I recently dipped back into the world of Chromebooks. Well, what actually happened is that I twisted our Editor-in-Chief’s arm just a little to whip out the company credit card and order me a Chromebook Plus, because it’s been years since I’ve had one of these laptops and it’s clear our readers just love them. So I wanted to see how far they’d come.

While my opinion of modern Chromebooks will be coming, I was taken by surprise when the initial setup of the laptop offered me a one-year subscription to Google’s AI services. After I did the numbers, it turns out this is actually like the deal of the century, and no one seems to be making a fuss about it.

Some Chromebook Plus Laptops Come With a Year of Gemini Advanced

Setting up my new Acer ChromeBook Plus, I got a popup saying that I was eligible for a Google One AI Premium plan spanning 12 months. This included 2TB of cloud storage, and Gemini Advanced, with integration into Gmail and Docs.

Now, this means you get Google’s ChatGPT competitor on your Chromebook, but also across your devices that use Google apps, since this is a subscription and not specific to the Chromebook’s hardware.

The normal price for the Google One AI Premium plan is $19.99 a month, which also happens to be what ChatGPT Plus costs. That’s $239.88 in value included with the Chromebook Plus. A laptop that costs $329.99!

Acer Chromebook Plus 516 (CB516-1H)

If You Want Gemini Advanced Anyway, You Might as Well Get a Chromebook

If you want to have access to Gemini Advanced anyway, it means an almost $240 discount on the price of a Chromebook Plus. In the case of the Acer Chromebook Plus 514 I got, it takes the price of the laptop down to $90! Given how useful AI bots like Gemini are these days and that everyone has a use for them in some part of their workflow, this is really a wonderful deal and a good way to get hardware for cheap.

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Some Chromebooks Are Cheap Enough to Be Almost Free With the Sub

Base model Chromebook Plus laptops are usually around the $300 mark as of this writing, but from time to time you’ll see stores put them on sale for less than that. Whether that’s an online deal, or something your local brick and mortar store is doing, that turns this from buying a Chromebook, to buying a year of Gemini Advanced and getting a free Chromebook in the deal. However you want to look at it, that’s one of the best deals I’ve encountered.

Of course, this isn’t out of the goodness of Google’s heart. Presumably, the idea is that after a year using Gemini, you’ll be so dependent on it that you’ll stay subscribed for the remaining years of your studies and beyond. The good news is that if you don’t find Gemini Advanced useful after a year, you can just cancel the subscription and you still have a Chromebook.

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You Also Get 2TB of Cloud Data and Some Other Stuff

It gets even better when you consider that you get more than just the chatbot interface for Gemini Advanced. The subscription plan includes 2TB of cloud storage, which is frankly necessary considering that my Chromebook only has 128GB of storage, though an SD card helps.

Gemini Advanced is integrated into all the other Google stuff, and if you’re using a Chromebook you’re probably relying on Gmail, Google Docs,and the like. Since activating my subscription, Gemini has popped up in all these apps offering to do some useful (and not so useful) stuff.

You also get expanded access to NotebookLM, which quite a few people on staff here at HTG swear by, and I guess now I have no excuse not to try it.

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There’s also a video-generation perk using Veo 2, similar to the limited access you get to the Sora video generation model if you’re a ChatGPT Plus subscriber. Though I could not find it anywhere, so perhaps it hasn’t rolled out yet or I just don’t know where to look.

Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 514

If you’re looking for a new Chromebook, double check whether it’s a model that comes with this included year of Google AI One, and that might just be the value tipping point for you. The offer is available until 31 January 2026, as of this writing, with the purchase of a Chromebook Plus.

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