You can still get an M1 Macbook Air at retail for $599 ($300 for refurbs), which is a Chromebook price for a laptop that is better in pretty much every respect than any Chromebook.
If you're going for refurbs, you can get a device with an AMD 7000/8000/9000 APU, at the same or lower price point, and the iGPU itself will perform better than an M1 for prompt processing and generation, even with SODIMM memory.
