Dell released a "business class" 13-inch Chromebook (the Lulu platform) in 2015. It came with several options (e.g. Celeron vs i3 vs i5, 4GB vs 8GB RAM, choice of SSD storage size, touchscreen or not, etc). At the time it was released, the retail price for a non-touchscreen i3 was over $900. Again, that was not even the most expensive configuration, and that's 2015 dollars, not 2022 post-COVID inflation dollars. Many institutions went for the cheap Celeron-based models, but plenty others apparently opted for pricier ones (e.g. models with an i3 and a touchscreen, to give one example that I'm personally familiar with).
