Affordable laptop or Chromebook for school exams and handwriting support?

[kalabala]

Hello there! My daughter struggles with handwriting and its affecting her English exam outcomes. We've been told that we can bring a laptop into school. I don't want the worst of the worst but our budget isn't huge. happy to go second hand!

• Robust
• Not so old / laggy
• Lightweight
• Not so small it's hard to use, but not big or bulky
• Suitable for school work such as internet, typing etc

Brand recommendations helpful. Thanks so much

Given it's for school obviously we don't want to spend a packet! I was thinking around £250 max, but less is ideal. Could go above a bit but my worry is it gets lost or damaged!

Looking at Chromebooks would they be suitable? I'm worried they won't have word or whatever is needed! Do we need a laptop itself?

Thanks

I've seen Chromebooks described as just like a laptop but broken. I have one and I'm not keen really. For work I use a Lenovo thinkpad and it does what I need and is powerful enough for what I need.

My daughter wanted/needed a laptop for school as well as making videos and stuff. She was 12 so I got her a reconditioned ThinkPad too from Backmarket. The Yoga 13" model I think. Came with a 12 month warranty and she's used it a lot without any issues

thank you! that is helpful :)

Chromebooks are a pain in the arse. My kids are in y11 and have had Dell laptops since y7, think they were about £300. They had chromebooks for primary but they really were painful. They take them into school every day as both dyslexic and type instead of write and they’ve survived.

thank you, super helpful. is there a particular type or model that you recommend? second handplace to buy etc? Are they relatively lightweight?

Lenovo ThinkPad is the workhorse of the laptop world. Just keeps going and going. There's a reason our local council give them to their employees so there is no faulty IT equipment excuses for not working!

I work in a College. We have Chromebooks to lend out to students. They are fine for the basic word processing, or browsing online but fiddley for anything else. I would probably go for a lightweight laptop for anything else. Be aware that your daughter probably won't be able to use her own laptop in exams. She will almost certainly need to use an exams laptop especially configured for the exams with no access to the internet or other files.

Laptop. I have had two Chromebooks and never again. Absolute pain in the arse when trying to work with anything linked to Microsoft or Apple.