With so many classrooms filling up with Chromebooks, laptop makers are rushing to place drop-proof Chrome OS notebooks that are perfect for classroom use. For HP, that laptop is the newly-announced Chromebook x360, a 2-in-1 with an 11.6-inch Gorilla Glass display.
Admittedly, Gorilla Glass isn't a massive innovation. Your phone probably already has it, and your laptop may, too. But for $300, it's nice to have (especially when a third grader drops it while it's open). Unfortunately, HP doesn't make any specific claims about how far you can drop the x360, without breaking it. By contrast, Asus advertises that its Chromebook C213SA will survive 3.9-foot drops and our tests confirmed it.
The Chromebook x360's specs are modest, with 32GB of eMMC storage, 4GB of RAM and an Intel Celeron CPU. It has two USB Type-C ports and microSD, but your legacy USB 3.0 accessories won't work. It comes in two colors: Smoke Grey and Snow White (I prefer the former), and weighs just 3 pounds.
The laptop is available at Amazon, Costco, Micro Center, Walmart and more.
