Robby Payne Reviews the ASUS C300 Chromebook

In this video Robby Payne of Chrome Unboxed reviews the ASUS C300, one of the first Chromebooks powered by an Intel Bay Trail processor.

The hardware, except for the screen, is alright and the device's performance in rendering Web pages, executing benchmarks and even running 3D games is satisfactory. Robby calls it a big step-up from ARM processor based Chromebooks, but not enough to serve as a replacement for your work laptop or desktop, in contrast to the HP 14 and Acer C720. Below is a summary of the pros and cons.

Pros

• Nicely spaced and quiet keyboard very well suited for typing.
• Great feeling, smooth and responsive trackpad.
• Matte display, i. e. not a fingerprint magnet.
• Fanless, silent device.

Cons

• Screen viewing angles.
• Lid collects fingerprints like crazy.
• Speaker sound is pretty shallow as with most laptops.
• Too little performance for very demanding tasks.

You cannot expect too much performance and also not a high quality screen of a laptop that costs US $230 (as of Aug 28, 2014). This feels like a pretty good deal to me, provided you feel comfortable with Chrome OS or will use Crouton or alternatives to run a different operating system.