Lenovo’s Yoga Chromebook C630 is a convertible laptop with a 15.6 inch touchscreen display, a 360-degree hinge, and pretty beefy specs (by Chromebook standards).
An entry-level model features 8GB of RAM, 64GB of storage, and an Intel Core i3-8130U processor, while higher-priced models have 128GB of storage and Core i5-8250U chips.
When Lenovo first announced the laptop last year, the company also noted that it would be available with up to a 4K display. But so far the only models available for purchase have had 1080p screens.
Now that’s changed — Lenovo has started selling a 4K version, which makes this the first Chromebook I’m aware of to feature a 4K display.
A top-of-the-line Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630 with a 3840 x 2160 pixel IPS touchscreen display, a Core i5 Kaby Lake-R processor, 8GB of RAM, and 128GB of eMMC storage will set you back $900.
You could buy a pretty good Windows laptop for that kind of money. And if you’re a real pixel-density enthusiast, this might best the highest resolution Chromebook to date, but it’s not necessarily the most pixel-dense.
The Google Pixel Slate, for example, has a 3000 x 2000 pixel display, but its screen is just 12.3 inches, which means it packs 293 pixels per inch. That’s compared with 282 ppi for the Yoga Chromebook C630, if it matters.
Interestingly it looks like Lenovo doesn’t actually have any 1080p models in stock at the moment, and the company says the 4K version of the laptop won’t ship for at least five weeks. So if you’re really itching to get your hands on a Yoga Chromebook C630 and don’t mind settling for a 1080p version, your best bet is probably Best Buy — the retailer is selling a Core i5/8GB/128GB model for $649.
via Chrome Unboxed
If I could easily add this device to my son’s school network I would think about buying it.
You can easily add this to your sons network by contacting any specific technical support for HP.
Can students use their own devices?
No. Many students may want to use their own devices and/or cell phones to complete
learning tasks while at home. When XXX purchases the devices, a license is also
purchased for each device that allows Technology Services to enroll the Chromebooks in
an Admin console under our district Google domain. The console is configured unique to
XXX Public Schools and allows Technology Services to manage the devices based on
the groups the devices are placed in, for example, school, grade level, and even down to
class level. This allows Technology Services to manage policies, install applications and
OS updates and quickly change settings from a web based console to the devices and
makes managing 30,000+ devices possible for the technology services staff. When
students are assessed by the state, Technology Services can apply a Secure Browser
setting that directs each device to the test, while not allowing them to access any other
websites while taking the test, which is a requirement. With personal devices, Technology
Services would not have a way to manage these devices, filter content, or work on them if
there is an issue.
Students theoretically could.
I manage 40+ G Suite for Education domains, most of them with Chromebooks. A lot of the restrictions you would put on a device are actually user-based, so they could do content filtering, app pushes, and so on just with your son logging into this device with a school-issued Google account. You’re right that there are a few things you can only do with a device license. You could absolutely wipe this device and enroll it in any enterprise domain, including your son’s school, with permission, of course. If the license designated for your son were already used on a school-issued device, you might need to pay $30 for an extra license, but this is absolutely within realm of possibility.
That said, I can see why the school might not want to set a precedent of having to track a BYOD program inventory if they don’t have one already.
Serious question: What do you do with all these high-end Chromebooks, screen resolution notwithstanding? I’m thinking about the RAM and the CPU, specifically. OK, you can now keep 100 tabs open comfortably instead of 50. But what else? Is there a cloud app for media production, CAD, etc. which also tax the local computer’s resources heavily? I have no knowledge of this field, that’s why I’m asking. But I keep seeing these high-end Chromebooks advertised running something like this on their screens. All before Android and Linux were things for Chromebooks.
You go fast. Seriously though – how many Windows or Mac laptops of similar spec do you really think are being used for apps that require a lot of horsepower? That’s pretty niche usage even in the day of Youtube video stars. Most people involved in serious video production – or CAD are using desktops with large monitors. That would be my guess.
No they are just checking email and facebook and twitter and perhaps some document handling or the odd spreadsheet maintenance. Or coding perhaps. Most of them anyway. And you do the same on Chromebooks.
Of course with Linux coming in Chromebooks certainly could be used for much more if you wanted to.
Thanks for the kind note! However, I’m still left in the dark with this, the main intrigue:
“I keep seeing these high-end Chromebooks advertised running something like this on their screens. All before Android and Linux were things for Chromebooks.”
The image shown appears to be a high-resolution tone-mapped satellite image of a river delta rather than a program.
Come on! I’ve said that I didn’t mean this Chromebook in particular, but high-end Chromebooks in general. I bet you’ve seen it advertising a high end Chromebook. Before Android and Linux were available. I’m sorry I’m afraid I’m unable to locate that image by the time this post with its comments gets buried into oblivion, I’m aware this isn’t a discussion forum. Albeit with insightful participants.
Running the Spin 13 (i5 with 8GB ram). Have it in developer mode with crouton. Ubuntu 16.04 in chroot running SageMath and Jupyter Notebooks. That means being able to do advanced computational mathematics on the ChromeOS side using the web browser pointed to localhost. Also running Blender, Octave, Maxima, Gimp, inkscape, Libreoffice, Audacity, and tons of other image, sound, and video editing tools in the xorg chroot.
Android apps and Crostini (the Linux VM) also add to the usefulness while staying strictly in the ChomeOS side of things. Biggest issue right now, for me, is that Crostini doesn’t allow full use of the Wacom EMR pen (for pressure sensitivity and such) or GPU acceleration. So I have to use the chroot to get that.
I’ve never stayed around the pure ChromeOS with no Android, no VM’s, no developer mode, no chroot world. The people I know that do basically use it as a safe web browsing environment.
Yes, there are cloud and Android apps for all these things. CAD, video editing, coding, what have you, they are indeed out there. You’re not going to quite get a full desktop replacement, but I could easily justify having the extra performance on a Chromebook, and that’s not even getting to Linux support.
It’s not for everyone, sure, but not everyone needs an i5 in a laptop either.