This $109 Chromebook Is the Cheapest Black Friday Laptop Deal Worth Buying

There are many types of laptop deals to hunt for this Black Friday, but the biggest doorbuster deals are and have always been Chromebooks. These lightweight laptops have outgrown their budget beginnings and proved themselves to be a reliable system, providing all you really need in a laptop. Now, no one will mistake the Acer Chromebook 311 for the latest and greatest Chromebook on the market -- that's the Acer Chromebook Plus on sale for $200 at Costco -- but the Acer Chromebook 311 is down to impulse-buy territory at $109 at Best Buy as part of its early Black Friday deals.

Acer's Chromebook 311 series has been around for several years, and this particular model will receive system updates until June 2031, meaning it's still got seven years ahead of it before it'll need replacing or conversion over to Chrome OS Flex. Seven years of service for less than $120 is a steal, though this is a Chromebook squarely aimed at portability and casual use rather than full-time work; for work, you may want to look for stricter hardware requirements, like the ones found on the Acer Chromebook Plus 514.

I've used many 11.6-inch Chromebooks, such as the 311, and they are just perfect for throwing in a bag and heading for the coffee shop -- or, in my case, Walt Disney World -- and getting some research or light writing done without breaking my back carrying around a more powerful business-oriented laptop. 4GB of RAM will be fine for casual users, though 8GB is handy if you take a lot of video calls or are a tab hoarder. And if you are a tab hoarder, tab groups and Memory Saver will make your life much easier while you battle your affliction.

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The Acer 311 comes with three months of Google One AI's Premium plan, which includes Gemini Advanced, the full suite of Google's AI assistant features throughout a variety of Google's services and 2TB of Google One/Google Drive storage. That's a $60 value on a $200 laptop you can take home for $109, and even with the laptop deals to come next week, I'm not sure we'll see a price lower than this on a Chromebook that's actually worth using.

Check out more early Black Friday deals at Best Buy. And for more laptop savings, check out the Black Friday deals on laptops you can start shopping now. 

Why this deal matters

This Chromebook might only have 4GB of RAM, but for grade-school homework or casual computing, it will do just fine, and with the 8-hour battery life, it should be able to last the whole school day on a single charge. Chromebooks have won over school systems and Fortune 500 companies around the world by being incredibly secure with basically zero upkeep. Chromebooks sandbox everything away from the core system, keeping it secured against traditional viruses and malware, while system updates are installed automatically and will simply wait until the next time you reboot or power off your laptop to finalize the changes. Combined with the flexibility of using both Android apps and progressive web apps (PWAs), Chromebooks are quite adaptable machines even when they aren't packing the last Core i5.

While I wish this laptop had a touchscreen, at $109, I can't really complain. If no touchscreen is a deal breaker for you or you just want a bigger screen, Best Buy is also offering a $169 Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 Chromebook with a 14-inch touchscreen, a year of Gemini Advanced and up to 13.5 hours of battery life per charge.