.

But in the Chromebook space, as many of you already know, prices rarely stay stagnant. And that is very true of the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 at the moment; because a massive new discount has slashed a whopping $400 off the MSRP, bringing the top-tier 16GB RAM and 256GB storage model of the Chromebook Plus 14 down to an absolute sweet spot of just $599.

Why $599 makes this a no-brainer purchase

When I first reviewed this clamshell beast at its original $749 MSRP, I was over the moon about the total package Lenovo managed to put together. Dropping it down to $599 completely and fundamentally changes the value proposition, undercutting most premium Windows alternatives and putting this laptop on equal footing with the Macbook Neo.

As a quick refresher of why this machine is a permanent fixture in my backpack, you are getting a highly premium list of specifications for under six hundred bucks:

• The Processor: It features the standout MediaTek Kompanio Ultra chip. It is a super-fast, wildly efficient processor that delivers blistering performance while maintaining a completely silent, fanless design.
• The Screen: The 14-inch, 16:10 WUXGA OLED touchscreen display is absolutely gorgeous. With perfect contrast, a 100% DCI-P3 color gamut, and 400 nits of brightness, streaming media or editing photos on this panel feels incredibly premium.
• Premium sound: With the upward-facing speakers that sound pretty incredible out of a device this thin, you get great stereo separation, full sound, and an audio experience that perfectly matches that gorgeous screen.
• The Multitasking Headroom: This deal is for the fully-loaded variant equipped with 16GB of LPDDR5X RAM and 256GB of fast UFS storage. It handles dozens of dense Chrome tabs, background apps, and system-level Gemini tasks without breaking a sweat.
• The Battery Longevity: Thanks to the architectural efficiencies of the Kompanio chip, the battery life is a legitimate beast, easily stretching across two full work days of real-world use between charges if you keep your screen brightness in check.

Don’t miss this discount

When a device of this caliber balloons to $999, it forces me to pull back on it as my go-to recommendation. But when the discount pendulum swings back this heavily, it easily jumps right back to the absolute top of the list for me.

If you want a rigid, lightweight laptop with a spectacular display, an exceptional backlit keyboard, a smooth glass trackpad, and enough horsepower to sail through the next several years of ChromeOS feature rollouts (and likely an optional upgrade to the new Googlebook experience this fall), you simply cannot do better than this right now. We have no formal indicator on how long this $400 price drop will hold live, so if you’ve been waiting for the perfect moment to grab one of these for yourself, I’d recommend doing so soon.