Have you ever loaned out a student Chromebook to a teacher? By third period, they’ve emailed you to complain that Chromebooks are “painfully slow,” the screen is “terrible,” and they never want to use a Chromebook again!
This short experiment with a student Chromebook made a lot of teachers believe that Chromebooks are for kids, not adults.
👉 Today I want to challenge you to re-think the possibility of deploying Chromebooks to staff. The key is selecting the right hardware for the job. Your teachers deserve a Chromebook Plus device!
The Chromebook Plus Difference
In 2023, Google introduced the “Plus” standard for Chromebooks. Google enforces strict hardware requirements for any device carrying the “Plus” badge:
- Performance: Faster Intel Core i3 / AMD Ryzen 3 (or better) processors.
- Memory & Storage: A minimum of 8GB RAM and 128GB of fast SSD storage.
- Display & Video: High-definition IPS displays and a 1080p webcam
When you hand a teacher a Chromebook Plus, you are giving them a fast, professional-grade device: beautiful touch-screen, backlit keyboard, and the horsepower to run ALLLLLL the tabs.
All this for a fraction of the cost of a high-powered Mac or PC. Here are my three favorite ​Chromebook Plus​ models for teachers:
- CTL PX141GXT ($623) – this is my current daily device, 18GB of RAM!
- HP x360 ($629 retail) – I’ve owned several x360s over the years!
- Lenovo ideaPad Flex 5i ($599 retail) – this is my backup device
Most of these models can be purchased below retail price through a Google Workspace reseller.
Related: Join the Chromebook Academy for IT admins to sharpen your ability to manage devices for staff and students!
đź’Ž Chromebooks + Class tools = Awesome
In case you need more reasons to switch your staff to ChromeOS, let me introduce you to “​Class Tools​“. Google introduced this feature to EDU Plus domains about a year ago. It allows teachers to manage student Chromebooks through Google Classroom:
- Lock and unlock student devices
- Focus learning on specific tasks (similar to kiosk mode)
- Push out web pages to students
- Live captions and translation
- Screen sharing
Class Tools is similar to expensive management software like Securly Classroom or GoGuardian Teacher. Because Class Tools is built into ChromeOS, it is highly effective (no extension to manage), but requires that both teachers and students use ChromeOS.
Getting teachers to buy in to using a Chromebook as their primary device might take some work. A few years ago, I wrote a detailed blog post detailing 7 common reasons teachers don’t want to use a Chromebook—and how to answer them.
👉 ​Read the 7 Teacher Objections (And How to Handle Them)
​🆕 Introducing “Googlebook”
You might have seen the big “​Googlebook​” announcement in May of 2026. This new device and operating system are scheduled to be released in the fall of 2026. Naturally, this has caused some anxiety in K-12. Is ChromeOS dead? Are our current fleets obsolete?
The short answer: Absolutely not. Google has explicitly confirmed their unwavering commitment to the ChromeOS ecosystem. Standard Chromebooks will continue to receive their full 10-year software update commitments. Nothing changes.
Many current premium Chromebooks (especially those in the Chromebook Plus category) will have the hardware chops to transition over to the Googlebook operating system when it launches this fall.
There are lots of reasons to deploy Chromebooks to staff. I’ve personally used a Chromebook as my only device since 2015. If you’re interested in learning more about managing devices for staff and students I hope you’ll join me for the ​Chromebook Academy​.
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