Our top 5 Amazon Prime Day Chromebook deal predictions

Our top 5 Amazon Prime Day Chromebook deal predictions

When it comes to low-cost, high-value laptops, nothing beats a good Chromebook for its price-to-performance ratio. Thanks to their lower-cost specs, Chromebooks are able to stay far more affordable than other laptops with beefier specs running more robust operating systems like Windows 11 and Apple MacOS 12 Monterey

With only a couple of days to go before Amazon Prime Day deals start hitting the streets at midnight on July 12, there are going to be some incredible deals on everything from airfryers to computers. With so many products potentially getting major price cuts, a lot of shoppers looking for a new laptop are going to torn between getting the best Windows laptop they can afford and the siren's song of a dirt cheap Chromebook.

So how can laptop buyers know which is the best Amazon Prime Day laptop deals for them? With so much likely to go on sale, what should shoppers keep an eye out for on Prime Day itself? 

We've already laid out some of our Amazon Prime Day laptop deal predictions for this year, but now we want to zoom in specifically on Chromebooks since these are expected to be a very hot item on Prime Day. So, we're going out on a limb again and giving you our top five Amazon Prime Day Chromebook deal predictions to help you spot the best Chromebook deals you can, and hopefully walk away from it without egg all over our faces.

1. We're going to be buried in Chromebook deals

(Image credit: Future / Acer / HP)

For both work and play, few things match the efficiency and affordability of a good Chromebook, and the best student Chromebooks – and even some higher performance enterprise Chromebooks – are also some of the best-selling items on Prime Day.

Because they start off so affordable (generally speaking), getting a Chromebook deal on Prime Day can often net you a substantial savings, meaning that an already cheap laptop becomes even more of a steal.

And with them being priced so low, retailers make sure to push these Chromebooks as much as they can since they need them to sell in enough volume to make the price cut worthwhile. With the close of the school year, a lot of unsold educational Chromebook units now need to go somewhere else to make room for next year's stock. And, because supply is generally higher, the sales price for these Chromebooks are generally going to drop even further.

This is definitely something you'll want to take advantage of while you're shopping for a new laptop in a couple of days.

2. Don't expect too steep a price cut

(Image credit: Konstantin Savusia / Shutterstock)

While Amazon Prime Day is going to be a great time to pick up a Chromebook, you also need to keep sales prices in perspective. 

Chromebook deals are going to be plentiful if past experience tells us anything, but that doesn't mean that retailers are going to sell at a loss. If you see 25% off on a Chromebook you really like this weekend, don't be afraid to buy it and lock in that deal. 

Some Chromebooks are going to see price cuts upwards of 50% or more, but these will usually be deals on Chromebooks that were already cheap to begin with or that were way overpriced and have fallen back down to Earth and reasonable pricing. Most deals will be likely in the 20-30% range, and holding out for an even deeper price cut might see you lose out on a deal entirely.

 3. Fewer premium Chromebook deals this year

(Image credit: Future)

While Amazon Prime Day Chromebooks deals are usually a great way to pick up a premium Chromebook, I wouldn't anticipate seeing many this week.

There have been some pretty awesome experiments with premium Chromebooks in recent years like the Google Pixelbook Go and the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2, but in the last two years these have become much rarer. 

First, there is the global chip shortage which makes any silicon you can get your hands on more precious. I love a good Chromebook, but manufacturers are going to move towards higher-margin electronics in this environment, and even the best premium Chromebooks aren't going to make enough of a return to use a Core i5 or even a more powerful chip at this point.

Second, as much fun as a premium Chromebook is, there's not a whole lot you can really put all that power towards. Chromebooks have access to the entire Google Play store, sure, but none of the games on Google Play are really pushing the boundaries of what today's tech can do. 

Without a really good reason to justify them, premium Chromebooks really are just too ahead of their time right now. Their time might be coming, but it won't be Prime Day 2022.

4. Cheap 2-in-1s are going to be the big Prime Day Chromebook deals

After the past couple of years, we've seen how education and technology have become so intertwined that it's almost unfathomable to think of schools going back to plain old textbooks and loose-leaf paper.

The fact is that educational laptops are here to stay, and as students advance in their education, their technology will need to keep up with new demands. The best 2-in-1 Chromebooks have been some of the biggest sellers in the entire computing market since 2020 and even a little bit before, with the value a hybrid laptop-tablet configuration adds to the product becoming impossible to understate.

The trend is just going to accelerate and now that the school year is over, retailers will likely want to clear out all of last year's 2-in-1 Chromebooks to make way for this year's models, and Prime Day is a great way to do that. 

(Image credit: Asus)

5. Expect to see some surprisingly powerful offerings

Wait, didn't I just say that premium Chromebooks were being shelved for the time being?

Yep, I sure did, because I'm not talking about premium Chromebooks, I'm talking about the workhorse kind of Chromebook that sports a plain exterior, 8GB RAM, and an AMD Ryzen- or Intel Core-series.

No, we shouldn't expect Core i7-12700Hs just yet, but a Core i3? Absolutely, and for a Chromebook, a Core i3 is a high-end component. Likewise 8GB RAM and PCIe SSDs. These used to be rarities during Chromebook sales events, but there are so many 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD Chromebooks out there that this has increasingly become the kind of Chromebook to target when looking for great Prime Day Chromebook deals.

While these specs might struggle with a more robust Windows 11 OS, for a Chromebook these kinds of specs will absolutely chew through productivity and even serious multimedia workloads. So unless someone is offering a 4GB RAM, 32GB eMMC storage Chromebook with a MediaTek chip from three or four years ago for $50, look past some of these eye catching dollar figures. 

Look for three key specs instead before you even look at the price: 10th-gen Core i3s or better, 8GB LPDDR4 RAM, and 128GB PCIe SSDs or larger. Find a good cheap Chromebook with those specs and you've got a heck of a laptop that will last you well into the rest of this decade.