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In 2013, I bought my first Mac, a MacBook Air. It was a great machine that accompanied me on the go for seven years, but as you can imagine, it’s been getting long in the tooth lately. I enjoy macOS and have grown accustomed to the platform over the years and decided to buy an iMac a year ago, but as someone who does little other than blogging on a laptop, I was interested in a more significant switch. Instead of going for a new MacBook for work on the go, I decided to try a Chromebook. After a long adjustment period, the experiment turned out to go surprisingly well, especially as I learned to work around the restraints of the machine. I could still never use a Chromebook as my primary machine, but that’s not even what I want from a laptop these days.
For some added context, here are the devices I’m throwing into the mix: I use a 27-inch iMac with 40GB of RAM and a 9th-gen 3.7GHz 6-core Intel Core i5 at home while my MacBook is running on 4GB of RAM and an aging 4th-gen dual-core Core i5. My new laptop/convertible is a 14-inch HP Chromebook x360 with 8GB of RAM and an 8th-gen dual-core Intel Core i3 (Taylor reviewed a similarly equipped variant here at Android Police).
Design and hardware
It isn’t fair to compare the build quality of a $1,000+ computer to one I got for about $500, but considering the price difference and the resulting compromises in design and material, the Chromebook holds up surprisingly well. That’s mostly due to HP’s excellent keyboard and the laptop’s sturdy exterior — I’ve got my gripes with the weight, the dark screen with its 16:9 form factor (3:2 is best, don’t @ me), and the hinge, which you have to open with two hands. The touchpad isn’t too great, either. I tried to play with the settings, but I just couldn’t find the perfect speed. I guess there’s a reason MacBook trackpads are considered industry-leading. I also dearly miss the four-finger Mission Control gesture, but at least Chrome OS offers a keyboard replacement for it. On the other hand, the Chromebook’s three-finger swipe gesture to switch between tabs is just perfect, so it’s giving and taking.
While I despise Google’s decision to replace caps lock with a search icon instead of putting it in the Windows or command key’s place, I do like having dedicated browsing buttons in the top row. After some time, I started remembering my go-to keyboard shortcuts like Search + shift + left/right to go to the end or beginning of a line. The screenshot combinations also came in handy once I memorized them.
The HP Chromebook x360 in tent mode.
I had hoped I could use this flippable Chromebook as a tablet replacement, but I’ve found myself gravitating towards laptop mode most of the time, even when I’m consuming content. A 14-inch device is a tad too huge for a tablet, even with Google’s latest improvem