In every single way, the Samsung Chromebook – seriously, that’s what they named this thing – is the lesser of the company’s two Chrome OS portables. It’s made with lower-quality materials. It has a smaller display. It has the guts of a tablet rather than the guts of a traditional laptop. And it costs less; only $250.

But in actual use, the Samsung Chromebook offers more bang for your buck than its predecessor. The Chrome OS proposition of life in (and only in) the cloud makes more sense at $250 than it does at $450. It’s not the only low-cost option – Acer makes a $200 Chromebook, but the hardware isn’t as nice as Samsung’s. There’s also a Verizon 3G-equipped version of this Samsung Chromebook that sells for $330 and offers up to 100MB of free service each month for two years. At these lower price points, the Chromebook becomes a fantastic option as a secondary computing device.

No, the New Chromebook is not going to fully replace your Mac or Windows PC. It’s not going to be your next gaming machine (unless all you do is play Angry Birds, Cut The Rope and other casual games). It won’t run Photoshop, Outlook, iTunes and all the rest. And no, it’s not as much fun as a tablet like the iPad or the Nexus 10 (which about as expensive as Samsung’s next-level Series 5 550 Chromebook).

The reality is that this Chromebook – or any Chromebook thus far – wasn’t built for any of that. This is simply a relatively cheap, durable, laptop that you can leave around the house and that anyone can log onto as needed. It’s also thin and light enough to toss in your backpack, making it a great option for students who need a simple computer for doing their homework. And it’s even a great laptop for the workplace, as long as you’re working entirely within Google’s ecosystem of web-based apps. If you’re looking to move over to the Googleverse, this is a great, cheap machine to get you started.

Like other Chromebooks before it, this laptop runs nothing but Google’s Chrome web browser. The web apps you access in the browser form the entirety of the computing experience. There’s a “desktop” you can customize to display any photo you want, but you can’t even drag a web app icon onto it – those shortcuts are restricted to an icon tray on the left, bottom side of the screen. Built-in storage is kept to a minimum – just 16GB. Remember, this is a computer built for the cloud, and as small as 16GB seems, in this case, it’s enough. Google throws in 100GB of free Google Drive storage for two years with every new Chromebook purchased, which should be plenty of space to keep documents, photos and some videos. And, of course, anything that can be accessed through the web can be accessed on a Chromebook. Netflix, Hulu, Rdio, Twitter and Facebook, Amazon’s Kindle eBooks and Prime video, web-based email (hello Exchange users) and of course Google Play content – it’s all here. In the browser.

Without a web connection, a Chromebook can’t do much more than view files you have stashed in your 16GB of storage. You do have the ability to perform off-line edits of any Google Docs you’ve had the foresight to sync to your Chromebook. But Chromebooks do have some clear limits. However, if you’re already living within these boundaries, you’ll be right at home with a Chromebook. I am – I store most of my files in Google Drive, Dropbox and iCloud, while backing up to portable hard drives, too. I’ve got backups for my backups. I write and maintain spreadsheets in Google Docs. I’m a big user of Gmail and Microsoft Exchange, Google Calendar, Google Voice and other Google apps – all of which can be accessed through a browser. The Chromebook is the computer I use the most (previously the Series 5 550, and now this newer model), outside of the Apple iMac I have on my desk at work. I have a MacBook Pro at home, but because the Chromebook fits my computing life so well, I only crack open my Apple laptop to use Final Cut Pro and Photoshop.

I was a big fan of the Series 5 550 Chromebook, but moving over to the new Chromebook has been a breeze. It’s tiny – only 0.69 inches thick and 2.4 pounds. Inside, the new Chromebook uses a 1.7-GHz, dual-core Samsung Exynos 5 processor, built on the latest ARM Cortex A15 architecture, and 2GB of RAM. This is the same CPU and RAM setup as is used in the Google’s Samsung-built Nexus 10 tablet, which surely helped Samsung and Google cut down on costs. Everything inside is solid-state. Unlike previous Chromebooks, which all used Intel processors and required fans to keep things inside cool, there are no fans. This Chromebook runs silent.