Dell Chromebook 11.6" 3120 Multi-Touch 2-in-1 Review

Look, this Dell Chromebook is cheap and small. That's the one thing to know. It's a tiny, lightweight 2-in-1 that you can toss in a bag and barely notice. But you're making massive sacrifices for that portability. The specs are from a bygone era, and it's only good for the absolute basics like checking email and watching a single YouTube video in a browser tab. Anything more, and it'll start to sweat.

Honestly, nothing surprised me. The single-core Intel Celeron is painfully slow, landing in the 2nd percentile for CPU power. It's fine for opening Google Docs, but try having more than three tabs open and you'll feel the lag. The 4GB of RAM is the real bottleneck here, sitting in the 4th percentile. It just doesn't have the breathing room for modern web apps, even on Chrome OS. The 64GB of storage is also a joke, but at least it's an SSD so it doesn't feel like molasses.

At $505, this is a terrible value. You're paying a premium for the Dell brand and a touchscreen on a chassis filled with bargain-bin components. For the same money, you can find Chromebooks with better processors, double the RAM, and nicer displays. This one isn't worth it.

Forget the gaming laptops on the competitor list; they're in a different universe. A more relevant comparison is any other modern budget Chromebook. Look at something like an Acer Chromebook Spin 314 or a Lenovo Chromebook Flex 3. For around the same price, you'll typically get a newer, more efficient Intel N-series processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 1080p screen. They'll feel snappier and last longer. If you absolutely need a Windows convertible at this price, the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i is a much more capable machine, though battery life won't be as good.

Skip it. This Chromebook is built for a world where web pages were simpler. Today, it's underpowered and overpriced for what you get. Its only real win is being small and light, but that's not enough to justify the cost when the experience using it is so compromised. Spend your $505 elsewhere.