Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 Review: A Pretty Chromebook Leave a comment

One main omission from this mannequin is a backlit keyboard, which is disappointing if you wish to use it at the hours of darkness. Older CX34 fashions got here with a backlit keyboard, so, curiously, Asus opted to not ship one on this up to date model.

The excellent news is that, regardless of the dearth of a backlight, the keyboard is comfy to make use of for lengthy intervals. It has a strong quantity of journey and by no means feels onerous to kind on. If I needed to identify one quibble, it’s the small dimension of the home-key ridges on the “F” and “J” keys, which make it slightly more durable to touch-type.

The trackpad is massive and spacious, although the fabric it’s fabricated from creates extra drag in your finger than I’d like. I additionally encountered one bug with the trackpad throughout testing the place it was unresponsive after waking the CX34 from sleep. This gave the impression to be a one-off and was remedied by a restart (a fast course of for Chromebooks), but it surely’s price noting.

For on a regular basis work and net searching, the contact show on the CX34 is unbelievable. It’s a 14-inch, 1,920 x 1,080 pixel panel that appears crisp and cuts down on an honest quantity of glare with a matte end. It isn’t the brightest show on the market although, and it could possibly wrestle when working outdoor on a sunny day.

Whereas the 16:9 display ratio is fairly commonplace for laptops, I might have favored to see Asus go for a barely taller 16:10 show right here. The elevated vertical area on a 16:10 display is nice for the productiveness work the CX34 is focusing on. You possibly can see this in motion on rivals like Acer’s Chromebook Plus Spin 714.

Port choice on the CX34 is fairly good, with two USB-A ports, two USB-C ports, an HDMI slot, and a regular headphone jack. The USB-C ports can cost the laptop computer with the surprisingly compact 45-watt charger Asus consists of within the field, however they will also be used for DisplayPort over USB-C connections to exterior screens.