[DEAD] 13.3″ ASUS Chromebook C300SA for $150

Oy! I jinxed it. As of late night on 6/27/17, they got sold out. Someone probably post them on a big deal website or something…

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13.3-inch HP ENVY 13-ab016nr for $620 (SSD, Win10)

Unless you need to store a lot of data on the on-board hard drive, or need a high-powered CPU, SSDs are the way to go with laptops these days, and if so, Amazon has a nice sale on the HP ENVY 13-ab016nr for $620 with free shipping. HP needs to work on their product naming schemes. No one is going to be standing on a street corner singing the praises of a “ab016nr” 🙂

It is powered by the i5-7200U dual core, a seventh generation Core model, which currently ranks #602 at cpubenchmark.net, so if you need to have a lot of processing or more cores, this is not it for you. Of course the rankings are relative, and as more new CPUs come out, older ones drop. For example, AMD’s Ryzen line-up pushed almost everyone down seven spots, five of the seven Ryzens are in the Top 100 already. I should also point out, that unlike the Billboard Music Charts, the only way for CPUs to go in this chart is down, since there’s always newer and faster models. No one can climb. The best they can hope for is to stay put 🙂

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13.3-inch ASUS Zenbook UX305UA for $750 [Win10]

Everything Zen, well, if all goes well 🙂 There’s a discount on another SSD-powered Zenbook, the UX305UA is on sale for $750 with free shipping at Amazon by Amazon actual. This is a Windows 10 device, with 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD (hooray, no spinning disks!).

It is powered by the Core i5-6200U Skylake processor which currently ranks #547 at cpubenchmark.net. It has a 13.3-inch full HD (1920 x 1080) display of the matte variety with a 170-degree viewing angle.

Other potentially promising specs include a weight of under 3lbs, a 10 hour battery life, and a variety of ports, including micro-HDMI with 4K display support. This has no touchscreen display, but a larger touchpad if you are fond of using touchpad gestures.

If you prefer a touchscreen, there is a model that shares some of the main specs going for $800, it is the ZenBook UX303UA.

Refurbished 13.3″ Toshiba CB30-A3120 Chromie for $140

Chromebooks are great if you are a big fan of the Google ecosystem and bargain laptops with SSD drives without bloated OS hogs. If so, you can get the 13.3-inch Toshiba CB30-A3120 Chromebook for $140 with free shipping from VooduBlu via Rakuten’s.

This Chromie eats celery. And by that I mean it is running on an Intel Celeron processor (2955U). It has the expected specs, 2GB RAM, 16GB SSD, 1366×768 on a 13.3″ screen, card reader, two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI output, Bluetooth, etc. You also get the 100GB of Google Drive bonus.

PS: once upon a time, Bluetooth Audio wasn’t even working on Chromebooks. They’ve come a long way since 🙂

HP Stream 13 Laptop with T-Mo 4G cellular for $229 [W8]

The 13.3″ HP Stream 13 Windows 8.1 laptop with T-Mobile 4G cellular is currently on sale for $229 with free shipping, with a limit of three per customer, at Amazon.com by Amazon actual. It may look Chromebook-ish but it’s really a Windows 8.1 laptop with 32GB on-board solid state storage, not a spinning hard disk. Other specs include 2GB RAM, Intel HD Graphics, the obligatory Windows laptop 1366 x 768 screen resolution, and such.

It comes with a variety of freebies as well. For the life of the device, T-Mobile gives you 200MB of data per month. Not a lot of data but free is free. You can optionally sign up for a T-Mo data plan, but you don’t have to. This is not a contract laptop.

The other freebies include a $25 Microsoft Store app credit (a smart idea to get people buying Metro apps), and for one year you get 1TB of OneDrive and Office 365. After the one year, the OneDrive goes back to the default free service levels, and you no longer have access to Office 365.

13.3″ ASUS Zenbook UX305FA-ASM1 for $700 [SSD]

If you like SSD-only laptops, and the $600 price range, the 13.3-inch ASUS Zenbook UX305FA-ASM1 is currently on sale for $700 with free shipping, with a limit of three per customer at Amazon.com by Amazon.

This has a 1920×1080 resolution with a 170-degree viewing angle, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD storage (no spinning hard disk), Intel HD Graphics 5300, eight hour battery life estimate, three USB 3.0 ports, 2.6 lbs weight, and such. To achieve lightness and slimless, it uses the fanless Intel Core M 5Y10 processor. It averages 4.2 out of 5 based on 57 customer reviews and if you are curious abut it, it has over 100 questions answered by your internet peers.

[DEAD] 13.3″ ASUS Chromebook (4GB RAM, 32GB SSD) for $230

As of a 12/28/14 recheck, this sale ended…

If you are a fan of Chromebooks with 13-inch displays and you don’t need a touchscreen, the 4GB RAM and 32GB on-board storage version of the 13.3″ ASUS Chromebook is currently on sale for $230 with free shipping at Amazon.com with a limit of three per customer during this promotional period. This version is only available in black.