I think the best Black Friday Chromebook deal just launched early

Everyone has the same thought process in the days before Black Friday: Should I buy now or wait? I’ve been covering holiday Chromebook deals for years now, and Lenovo’s $149 IdeaPad Chromebook deal at Amazon is a perfect time to pull the trigger.

Lenovo’s $150 IdeaPad 3i at Amazon doesn’t ask for any compromises, which is exactly what I want in a Chromebook deal. The two criteria I look for are 8GB of RAM and a large 1080p display, and this Chromebook delivers exactly that.

Most deals drop the available memory down to 4GB instead. More memory means that you can leave more tabs or applications running at any one time, which is one of those quality-of-life advantages you’ll appreciate, like a more spacious seat on an airplane. And the really cheap deals on my list of the best Black Friday Chromebook deals typically include a 768p screen, a grainier resolution than your 1920×1080 laptop display. Eye strain isn’t fun, especially with kids.

The IdeaPad is a slightly larger laptop with a 15-inch display, which adds a tiny bit of weight for a kid’s backpack. What the larger size adds, however, is a dedicated number pad on the right of the keyboard, which helps with keying in math problems or data entry. You never have to worry about a cramped keyboard with a larger Chromebook, and there’s never any issues with squeezing in a battery, either — the battery life is rated at 10 hours, incidentally. The larger size also allows for a range of I/O ports, including an HDMI port to enable a second display — which I don’t think you’ll rally need.

The Intel Celeron N4500 inside is typical of most Chromebooks that appear in these lists of deals. An Intel Celeron is less powerful than those found in Windows laptops, but that’s far less important with a Chromebook than a Windows PC. It’s a dual-core, dual-thread chip capable of 2.8GHz, which has enough power for browsing the web, doing word processing, and the like.

Basically, the vast majority of deals I track either are refurbished Chromebooks, or sacrifice memory or screen resolution to hit a lower price point. This new Chromebook does none of that. I think that there’s a very good chance that this will be at or close to the best Chromebook deal of Black Friday. Buy it now, and move on to everything else you need to take care of.

Check out this Lenovo IdeaPad 3i Chromebook for only $149!