"Best build quality" is the most important part. If you never got to handle one you are missing out. Glass and Solid milled aluminum. Silicone wrist pads and grip. 4:3 screen ratio. high quality keyboard. Rock solid 360 screen hinge.

Hardware is essentially a high end cellphone from 2016, which isn't a powerhouse but still does everything I would ask of a chromebook in 2026. Batteries are all generally going well.

Repair-ability is a challenge, but I want to work on that. You can mod it to run windows or linux. Stock it runs chromeos, linux subsystem, and android apps. It has a "feature" where if you keep in developer mode it auto-wipes itself if anybody else tries to boot it (hitting anything but the un-indicated ctrl-d at the boot screen initiates powerwash). Great for international travel.

It isn't a good choice for "power" but dominates every other aspect of "being a good laptop". It was too expensive for the chromebook market back then, but now you can pick them up for $200 and hand them to your parents and stop getting asked to fix their computer.