5 Best Chromeboxes and Chromebits You Can Buy
Jan. 27, 2020When it comes to Chromeboxes, Acer has been creating some of the best machines in the past few years. It brings new Chromeboxes with the latest internals and moderate pricing. Last year, Acer released three variants of its newest Chromebox: i3, i5, and i7 models. The best part is thatall of the variants are running the 8th-gen Intel Core chips which should translate to better performanceand battery efficiency. On the memory front as well, you get 8GB of DDR4 RAM for i3 and i5 variants whereas a humongous 16GB of DDR4 RAM for the i7 variant particularly. That’s one beefy Chromebox and I love it.
Other than that,you have 64GB of SSD storage on all three modelsand plenty of ports to offer. On all the models, you get 5 Type-A ports, 1 Type C port, 1 HDMI port, 1 microSD card slot and 1 DisplayPort over USB Type C. As for the connectivity, it comes with Bluetooth 4.2, WiFi and Gigabit LAN. Simply put, the new Chrome OS machines by Acer are one of the best Chromeboxes available now and you should not give them a miss.
Buy from Amazon:Starts at $482.07
Asus is another Chromebox manufacturer who is giving a tough competition to Acer. It’s among the few companies still making some great Chromeboxes. If you are looking for Chromeboxes having powerful specs and I/O ports, you can take a look at the Asus Chromebox 3. The Asus Chromebox 3 comes in four major configs whichinclude 7th-gen Celeron, i3, i5, and i7. All of the variants are packed with 32GB of SSD storageand have support for microSD cards. However, bear in mind, you can’tupgrade the internal storage like Windows PCs.
Talking about memory, the Celeron and i3 models have 4GB of DDR4 RAM whereas i5 and i7 have 8GB of DDR4 RAM. As for ports,you get 5 Type-A and one Type C portand both of them are based on the USB 3.1 standard. Not to mention, you also have HDMI, WiFi, Bluetooth 4.2 and a Gigabit LAN port. All in all, the Asus Chromebox 3 seems like a well-rounded Chromebox and you should definitely consider this tiny machine.
Buy from Amazon:Starts at $260.38
If you are looking for a Chromebox with largeSSD storagethen I would recommend the Celeron variant of CTL Chromebox.It comes with 128GB of onboard SSD storage and 4GB of RAM.That’s really great, right? However, if you want a powerful Chromebox then you can take a look at its 8th-gen i7 variant. It has 32GB of SSD storage, but you can expand it internally and can also insert a microSD card.
Not to mention, the i7 variant has 8GB of RAM so if you are a power user, that should suffice for running multipleChrome and Linux appsat once. Apart from that, both the models come with WiFi, Bluetooth, plenty of USB Type-A ports, HDMI and of course, Ethernet port. All in all, I would saythe Celeron variant is quite good for the moneyand you should check that out. However, if you want the i7 variant, the steep price may disappoint you.
HP offers two Chromeboxes: one with Celeron and another one with the 7th-gen Intel Core i5 processor. Both have 32GB of SSD storage, butthe Celeron one comes with 4GB of RAM and the i5 variant is packed with 8GB of RAM. Having said that, I would recommend you to go with either Asus or Acer Chromebox if you want the i5 variant. The i5 model of HP G2 is needlessly expensive and does not seem to bring any additional features to justify its high price. As for I/O ports, you have 4 USB Type-A, a microSD card slot, one HDMI, and an Ethernet port on both the variants. If you are wondering about wireless connectivity then you do have WiFi and Bluetooth on both the models. All in all, the Celeron variant of HP G2 is a decent Chromebox and you should check that out.
Not to mention, you even have WiFi and Bluetooth support on this tiny stick. As for the ports, there is a microSD card slot, one USB Type-A slot, and a mini HDMI port. Simply put, if you want thebest Chromebit to run basic tasksthen Asus CS10 is your one and only option.
Buy from Amazon:$110
The Best Chromebox and Chromebit Ranked for You
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