Chromebook vs laptop?

You don’t want a chromebook for on flight entertainment. The Wi-Fi in planes isn’t nearly robust enough most of the time. There are some airlines who are moving to using streaming to your device for in flight entertainment. But it is using their own entertainment packages, not Netflix or the like.

You want something that will let you work and watch offline. Chromebooks have limitations in that area.

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You want something that will let you work and watch offline. Chromebooks have limitations in that area.

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What do you suggest?

Are we talking Netflix and amazon prime? Where they let you download episodes or actual movie files like a ripped dvd?

Either way, chromebook can do this. May require a nice jump drive if you are planning major storage.

I use my chrimebook for everything. Only limitation is unique programs like publisher or some other that requires install.

I do all my work through google docs

sounds like you need a tablet.

My advice would be to get a tablet. The biggest advantage is that there's no restriction on having a tablet out for takeoff and landing like there is a regular laptop with a physical keyboard.

The Lenovo Yoga tablet 3 or Yoga tablet Pro in the 8 or 10 inch size or the Huwai Mediapad would be perfect. The Lenovo tab 4 would also be a ice. Asus also makes some nice droid tablets.

LINK

iPad Pro 10.5"

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You don’t want a chromebook for on flight entertainment. The Wi-Fi in planes isn’t nearly robust enough most of the time. There are some airlines who are moving to using streaming to your device for in flight entertainment. But it is using their own entertainment packages, not Netflix or the like.

You want something that will let you work and watch offline. Chromebooks have limitations in that area.

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Won't claim to be an expert on Chromebooks at this time, but I'm doing a shite ton of research right now on it for my wife...

Unless you're looking to have an excessive amount of content downloaded at any given time, you should be fine for data storage with most of the mid-high end chrome books. The two I'm looking at are the Samsung Chromebook Pro and the ASUS Chromebook Flip. Once you factor in a microSD card it really isn't a huge issue... (128GB from Samsung/Sandisk is around $40 these days... if you wanted to step it up to a 200/256GB $70 Sandisk, and $90 from Silicon Power - though I can't speak for their reliability).

As to the connecting to in-flight entertainment, generally speaking you're not using the WiFi to connect to remote resources... Delta manages their in-flight "BYOD" entertainment essentially by storing that data on a hard drive on the plane I believe, and it's periodically updated when the plane is on the ground. Otherwise, you'd be correct, you wouldn't be able to watch a damn thing because the bandwidth in flight is atrocious.

A modern chromebook actually sounds about perfect given the OPs comments. My advice (which I'm giving to my wife as well) is take a look at both of the devices I listed in person... play with the OS, feel them and see if they might work for you... ~$500 compared to the Pixelbook at $1k+ and it's not a significant upgrade according to pretty much every review, and they're easily better quality devices than a corresponding $500 Windows machine. Side note, you can run Linux on it as well... if that matters at all.

If you had to go with a Windows OS laptop, seems like one of the best options out there from a value standpoint (but similar device size) might be the Samsung Notebook 9 Pro. Seems like it could be had for around $850ish...

ETA: The 2 chromebooks I referenced also have access to the GooglePlay store now, which opens up Android applications

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iPad Pro 10.5"

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I have an iPad Pro 12.9"

I love the damn thing. Netflix has a large number of shows available for offline downloads. I simply click the shows I want to watch and fire up the iPad on the plane.

It is also very useful when paired with a smartconnect keyboard. I hardly ever fire up my laptop at home