I had a recent work mishap where I put my laptop on top of my car and drove away.
It's not fully broken, but there's some cosmetic damage I'm not super happy about, and it'll
probably get worse over time. So ASUS sponsored this video, so I can take a look at not one, but two different Chromebooks
and decide if I actually need like a full-fledged laptop or if I'm okay with just a Chromebook,
considering all I'm doing most of the time anyway is just either pulling up a webpage
or writing some notes in a script. So let's see what we got.
We're going to look at the more premium version first, the CX3402CV.
This guy has got it all, and by all I mean it's got everything you need, like a 14-inch
screen, 1080p, 60Hz, you know, it's actually not too heavy either.
That's my other problem is the laptop they want to give me at work is like pretty heavy
compared to my old one, whereas like this is small and sleek, and actually how heavy is
it? 1.45 kilos, that's all, that's about three pounds, it's pretty close.
What else is in the box though? ASUS has given me a charging brick.
This thing's got about a 50 watt hour battery, so plenty of juice as long as you're not trying
to make the screen super bright all the time and run it to its absolute limit.
It should last you quite a while. ASUS is boasting up to 10 hours, I think we tested it closer to six and a half.
It's pretty long cable, probably about six feet, because I'm not six feet and this thing
goes a little further than me. I wish it was.
One other main feature though, we've got one USB-C for charging, and on our other side
we've got another USB-C with, looks like DP alt mode, so if you want to plug this thing
into a bigger screen, that's totally valid, and then we've also got HDMI, and then a couple
of USB-A ports and a headphone mic combo jack.
Honestly, we'll talk about the price in a bit, but that's more IO than I get on like
my own laptop actually. Otherwise, it seems pretty bog standard, you know, you can see the cooling system in here,
it actually looks like pretty accessible too. They don't have a ton of stickers and other stuff blocking all the screws.
I don't even think you have to take these feet off, so it actually seems pretty repairable.
I don't know how much you want to repair a Chromebook, but it looks like you could.
Otherwise, yeah, it's pretty light. I like the look of it. It's got a little Chromebook Plus logo and the rock gray, I like the ASUS there.
I just messed this up pretty bad, and the fingerprints aren't like hyper visible.
You can get your grubby hands all, you can let your kids get their grubby hands all over
this thing, and it's going to be fine. Let's open it up and take a look.
I'll be honest, I'm not crazy about the keyboard, but this is not meant for that.
There are a lot of things this device is meant for, and fancy keyboard is not one of them.
Obviously, it's a Chromebook, so we're using Chrome OS, not Windows, but I believe this
is a touch screen, is it? It is! Yo, I don't like the touch screen very much.
It does work. We're also missing my coveted Windows key.
As for the keyboard itself, it's got a okay texture to the keycaps, and we're not getting
a fancy low profile mechanical keyboard or anything in this, but honestly, I actually
don't hate like, chiclet style laptop keyboards. I find I type on them really well, and away we go.
No, I made a mistake!
I was going to send a new record, I swear.
But honestly, yeah, it's pretty good. It's responsive, it types things just fine, and one nice thing actually is the keys are
nice and spaced apart, so you're not going to have that weird moment where you jam two
keys at the same time, because you've got that hyper-condensed keyboard layout.
So overall, it's fine. Sounds fine, sounds like a laptop chiclet keyboard, which frankly, they have their place.
They're totally okay. As for the trackpad, it doesn't like it when I've got two fingers there.
How's the palm rejection? Palm rejection seems like pretty good, actually.
As for the clicks, yeah, this seems totally okay, actually.
Let's take a look at the specs, and we've got a 13th Gen Intel Core i5-1334U, 12 threads.
That should be a 2P core chip, so we've got 2P cores and then 8E cores, and then the 2P
cores are hyper-threaded to get you 12 threads total. It says boost, a 4.6 gigahertz.
This doesn't clarify that that's a boost, but that is a boost clock. There's no way this thing runs at 4.6 base.
But then we've got 8 gigs of RAM, and I'm only using 2 gigs of it right now. So let's open some more Chrome tabs.
So we've got a video playing, we've got a web page up, we've got email open, some other
random tabs, web GL aquariums running.
How are we doing? I'm using less RAM now. I'm down to 1.5 gigs of memory.
How did that happen? I don't know, but the fact is, you're not buying this to game.
Let's try to play Bellattro. Okay, we've got Bellattro installed, but that's totally fine because we've got 128 gigs of
UFS storage. I know this game can run on mobile, but like, hey, it's playing Bellattro.
The display itself isn't terrible either. It does 250 nits, which is bright enough.
You're not going to really be enjoying this outside too much. But you know, how's the speakers on this thing?
I guarantee you, there's not going to be any bass, but like, these are not the worst speakers
I've ever heard in my life.
That's with it cranked. Let me check out a more realistic thing. I want to hear dialogue because you're going to be using this as like a school aid or a
work aid. So you're going to be using it to watch lectures or attend a meeting or something.
So I want to see what it's like when someone's talking to you. Meta launched their Meta Ray-Ban.
That sounds pretty good. I can hear that. If someone's talking to me over a meeting, I can totally understand them.
Let me check how the webcam is though. And the microphone as well, because I can hear them, but can they hear me?
This isn't half bad. It's a full HD webcam with AI enhanced audio and video.
I think this is a very reasonable meeting webcam.
I don't know how good the audio is on my side because I can't hear the mic, but I hope that
you're using this as a good way to determine if it's a good enough microphone for you.
If you're looking into buying a new Chromebook for whether that's work or school or just
like walking around the house. That's what I want this one for is to like just walk around with a light laptop, super
lightweight with a script on it and just like check stuff out and read things.
And that's it. I want like a super tablet, I guess.
It's pretty durable. If I drop it, I'm not super worried about it. Andrew can attest to how uncareful I am with the company laptops.
The hinge should 180. Look at this. Now you can use it as like a tablet.
Maybe you want to use Photoshop and stylus and use it kind of like a tablet.
It is optimized for creative apps, Photoshop, Express, LumaFusion and Google Workspace.
And while there wasn't an Ethernet jack during the IO tour, it is Wi-Fi 6E, which is honestly
pretty fast. We connected to our network here, no problem.
We were streaming video without issues and so it should be totally fine for you.
As long as your network, don't forget that you have to have a network that's also Wi-Fi
6E. Otherwise, it's just going to default to whatever your slowest speed is. And you can get all this for $5.99, which is their, this is their most premium of Chromebooks
and that $5.99 does come with a year of Gemini.
So that's like a pretty, that's what over another $100 worth of subscription savings
that you'd get. So overall, the value is pretty solid and I'm personally leaning towards this one just
because like I want to play Bellattro with the slightly better mobile CPU that's in
this guy. But if 600 bucks is outside of your price range, I've got kind of a treat for you because
this guy, guess the price. Guess the price of what the slightly bigger one is because this is a 15 or a 16 inch screen.
Like our other box by the way, basically just Chromebook, charge cable, some other random
ASUS stuff. Have you guessed it yet? $30.
This is this ASUS CB CX 15, 15.6 inch screen and fabric blue and it's only 160 bucks.
Like I honestly can't believe the day and age we live in where I'm getting a laptop that's
like this big has an okay screen, like it's crazy.
Now that price is a little bit too good to be true. It's technically $220 at MSRP.
However, ever since this thing launched at Walmart, you can get it for $160 and we do
expect that sale to last for quite a long time.
What do you get for 160 bucks? Well, we get a little less than on our more premium guy, but we've got one USB-C, HDMI,
always really nice to see when you're trying to hook up to a monitor and then USB-A.
And we've also got a mic and headphone jack. Let's smudge this guy up, barely any smudges.
I actually really like the aqua blue. Like that's one thing is I sticker bomb all my stuff because I like color and this is
way more up my alley in the sense that like it's a nice shiny, pretty blue.
Now it is bigger. We've got a whole extra like inch and a half of screen space here.
So it's going to be heavier, but it's really, you know, I can still one hand it.
Get to the pizza. I'm going to guess 1600 grams.
The other one was 1450. I'm so close to guess 1586.
So it's actually pretty light even though the screen is bigger. But this does have a significantly weaker mobile processor in it.
But hey, the value is there because this thing is still going to do most of what that could
do. And I will say I actually kind of like this keyboard a bit more just because it's more
in line with what I'm used to because I tend to use Windows laptops, but we've got this
little Google button here, which is basically the Windows button. I've also got nice function and an alt layout here.
It's like right now, at least just based on the keyboards. I strongly prefer this one just because it's got like a numpad and we've got that Google
button. The other one, like I said, you're getting a little less because you're paying for a
lot less, but you're still getting Wi-Fi six, 128 gigs of storage, I want to say.
And this one, we're getting a slightly smaller battery. It's advertised as 3550 milliamp hours, but we are getting a much more entry level CPU
with a cellar on N4500. This is a two thread ship running at like 2.8 gigahertz and we're only getting four
gigs of memory. So significantly less memory as well.
However, if you're doing a lot less, you don't need as much. So like let's bring up.
Okay. We've got a YouTube webpage up. We're going to have the same like docs thing where I have a document up and like don't
get me wrong. There's definitely a bit more of a delay as I'm navigating just like Chrome tabs and
whatnot and opening to Google docs. But the reality is this is like, it's still totally usable.
None of these are delays that upset me or anything like that.
And as for the display, perfectly serviceable again, I mean, don't get me wrong.
I'm just watching some 1080p video on a 15, 16 inch screen, but it looks pretty good and
it's getting bright enough. Like we're talking about a workhorse here.
And when you've got like a workhorse that needs to plow a field, you just want it to
do that thing and do it well. Let's check out the speakers really quick.
That's enough crab rave, but that's about what I'd expect honestly. I'm pretty impressed.
And so you're going to be probably watching a lot of YouTube on this thing and just using
like AI to summarize stuff for you. And that's great because it comes with three months, Google one AI premium as well as YouTube
premium. Even at the 220 price, I think that's still a decent price.
But man, if you can get this thing for 160, I think that's a steal.
And I mean, it's honestly still pretty solid. We didn't even check out the webcam yet.
Let's take a look and see how good the webcam is. One nice thing that I love to see on laptops because even at home, I keep like a sticky
note over my webcam. It's got a physical privacy shutter.
Boom, there it goes. Pretty decent quality overall. I think it's totally usable.
I don't know how the microphone is because again, I'm recording this into the laptop.
So I'm going to have to play it back to actually know how good the quality is, but I'm sure
it's fine. And the top of the physical shutter for the webcam, it's got a Titan C security chip from
Google just for that little bit of added peace of mind. And you know what else gives you some added peace of mind?
Just how durable this thing is. They're saying it's military grade and that, you know, it can withstand tumbles and fumbles
and drops. I bet you it's fine. Look at this.
Boom. It's great. As much as I love the value town that you're reaching with this guy, I probably lean towards
a CX34. I mean, 600 bucks is definitely a higher price to pay, but you know, it's a little bit more
premium too. So pick whatever you like the most. Feel free to check out either of those or a few of ASUS's other Chromebook models, which
we'll have linked in the description below. Thanks again, ASUS, for sponsoring this video and thanks for watching ShortCircuit.
I'm Ploof. These are Chromebooks and this video is over.