I would certainly never buy a new one, but there are tons of used Chromeboxes/books for sale on Ebay and elsewhere at very convenient prices. I've reflashed a good number of them and installed various Linux distros; this can be invaluable for people who need an unrestricted OS but have not much money to spend on a new PCs, beside repurposing hardware that could end up in a drawer or, worse, in a landfill. For those interested, my method of choice is described at https://mrchromebox.tech/ It is not destructive, one can backup and restore the original firmware at any moment, although I wouldn't see any reason to do that.