This great mid-range Chromebook is on sale for nearly an entry-level price

A few days ago a reader reached out to me for a budget Chromebook purchase recommendation. The main requirements were a cost between $250 and $400, 11- to 14-inch display, HD if possible, and both a touchscreen and backlit keyboard would be nice.

There are plenty of Chromebooks to choose from in this category, with most in the $250 to $350 range. They’ll likely have a 720p display in the desired size range, may not have either a touchscreen or backlit keyboard (or both) and are probably performance constrained by 4 GB of memory and, at best, a Pentium processor.

So I didn’t recommend any of those. The Best Buy sale of the very capable mid-range HP Chromebook X360 is back at $399.99, fitting in just one penny under the budget.

Yes, a buyer could save $100 to $150 and go for a true entry-level Chromebook. But I think the extra value by spending the additional money is well worth it, mainly because there are no compromises in the requirements at all and in many cases, this 2-in-1 exceeds them.

The only “downside”, if you will, is that the white & slate model isn’t on sale; this deal is on the white & gold option.

That aside, at this moment, I think the best “entry-level” priced Chromebook is a mid-range device based on this configuration at $399.99, which is $200 off of the MSRP:

It is a valid point that the HP Chromebook X360 isn’t included in the new Chrome OS software update policy of 8 years, announced earlier this week. However, this device did get a bit of a support extension late last year, so there’s still 5.5 years of updates to be had.

This sale has been on all week so I anticipate it will disappear by this weekend. And if it does, I’d definitely recommend another option that’s more in line with the entry-level Chromebook experience. Right now though? I’d take this deal over any of those options in a heartbeat.