After using it for half a year, I came away impressed at how well it runs on a system that it’s not designed or certified for. It was worth a shotĬhromeOS Flex is a fantastic idea, and it has a lot of promise. Using a ChromeOS Flex device feels like using a Chromebook from the early days of the platform. Streaming music through Spotify or YouTube Music and video is convenient, of course, but what if you were on a long trip with spotty Wi-Fi and wanted to preserve the battery on your phone? Tough luck.

Yes, you could play Cloud games on Stadia - but the Play Store has a wealth of games. Sure, you can do a lot with web apps - and that’s something you’ll notice even if you were using Windows or macOS, but sometimes an offline app would be better. There’s no point in dithering the feature doesn’t exist, and that’s a shame. ChromeOS’s containerized nature also means that it could take more work than Google would care to do compared to the potential profit. The Google Play certification process that all companies shipping products with Google Play preinstalled have to pass likely makes the Play Store itself a no-go. It’s not necessarily clear why you can’t install any Android apps on ChromeOS Flex officially, though we can hazard a guess. You’re also missing Android apps and the Google Play Store. That makes troubleshooting the problem a nightmare. This isn’t limited to non-certified devices running ChromeOS, as Google says, and it’s not even the same issue each time. They actually do, and if Bluetooth works for you, you’d be able to use them. To be clear, it’s not like these features don’t exist in ChromeOS Flex. That meant some of the Android features like Nearby Share, Phone Hub, and remote unlocking your Chromebook with Smart Lock no longer worked. Upon updating to ChromeOS Flex, Bluetooth drivers were killed for some users, myself included. When running CloudReady, though not as feature-full as Chrome OS Flex, Bluetooth worked. It’s especially weird because before ChromeOS, there was the aforementioned CloudReady. You only tend to notice them when they’re not there. It’s a weird one because drivers are like aglets. My biggest issue with ChromeOS Flex has been drivers. The part where things get dicey Mark Coppock/Digital Trends This means that most modern-ish Windows laptops being pushed to ChromeOS should net you a decent speed boost. Anyone who’s owned a low-end Chromebook and a high-end Chromebook can tell that there’s the difference in speed. Though Chromebooks are often touted as fast no matter the price range, this often means fast for their price range.

With the exception of Linux, Chrome OS Flex is stripped of all of these.Īs a result of those exclusions, though, it’s pretty fast. These include the Chrome browser, the Linux subsystem, the Parallels support, and the Google Play Store. ChromeOS as it exists right now is a hodgepodge of capabilities aimed at hitting a broad range of audiences. It’s also a certain, purer vision of ChromeOS. All your passwords sync over,= and you get updates the same as you would on regular Chromebooks - including the latest features.Īs a result of it being a bare-bones version of ChromeOS, it runs pretty fast.

It’s not like CloudReady with some weird blue Chrome logo (the Chromium logo) - it’s bona fide ChromeOS. One thing you’ll notice about ChromeOS Flex is that its classic ChromeOS. With a Chromebook with 256GB storage, you should be able to hoard every meme you see if I want to without paying for anyone’s cloud. It was that I could expand my Chromebook search to devices with the specs and price range I cared about and get a premium Chromebook for a fraction of the price.

The appeal for me here, as someone who loves Chromebooks, wasn’t that I could get Chrome OS on cheap Chromebooks. Image used with permission by copyright holder Apps open and close swiftly, and even Linux apps, from office suites to video players, run with aplomb (though they kick the fans into high gear). Slapping Chrome OS Flex on it makes the device feel as speedy as it should be. Powered by a Core i3, it wasn’t the fastest thing on Windows and would often lag, hang, or crash. My personal “Chromebook” has been a 2020 Asus Zenbook 14. Google says it’s working on certifying Chromebooks for Chrome OS Flex, but you can pretty much test it on any device of your choice if you want to. Google is changing everything you know about Chromebooks Why I started using a keyboard tray, and why you should too I finally stopped neglecting my second monitor, and you should too Download Mobile Legends Bang Bang for Android.Download Adobe Flash Player for Windows.

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