I love my MacBook Pro. It’s a great computer, but, when it comes to simply getting work done and lasting all day on a single charge, well, it doesn’t do either of those things adequately. Because of that (and more), I really want a Chromebook again.

Chromebooks Have Awesome Battery Life

Chromebooks are notorious for having crazy good battery life, and they’ve only gotten better over the years. Most Chromebooks can last for well over a single day’s worth of work on a single charge.

Related

The Pros and Cons of Owning a Chromebook

Chromebooks aren’t for everyone.

Coming from a 14-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro, that’s something I completely envy. While my MacBook Pro has better battery life than my previous 16-inch i9 MacBook Pro, it’s still nothing to be proud of. I can typically get four or so hours out of a charge when doing my average workload on the MacBook.

Consequentially, most of my work is done in Chrome or in Photoshop—two things that a Chromebook can handle. While I can’t run Photoshop on a Chromebook, I can run Photopea in the Chrome browser, which will do everything I need it to do while on-the-go.

The thought of being able to get hours and hours of work out of a single charge is just alluring. Even when I go to a coffee shop to work for two to three hours in the morning, I always plug my MacBook in. It’s just habit at this point. Unless I’m on the couch at my house, or somewhere without a plug, my laptop instinctively gets plugged in.

Another huge benefit that Chromebooks have is requiring a lot less power to charge. My MacBook Pro can technically charge at 20W, but, when using it, I typically need 65W or more to actively make my battery percentage not go down.

With a Chromebook, that’s just not the case. I could easily use a smaller portable battery to charge it, or plug it into a car charger that doesn’t require a mini power plant to run.

Ugreen 20,000mAh Two-Way Fast Charging Power Bank

Getting a Chromebook again would free me from being a slave to the wall outlet and add a lot more freedom of choice to my portable battery options for on-the-go charging.

Chrome OS Limitations Are Its Best Strength

I’ll be the first to admit that my ADD gets the better of me sometimes. Listen, I might work from home, but I’m far from perfectly productive. It doesn’t happen often, but when I’m at my desk or on my MacBook, I’ll sometimes find myself wandering into tasks other than writing, like gaming, video editing, coding, or other things.

With Chrome OS being focused around the Chrome operating system (with Android apps), it’s much more limited—which is the entire point of the OS.

While most people wouldn’t want to be intentionally limited, when it comes to writing, I think I’d love to have that limitation applied. It would force me to focus on the task at hand—writing. I wouldn’t be able to fire up Satisfactory, open DaVinci Resolve to edit a video, launch Lightroom to edit photos, or open VSCode and edit server files on my NAS. Not easily, at least.

This limitation is simply the best part of a Chromebook, in my opinion. It makes the laptop a purpose-built machine, great at one thing and making the rest of the stuff not fun to do on-the-go. With a limitation like that, I truly feel I would end up being more productive.

Related

A Beginner’s Guide to ChromeOS: Tips for New Users

Unlock the power of your Chromebook!

The great thing is, I could always bring a Chromebook and my more powerful computer with me if I ever felt that I would need that extra power. The Chromebook would let me work semi-distraction-free when necessary, and the MacBook would be there if I needed extra power. Or, I could use Chrome Remote Desktop (one of my favorite Chrome extensions) to just RDP back to my main desktop at home to accomplish a few tasks.

Chromebooks Are Typically Lighter Than My Macbook Pro

Apple Silicon laptops are vastly lighter than the generations which came before. By that token, though, they’re still not extremely light.

I do have one other laptop besides the 14-inch M1 Max MacBook Pro, and that’s an ASUS ROG Strix 17. With a Ryzen 9 processor and RTX 4090, it’s a beast of a computer. A desktop with a battery, even. But light is not an adjective I’d choose to describe it.

Since a Chromebook can easily get away with a low-powered processor, no dedicated graphics card, and a smaller battery (while still maintaining its crazy good battery life), they’re simply lighter than my current portable computers.

I’d also love a Chromebook for travel. Often, when I travel, I think I’ll want to play games, do work, or any other task that requires my more powerful MacBook. In reality, I answer some emails, get some writing done, and watch YouTube on my laptop. For shorter trips, a Chromebook is lighter, easier to carry, and could likely last most of a weekend trip without ever having to be plugged into the wall.

Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514

Adding a Chromebook to my workflow would mean I could more easily bring it with me to places, without having to worry about lugging around a heavy laptop or equally heavy power brick to run it when the battery dies.