Chromebooks suck. They’ve got great battery life but poor specs and lousy displays. You probably only heard that they were “fast” because ChromeOS is pretty much just locked down to Chrome and the file manager. They’re also great vectors for organization-enforced spyware as you mentioned. Why not install something like Linux Mint on your laptop or jailbreak your Chromebook and put something bearable on it?
Here’s my X200 still going strong (definitely not my main laptop, but still cool).