Why has my laptop been performing slowly?

The payload on your Chrome Book is what is causing it to stagger. How much RAM is being used and why? That would be where I'd start.

Unnecessary tabs and apps left open running a constant connection check doesn't help either.

On my own tablet, documents with Google Drive - offline mode kills your battery and lags the heck out of the device because of constant syncing. On my tablet I also killed extensions except uBlock and Signal encrypted messaging.

Browser extensions and aps for and from Google lately - and at the moment - are malware writers holy grail. Lots of slack ap developers (skript kittens) not knowing what they are really doing and that sets up a hacker, malware author, or code sniffing to inject and resubmit the aps as their own renaming it.

Whatever you don't really need on your laptop - uninstall. And of course reboot at least once every two days.

Firewall - Outbound Rules - not filters.

Android Device - never run a defrag program. Flash memory and the lifespan is unpredictable in the long run because there are only so many writes it will take before having to replace. There is also no need to defrag hardware that doesn't move. Linux developers have already taken this into consideration. ( this is only of course if you have flash drives)

Also, adult web content - when I used to fix computers - number 1 problem for laaaaaaaaaaggggging boxes and devices. Not saying you are into that but anything affiliated with the adult world and application installs is bad news.

Your laptop could be slow for numerous reasons, even torrent downloading and sharing running in the back ground.

Chances are processes need to be killed off, to much ram is being eaten up and you need a reboot.

Shaun