It’s back: $250 off the $629 HP Chromebook 14c with Core i3, 8 GB of memory
There’s no need to fight Black Friday crowds for deals this year as many retailers are using this whole week to share their discounts. And to limit in-store activities due to COVID-19, for that matter. Best Buy’s Black Friday week has kicked off and if I had to pick one deal out of the bunch, I’d go with the HP Chromebook 14c. Normally priced at $629, this convertible Chromebook is discounted to $379, making it a steal for what you get.
If you recall when HP announced the starting price of $499 for this 14-inch 2-in-1, I said to pay attention to the device specifications. That base model uses a dual-core Intel Pentium Gold 6405U processor, 4 GB of memory and 64 GB of local storage. Buy getting the $379 special deal, this HP Chromebook X360 14c gets beefier hardware: a 10th-generation dual-core Intel Core i3-10110U processor, 8 GB of memory and the same 64 GB of eMMC storage.
Along with the updated processor and memory, this model has a 14-inch IPS 1920×1080 touch panel with an average but decent 250 nits of brightness and 45% NTSC support. It also has WiFi 6 and Bluetooth 5 support, plus a trio of USB ports: 2 SuperSpeed Type-C and one SuperSpeed Type-A.
The keyboard is backlit and you can add additional local storage via a memory card slot. The 2-in-1 laptop supports an optional USI stylus and charges over USB-C with an included 45W charger. And it has a handy fingerprint sensor under the right corner of the keyboard as well.
It’s hard to find a Chromebook at this price with a Core i3 processor, let alone 8 GB of memory, which I generally recommend as the minimum if possible. Having more than double the relatively standard 4 GB of RAM offers more headroom to open up dozens of browser tabs or run Android apps alongside the browser. It’s not a “must-have” for most Chromebook users but definitely nice to have.
Update: This post was originally published on November 23. As of today, this deal is back.
Reviewers seem to be very pleased with the performance of this HP, even though it comes with a 64-GB eMMC local drive instead of a 128-GB PCIe SSD. Nor does it have various other premium build features like quad speakers. Still, this seems to be a very fair price for a good buy.
Can I do banking and excel, etc with this – 14C with core 1 3 – 8 GB memory