Conclusion

Considering the price points of the entry level devices here, it’s impressive what they are able to achieve.

Kogan’s Atlas 11.6in C500 might not have the nicest exterior or interface, but the device performed as well as anyone could hope for, being only around 27% behind Lenovo’s Ideapad Duet Chromebook in Geekbench 5. This means that it was capable of running any of the browserbased tasks we threw at it without any major stalls or noticeable lag. Of course 4GB of RAM isn’t going to stretch too far if you do happen to download more demanding applications and fire them up on the unrestricted Windows OS, but as long as you’re aware that the device isn’t going to be able to do it all, you’d be surprised by how much it can actually achieve.

What is perhaps the most poignant take home message of this roundup is that Chromebooks are an excellent alternative to Windows 10 for lightweight systems. In much the same way as Apple’s iPad OS takes the app landscape of iOS and taylors it into a rich PC-like experience for devices like the iPad Pro, Chrome OS does a similar job for Chromebooks… especially the more affordable units. Google is uniquely positioned to offer great low powered PC alternatives and we’re genuinely surprised that Chromebooks aren’t a bigger feature in the local market. If we were contemplating going for Microsoft’s entry level Surface Go 2, but wouldn’t mind something even less expensive, there are a suite of Chromebooks that will offer a more streamlined experience than anything offered by something running Windows 10.

If you are looking for something a little more powerful, then there’s a couple of avenues you can go down. Windows 10 is light enough these days for it to run really well on something like Samsung’s Galaxy Book S, and if you are sure you don’t need extra overhead for demanding processes like photo editing then it makes sense to use a more efficient mobile processor that’s constantly connected via LTE. You can achieve a similar scenario with the LTE Surface Go 2 models without feeling like you’re trading down on hardware, but it’s interesting to see that Chrome OS is a decent alternative to Windows 10 for more moderately powered ultrabooks too. And while we’re not sure the price is in the sweet spot just yet, Chromebooks have managed to design an Enterprise Management system that makes it much easier for small businesses to set up and maintain a fleet of laptops. Which is a great alternative for anyone hoping to save a little on the IT costs of maintaining and keeping secure a workforce of Windows 10 devices.

“Windows 10 is light enough these days for it to run really well on something like Samsung’s Galaxy Book S, and if you are sure you don’t need extra overhead for demanding processes like photo editing then it makes sense to use a more efficient mobile processor that’s constantly connected via LTE.”