It’s overkill for casual use and school. That laptop’s hardware is power hungry so if you need a laptop with great battery life, this laptop is not it. It’s also very bulky relative to a slimmer laptop that’s 13" or 14".

14th Gen Raptor Lake is a refresh, not a complete new architecture so the performance difference is marginal. So no, I wouldn’t wait. If you can score a BF/CB deal on a 13th gen, I’d say pull the trigger.

Also 14th Gen just came out so it’s just now starting to trickle into the mass market in the next few weeks and going into 2024 (not enough time to show up for BF/CB).

Since you mentioned battery life, you’ll want to look for a laptop with a “U” designation as these chips are designed to sip power for max battery life (example).

If you’re going to spend $400, you might as well get a fully-functional Windows laptop. Chromebooks are basically laptops for G Suite (e.g. Gmail, Google Docs, YouTube, etc.).

Fortunately Black Friday and Cyber Monday are around the corner (if you live in 'Murica) so there will be no shortage of feature-rich laptops for the same price (or cheaper).