This year hasn't been a great one for Chromebook deals because Chromebooks have been in huge demand this year. Millions of people newly working from home — not to mentions tens of millions of kids trying to learn from home on dinky little school-issued laptops — created a massive Chromebook shortage earlier this year. Many popular Chromebooks are still backordered clear into 2021, especially education models, so if you trust your kid not to throw their laptop against a wall, this is the Black Friday deal to buy your kid or your spouse or your grandma.
One of the Chromebooks that was actually damn near impossible to find for most of 2020 was the winner of our Best Chromebooks roundup: The Lenovo Flex 5 Chromebook. This shiny baby sports a 13.3-inch 1080p touchscreen, backlit keyboard, a 10th Gen Intel Core i3, 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. Battery consistently lasts me 8-11 hours, and the backlit keyboard is comfy enough to type on for long hours in low light — like the pre-dawn darkness of my apartment as I use it to write up this very deal.
The best Chromebook for everyone at the best price yet
This Chromebook is less than an inch bigger than the C330 but it packs powerful internals, a 13.3-inch touchscreen, upwards-facing speakers, and long battery life. It was already a great value, now even better with its first major sale.
I have loved the Flex 5 since I reviewed it this spring, and it's been my go-to Chromebook ever since. The webcam looks decent for the price and has a privacy cover you can slide over it, there's a decent variety of ports so you won't immediately need a USB-C hub, and it'll go a full work day before you need to find your charger. The 1080p touchscreen makes it easy to simply swipe through notifications and scroll through endless Amazon search results as I look for new power banks and chargers to play with.
The Flex 5's starting price of $410 was already one of the best deals in Chromebooks — a backlit keyboard, a good-looking screen, and a 10th Gen i3 for $400 is nothing to sneeze at — and seeing it down to $350 into Amazon's Deal of the Day on Lenovo computers and computer accessories is an unexpected pleasure. This deal will sell out fast and I do not expect to see it return between now and Black Friday so if you've been on the fence about buying someone in your household a new Chromebook, it's time to pull the trigger and do it right now!
