This has been a good day for Chromebook deals as we get a little over a week out from Black Friday. First, the Lenovo Flex 5 got down to its lowest price ever, but as expected, it's back-ordered already. If you're looking for a more powerful Chromebook for full-time work — especially one that can handle doing multi-window work while on a busy video conference call — you'll want a Chromebook with 8GB so that you don't have tabs start dropping randomly while you're in crunch time.
Our favorite 8GB Chromebook, the Acer Chromebook Spin 713, is back down close to its lowest price ever in this early Black Friday deal from Best Buy.
More RAM to handle video calls and full-time work
If you're someone who loves a 3:2 screen and a beefy, beefy processor to power it, this Project Athena Chromebook is for you. The 2K resolution means everything looks great whether you're working or just pretending to, and the 2-in-1 form factor makes it great for indulging some touchscreen games like Freecell after hours.
The Acer Spin 713 is a powerful Project Athena Chromebook that goes in a more practical direction than its luxury-minded cousins the ASUS Chromebook Flip C436 and the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook. The Spin 713 has a full array of ports, including an HDMI port for teachers and professionals that are used to plugging in to present to the room. While it has a microSD slot, you probably won't end up needing it since it comes with a speedy 128GB SSD for storage, a major improvement over the older, slower eMMC storage most Chromebooks use.
The 3:2 aspect ratio is something you'll either love or hate — a lot of people adore the fatter aspect ratio because it lets you see further down the screen at one time, but the tradeoff is that the keyboard sits further back on the laptop than a 16:9 Chromebook. The backlit keyboard is easy to use for hours on end, and you'll get a full 8 hour workday out of it unless you crank the screen brightness up. The screen can go up to 450 nits, so it stands up to sunshine better than most Chromebooks, but it'll eat battery when you stay that bright for prolonged periods.
We've seen the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 drop down to $529 a handful of times over the summer and early fall, but this is the first time we've seen it get a sale since Black Friday deals really kicked off. While there's a chance that it drops again on Cyber Monday, there's just as good a chance it'll sell out at $549 and be out of stock by the time Black Friday itself rolls around. $550 is also a phenomenal deal on a Chromebook this powerful, so grab it before it's back-ordered like the Flex 5 deal.
