Bloggers, I need your help. I am in a huge debate with myself, Bert and others on what is the best laptop/chromebook/tablet out there for bloggers and blogging alike. There has to be pros and cons to each one in the market, and I’m having quite a difficult time finding the best one for what I need to use it for. I’ll list out the potential devices I am considering, but would absolutely love guidance – and what better than to ask individuals who are also writing/blogging – so thank you for considering helping me in the search. Let’s see what I’m looking for, why I am and what I’ve come up with so far. From there – all and any feedback would be appreciated!
Why I am in the Market for a New Device
My macbook, personal laptop, is 7 years old (well 6.5 technically… haha). I believe everyone remembers when I re-vamped my laptop last year for $63 and boy, was it lightning fast! I added 8gb of RAM into my macbook and it was handling amazingly. Then… we had an operating system upgrade. Then… my screen decided to start spunnering out on me (which I believe is just an internal connection issue, as I have a 1 inch bar going down the center of my screen. Well, the new operating system upgrade has now led to an annoyance to my computer, as I have all of these ad pop ups that I never had before and it is just really sluggish, overall. I understand, at 7 years of age, one would think – DAMN, I have for sure gotten the life out of it that I wanted. I still had about 60-70GB left of hard drive space on it and it worked so well before the OS upgrade, okay Apple, are you trying to push me to get a new Apple product? I’ll say this – I definitely support Apple, their products are incredible, simple and they last. My laptop before this didn’t last more than 12 months. Nuff said. My macbook was $900 and I had around $400 in Apple gift cards. So… $500/6.5 years = $77/year in depreciation on the laptop, not bad and couldn’t be more grateful. I more than likely can sell the RAM I purchased back online at a discounted price and will hopefully catch $40-$50 for it, they are less than 1 year old. I also feel this will help in the blogging productivity as I have to jump between two laptops right now to accomplish things, very frustrating and I really want to hit one of the goals set to receive $1,000 in blogging income before the end of the year! As from my last quarterly update, we are very, very far away from this goal. Needless to say, I am back in the market baby and I’m now a blogger, to which I love this community and writing these posts. Nice segway into what I use my laptop for.
Activities to be performed on the next Device
I can easily list out what I do on a frequent/daily basis below and then follow it up with a little list of what I sparingly will use this device for, I will make this quick, to the point for everyone:
- Blogging/Writing Articles
- Reading Blogs
- Stock Research/Financial Websites
- Storing Photos (wouldn’t mind using a cloud device)
- Watching Youtube videos (music, basketball, etc.)
- Microsoft Office Products/Form of Word document & Excel/Spreadsheet usage (for investment/portfolio tracking, etc.)
Here below are the less frequent and the “occasional” usage of what the next device will be for:
- Netflix Videos
- Streaming ESPN, TNT, ABC, USA
- Video Chatting with family (VERY infrequent)
Essentially, I am using the next device to write and read articles, track my investment portfolio in spreadsheets, create word documents and then the storing of photos somewhere in an online storage. When I travel, I will occasionally watch a video on Netflix or other network, very rarely though. Pretty easy and basic right?
What I desire the Next Device to Have
This is gong to be a list of what I’m looking for in the device – more of a specification list, if you ask me. Again, I’ll list them out, bullet point style to make things easier:
- 3 Pounds or Less – would love to make it easy to carry around and transport
- 12-13 inch screen with a resolution that is HD (for pictures and viewing sites, videos)
- 2GB Minimum of RAM to run an office-type product & blogging at the same time
- 16GB minimum of storage on an SSD
- Cloud Access that is very easy
- Thin device, but not too terrible thin that it feels like I am typing on nothing
- Processor that is fast aka about 1.6 GHZ speed and would prefer over 2 GHZ
- Under $325
Easy enough? To summarize – a light with a mid-size screen of 12-13 inches with quality that contains enough processing power to handle multiple activities with easy access to a large cloud storage under $325. Thoughts?
Devices I have looked at Online
Here I will briefly show the devices I have looked at on Amazon the Specs and what I like/Don’t like about them.
Acer Chromebook13 CB5-311-T9B0 (13.3-inch Full HD, NVIDIA Tegra K1, 2GB) $249.99 or for the 4GB and 32GB hard drive = $349.99
- 1920 X 1080 HD 13.3 Inch Screen
- 2.1 GHZ Tegra Processor with 2 GB of RAM
- 16GB Hard drive Space
- 3.31 pounds (a bit heavier than I’d Like) and 4 stars on amazon
- Pros I like: Screen, Speed and Ram
- Cons: Weight, not the most popular processor and haven’t had success with Acer
ASUS Chromebook 12-Inch with Gigabit WiFi, 32GB Storage & 4GB RAM = $259.99
- 1366 X 768 screen
- 4GB Ram with 32GB Storage
- Intel Dual core process at 2.16 GHZ
- 2.5 Pounds and has 4.5 stars out of 5 on amazon (461 ratings)
- Pros I like: RAM + Space and the weight of it, as well as design
- Cons: Screen quality not as strong and not as large of screen would prefer a 13 inch
Toshiba CB35-B3340 13.3-Inch Chromebook 2 (Full-HD Screen) $342 Brand New
- 1920 X 1080 13.3 Inch screen
- 2.16 GHZ Intel celeron Process
- 4 GB RAM with 16GB storage
- 2.95 pounds and has 4.5 stars out of 607 ratings from Amazon
- Pros: Screen appears gorgeous and the design I absolutely love
- Cons: Price and it’s a tad on the heavier side
Conclusions & Feedback
Overall, I would love to have that 13 inch screen on the ASUS above, I think is where my heart is saying to me. I could always buy in a “Like New” condition online as well, has anyone ever had success with that? Also – what others do you see that fit the bill here? Under 3 pounds, clean/crisp, closer to 13 inch screen with speed above 2GHZ and a nice screen? What are you all using? What prices have you paid for it? Am I crazy thinking of spending under $325? Thanks everyone, I’m excited to hear what details you can provide. I’ll be going to a neighborhood best buy today to potentially check them out and get a feel for them as well. Talk soon!
-Lanny