Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication.
Save $170: As of Oct. 22, the 11.6-inch Acer Chromebook Spin 311 is nearly 57% off at Walmart, dropping the price to $129 plus free shipping.
Cheap laptops are looking to be a hot Black Friday item again in 2021.
Retailers are already touting deals on Chromebooks near the $100 price point, like Walmart’s monster $170 discount on the Acer Chromebook Spin 311. The laptop, originally $299, is down to $129.
Acer’s Chromebook Spin 311 has earned a flood of compliments from tech publishers and average buyers alike. It looks like a smaller version of another of our favorite Chromebooks for kids (the Chromebook Spin 713), switching out the large, heavy build for a compact frame and 11.6-inch screen.
What really matters is that it’s still an HD touchscreen, and is more than capable enough to handle everyday projects and streaming. Plus, you’ll get up to 15 hours of battery life on one charge.
Chromebooks are probably best known for operating almost exclusively in the cloud. Most anything you do is automatically backed up on Google Drive, and updates are typically automatic. Chromebooks are a particularly smart choice for kids who haven’t gotten the hang of saving stuff yet.
Antivirus software also isn’t a dire need in Chromebooks like it is in other laptops. Not only is malware targeted at Chrome even less frequently than at than Macs (which aren’t as immune as you might think, but we digress), but Google’s operating system was designed to protect itself as well. Every web page or Chrome app runs its own sandbox, essentially ensuring that other parts of the computer won’t be compromised even if that page gets hacked or “infected.” If something bad were to happen, closing the page can often wipe the threat.
