Working with Chromebooks: Explained and Tested [VIDEO]

If you’ve ever picked up an accessory and wondered if it would work with your Chromebook or not, you’ve probably noticed by now that a lot of things do work. Over the years, I can not count how many times I have wondered exactly the same and just started plugging things into the nearest Chromebook. After all, with a fairly high rate of success, I simply found it in the vast majority of times I try, things tend to “just work” on Chromebooks.

But that’s not true 100% of the time, and the fact that there was no real way to know if something was working well with a Chromebook or not was a real thorn in the side of many new Chromebook users. After all, most people do not like to buy and give back with the regularity I do, and therefore they just want to know in advance whether a certain accessory is going to work or not before they leave the store with it.

So, in response to this clear need, Google has the Work with Chromebook initiative we discussed here on the website. In a nutshell, items tagged Work with Chromebook is being tested to meet Google’s own Chromebook compatibility standards, so users can know for sure that the peripherals they buy will work well with their Chromebook once it’s home and unpacked. You can read more about this on Google’s dedicated landing page, but the idea is simple: this stuff just works.

In the next video, we put some of these items to the test. We sent some Western Digital peripherals that we did not unpack or try before the video. We just started plugging things in. We used 3 Chromebooks – 8th generation Intel, tenth generation Intel and AMD Ryzen powered devices – and tried it all simply. Destroyer warning: it all works right out of the box. From SD cards to external drives to USB Type C docks to keyboards and mice, things are marked Work with Chromebook do what they have to.

As part of this post and video, Western Digital was kind enough to give away our 3 WD MyPassport external chips, and you can win in various ways below to win. We hope all of this helps you make a more informed purchase in the future, and we really hope you sign up to win one of these free WD MyPassport SSDs below!

My passport works with WD Chromebook HDD Drives