Just by virtue of its form factor, the Chromebook 11 is better than a tablet for a lot of things, but the specs here don’t add up to anything special. It works fine, with no deal-breaking issues, but it’s not exactly fluid — scrolling is slow and stuttery on heavy webpages, HD videos often stutter and drop frames and occasionally just stop playing entirely, and even typing can lag behind your fingers. Nothing surprising for a $279 laptop, but Chrome OS is designed to be so light, so easy, so fluid that it can run well on any hardware. Using a Chromebook 11 next to a MacBook Air or even a Pixel is like using an Android phone from two years ago: it runs, but it’s lost a step or two. Intel and Google have already shown off Haswell-powered Chromebooks, including a $299.99 model from HP itself and the $249 Acer C720 — the more I use the Chromebook 11, the more I’m curious about those.

Chrome OS is much more than just a browser

With a little more power, Chrome OS could be a viable operating system for many people. Google’s vastly improved its offline capabilities, so that everything from Gmail to Docs to a lot of packaged apps work great without an internet connection. Those packaged apps help a lot, too, giving Chrome OS apps that feel native and separate rather than just another browser tab or a thin wrapper around one.

Making full use of the OS requires some buy-in, especially to Google apps — 100GB of Drive storage and 60 free days of Google Music help with the switch — but with Office 365, with so many great note-taking and to-do list apps, plenty of ways to track time, expenses, and do spreadsheets until you’re blue in the face, there’s not that much you can’t do with Chrome OS. You’ll just have to switch apps and be okay with lighter, simpler versions.

The two exceptions are media editing and gaming. Both have theoretical Chrome OS counterparts, but web-based Picnik is to Photoshop as my cat Gumdrop is to a lion. And if you’re trying to trade Battlefield 4 and Grand Theft Auto V for Running Fred and Bouncy Mouse, well, I’m sorry.

What I want from Chrome OS, and Chromebooks, is simple: be a killer machine for email and web browsing, a computer I can use in the living room or take with me to the library. That’s why the biggest issue with all Chromebooks, including the Chromebook 11, is battery life — at between four and five hours of normal use, it’s solid, but it’s neither enough for a cross-country flight nor enough that I can leave it on my coffee table for weeks at a time, like I can with an iPad. Chromebooks need Haswell processors not for their power, but their longevity — I’m still crossing my fingers that HP’s Chromebook 14 lives up to its promised nine-plus hours of battery life.