Below is an extract of an article produced by aboutchromebooks in July 2022 - click here to read their full article.
Essentially, there's a combination here for anyone wanting a 12th gen Intel Chromebook. You may not find the perfect configuration that meets every single one of your needs, of course.
My approach when selecting a Chromebook to purchase:
Make a high-level list of what device attributes are important to you, i.e.: Screen size of 13 to 14 inches with at least 1080p resolution, a backlight keyboard, battery life of 8+ hours, etc...
Once you have your list, order it by priority. If you can't do without a particular feature, that's priority number one. Number two is the next most important factor for you. And so on.
Using your prioritized list, go through each item and remove device choices that don't meet the highest priority one. See if you have any other choices left or if there's only one device that fulfills your most important feature wish. If not, move on to the next item on your list and keep whittling down your choices.
Again, there's no "perfect" device that will meet everyone's prioritized needs. But this strategy has served me well over the past 10 years of using Chromebooks.
In fact, not once have I ever bought a Chromebook that I regretted purchasing. Heck, I'm still using a 2018 Chromebook as my personal device. I knew in advance that even if it was missing some functions or features, it met my most important needs.
And just to reiterate: While you might "have to have" a Core i5 or i7, don't overlook the Core i3 options in a 12th get Intel Chromebook.
Unless you're coming from a last-gen Core i7, I suspect you'll see a massive uptick in performance with one of these four choices. The overall difference between a current Core i3 and Core i5 won't likely be noticeable, save for synthetic benchmarks.