You’re right, they make premium ones too. I just started seeing these. Do you know if they offer more features other than build quality/screen quality/etc? I would imagine the Chromebooks would have battery life advantages at least over a windows PC equivalent.
Probably only due to a less bloated OS, as high and chromebooks run standard pc laptop parts. Would be similar to min maxing battery by optimizing a linux distro.
Up until recently, and still applies to many, chromebooks had a rather short shelf life before “expiring”. You could buy a new Chrombook with like 2 or less years of support before it became e-waste. Like wouldn’t even support video streaming and no security updates.
Even on previous macOS versions they still receive security updates for a while as does Windows. Plus the lifespan is rather large with a 5-6yo intel Macbook receiving the upcoming OS release later this year.
Its not just a $199 vs $1999 laptop issue, its an ecosystem issue as well.
There are Chromebooks that do approach 1000$.
To take a more luxury approach, Framework has a chromebook edition of their laptop, which has the same hardware except a different motherboard firmware as chromebooks require a titan chip onboard.