Asus Chromebook CX1

The Asus Chromebook CX1 is a perfect Chromebook designed for casual users. It offers a 15.6-inch display with passable brightness along with a relatively sensitive keyboard and a nice average port selection. If you’re on a budget and have a large-screen Chromebook, this is a decent option. Otherwise, its generic design and small trackpad won’t turn up too much anytime soon.

Introduction

Chromebooks have always been the backbone of budget computing, and Asus’s big-screen candidate – the CX1 – aims to keep up with that trend.

It is clear when you look at its spec sheet, which offers 32GB eMMC storage and 4GB RAM as well as an Intel Celeron N3350 processor. These are very entry-level specs, even by the standard Chromebook 6

Priced at 9 279.99, this is definitely an affordable entry into the world of Chromebooks, and if you choose the 14-inch model or the positively smaller 11.6-inch option, it may have a more attractive price tag. But is it worth it? I’ve tested it to find out.

Design and keyboard

• The generic silver shell looks and feels just right
• Relatively sensitive keyboard, though with a compact layout
• The trackpad is small

The design or build quality of the Asus Chromebook CX1 will not go unnoticed. While its silver coloring and smooth finish on the upper surface look subtle, I can’t help but feel overwhelmed by the way the CX1 feels at hand. Unlike other budget Chromebooks like the Acer Chromebook 314, this one just seems simple.

For a laptop with a 15.6-inch display, it feels quite heavy with a total weight of 1.8kg. This puts it on the heavy side of the market, but I find it still seems quite portable if you need to take it on your trip.

In terms of connectivity, Asus’s offer is individually budgeted. All-round, you’ll find a micro-SD card slot and a headphone combo jack, as well as two USB-As and two USB-Cs. Considering its size, it feels a bit stingy. At the very least an HDMI port would be welcome.

The same thing is true once you unzip the CX1, as you’ll be greeted with a compact 60% keyboard layout and an awful lot of free space. Other laptops with this chassis space will provide you with at least a number pad, which is welcome here.

The keyboard itself is relatively responsive and sensitive, although there is not much defined travel for individual keys that can sometimes make it feel a bit flat.

The screen bezel on the top and bottom of the CX1’s 15.6-inch panel is noticeably thick, but Asus partially sets up a decent quality 720p webcam for it, which is great if you need to team up or zoom in.

There’s not much to say about the CX1’s trackpad for the overall size of the laptop, it seems to be on the small side. On the plus side though, the buttons are sensitive enough to give accurate and repeated input.

Display

• Display low-resolution with average color
• Quite faded brightness
• Although the 15.6-inch panel offers a simple size

If you’re looking for a budget laptop with a full HD display, you’re out of luck with the base model of the Asus Chromebook CX1. It offers a basic 1366 × 768 resolution, which sits just above 720p.

For a larger display like this 15.6-inch panel, a lower resolution doesn’t help anything, especially since the gap between the pixels is noticeable when watching Disney Plus or Netflix videos.

With a quoted brightness of only 220 nits, it is not the most vibrant in the panel and it can also be a bit dull for everyday work. If you are planning to work out on a bright day, Asus Chromebook CX1 may not be an ideal companion.

On a brighter note, the side screen bezel is small enough to ensure that the CX1 provides a good screen-to-body ratio. This means that the viewing angles were quite decent.

Performance

• Dual-core Celeron CPUs offer little performance
• 32GB eMMC storage is quite stingy
• ChromeOS provides a typical user experience

Given the status of the CX1 as a wallet-friendly Chromebook, I had no real expectations for anything other than the basics.

That being said, even for a low-end machine, using the CX1 was sometimes like pulling a tooth, resulting in a painfully slow real-world performance of the 1.1GHz clock speed of its dual-core Intel Celeron N3350.

It backs up the low scores obtained by CX1 in our Geekbench 5’s CPU testing ground and compares its scores only with the Lenovo Chromebook Duet, which is basically just a tablet. Its multi-core scores were remarkably slow, but it’s hardly surprising that the Celeron N3350 has only two on offer here.

32GB eMMC Packing With this review unit, the CX1 is not given much in the way of storage, one third of which is taken up by the system storage. You might want to pick a large-capacity microSD card and use it here if you want this Chromebook to be useful for storing lots of apps.

To get the most out of this laptop, you need to adhere to the basics of CX1 while browsing the web and typing word documents. Those looking for a laptop for university or work will probably want something more powerful.

Battery life

• The battery test lasts 9 hours 52 minutes
• Able to last between one to two working days

The battery life of the Chromebook is generally decent, but in the case of the CX1, it scrapes quite a bit.

In our video loop test, the CX1 lasted only 10 hours, which means it lags behind other budget Chromebooks in some cases by two or three hours.

Ten hours of battery life will last from one to two working days, depending on how much hypermilling you plan to do.

It’s certainly not a bad battery life, but seeing how weak the processor is here I expected better stamina.

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