It鈥檚 August, and more schools are heading back into session with every passing week. For many children, 鈥渋n session鈥� means actively working online at least some portion of every week. If you are a parent of a 1:1 school system, you鈥檙e likely receiving directions from your child鈥檚 school about the device your child will use, and there鈥檚 a .
If your school isn鈥檛 providing a device, or you鈥檙e interested to purchase a Chromebook for your family, we鈥檝e pulled together 5 strategies for picking the right Chromebook for kids:
Durability rating
Your Chromebook is going to take a few tumbles, especially if you have a middle school student. Determine to either , or purchase a that attaches to the Chromebook itself.
4 GB of RAM, minimum
There are still a few 鈥渄eals鈥� out there on Chromebooks with 2 GB of RAM. That鈥檚 way too low, given the way the Internet continues to advance. Web browsers are demanding more and more RAM to support both the needs of webpages as well as the series of extensions many of us add to customize our experience of the Internet. 4 GB is a minimum.
Current year鈥檚 models only
Another 鈥渃ost saving鈥� strategy might be purchasing a Chromebook that鈥檚 a year or two old. That鈥檚 a dangerous stance, as microprocessor technology improves dramatically each and every year. A machine with 4 GB of RAM two years ago will likely not perform as fast as one with the same amount of RAM this year, due to improvements in CPU performance. Pick a model as modern as your budget will allow.
The rotating 4: screen, webcam, keyboard, and trackpad
There鈥檚 only so many functional pieces of a laptop that a company can cut costs on and still make sales quotas. In order to hit a $200 – $300 price point, most Chromebooks will deliver one or two of the above features with excellence and scrape by with tolerable performance in the others. Search 鈥渂est Chromebooks of the year鈥� and you鈥檒l see how this plays out in a given set of budget options. Determine what feature you care about most and be willing to give on the others.
Content Filter
Finally, one hidden element to purchasing any Chromebook for kids isn鈥檛 physically connected to the Chromebook at all – the content filter that protects your child鈥檚 experience of a device that鈥檚 largely dependent on the Internet. There are two general routes to providing this protection: router-based filtering and account-based filtering.
Router-based filtering is enabled by purchasing an wireless router with content filtering abilities that connects to your Internet modem, like . Benefits to this approach are that protection policies are enforced on every device that connects to your Wifi and most systems allow custom profiles for every device. Limitations are that the profile system locks devices to specific people (making sharing difficult) and that the filtering works only when the devices are used at home.
Account-based filtering attaches content filtering policies to the accounts used to log in to the Chromebook. There鈥檚 a little more setup involved with this approach (), but this gives the primary benefit of providing protection wherever your child logs in to the device. The biggest limitation of this strategy is the price: account-based filtering typically comes with a monthly subscription of some type.
The following Chromebooks are owned by or purchased by 最大资源采集网 employees, and might provide a jumping-off point for your own research.
- – Solid, entry-level Chromebook popular with schools
- – Ruggedized clamshell-style laptop with splash resistance
- – 2-in-1 Ruggedized Chromebook
- – Top-tier 2-in-1 Chromebook with pen input and a fantastic screen
