Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 review: Productivity on point

A new generation of Chromebooks is upon us! The Chromebook Plus series aims to pull Chromebook specs into the present and help users find the best Chrome OS experience without having to obsess over numbers and standards. (After all, that’s my job.) This is a promising idea, taking the guesswork out of buying a great Chromebook for consumers while also providing a clear standard for Chrome OS devices moving forward.

Among the first of these is the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34, one of the most handsome and handsomely-priced laptops in the lineup. It may not be as eye-catching as a 2-in-1 like the Acer Spin 714 or as flexible as the Lenovo Flex 5 — which also has a new Chromebook Plus version — but the CX34’s got it where it counts and looks much better than its price tag would suggest.

UPDATE: 2024/06/05 06:54 EST BY DOMINIC PRESTON

We’ve updated the review to reflect current pricing, and the availability of an i5 variant from Best Buy.

Pricing and availability

The Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 was announced on October 1 as part of the first crop of Chromebook Plus laptops and went on sale a week later on October 8. The base model with an i3 processor and 128GB of internal storage is being sold at Target for $400, a 256GB model is available from Amazon, and Best Buy stocks a 128GB version with an upgraded i5 chip.

What I like

Chromebook Plus’s hardware requirements are there to ensure that these laptops are powerful enough for full-time work, and the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 is every bit the workhorse laptop you’d expect. Multiple windows, dozens of tabs, the CX34 takes them all in stride, and it does it without getting overly warm, even after hours of it sitting in my lap. The battery can keep up, too, which means that no matter how distracted my day gets, I’ll get through it before I need to fish out one of my USB-C chargers from either end of the couch.

One inevitable part of work these days is video calls, and one of the unsung heroes for the Plus certification is a 1080p webcam “with Temporal Noise Reduction”. I’ve worked from Chromebooks for half a decade, and outside a couple $1,000 models, the webcams have been just okay or potatoes. This webcam still gets a tiny bit of graininess, but it looks noticeably better in my Google Meet calls, and it’s nice to have an on-device background blur option in the Plus-exclusive audio and video menu.

Asus’s design language hasn’t changed much in recent years, but I’m perfectly fine with that as the CX34 is the classiest of the first Chromebook Plus models. The matte white shell is clean and feels good to the touch, and when you flip it over to the bottom, you’ll find fetching grooves across much of the back. These grooves make the air vents look much more natural and unobtrusive, and the speaker grills closer to the front are modeled the same way for a cohesive look.

The hinge on this laptop is smooth with just the right amount of tension to keep the screen at the angle you want but still openable one-handed. The 180-degree hinge will let you spread the CX34 flat if desired, so we don’t have to worry about limited viewing angles like many other clamshell Chromebooks. Not that you’ll really need to, though, as the matte display and decent brightness make the screen easy enough to read.

The keyboard is surrounded by clean, unbroken white plastic on all sides, no stickers, grills, or logos, and the backlit keyboard itself is set back reasonably from the front edge to accommodate the large trackpad. It’s no Pixelbook Go keyboard, but I’ve written comfortably on it for hours at a time. Especially on a non-touch Chromebook, a large trackpad is absolutely essential, and this one is quick and responsive.

What I don’t like

With Google wanting to prove that Chromebooks Plus — or is it Chromebook Pluses? — are powerful and perfect for productivity, it’s unfortunate that they’re leaving out what is often the fastest method for interacting with one. While Chromebook Plus requires screens to be 1080p and IPS or OLED, it does not require them to be touchscreens.

I understand that there had to be sacrifices to get these laptops down to $400, but Android apps are often difficult to use without touch input. A mouse can’t mimic swipes and motions endemic in mobile apps, and while some apps have been optimized for larger tablet screens and Chromebooks, most have not. Even while just browsing in Chrome, I found myself time and time again reaching forward to tap the next prompt on a website or swipe to scroll to the next page in a web novel.

All that room and not a speaker grill in sight, it’s a shame.

Speakers on a $400 work-focused Chromebook are obviously not a high priority, but it’s an utter shame that Asus opted for these tinny, down-firing stereo speakers in the CX34. They’re good enough for Zoom meetings (but please, use headphones for the courtesy of everyone else on your call) and watching YouTube on your lunch break, but the subpar quality shows when playing any sort of music.

Of the Chromebook Plus-exclusive features that Google touted for the series, File Sync is both the most important and the most disappointing at this time. You could already sync individual files and folders in the Files app, so File Sync just allows you to set which folders should get it in one go rather than having to manually go to each and every one individually. This is a welcome change, but it faces a few pitfalls.

File Sync still only allows you to sync files from one Google account, and only the folders in Google Drive, not any local folders. Lack of multi-account support is a heavy blow, as many jobs involve multiple Google accounts, not to mention people who use their personal Google account for the Chromebook profile and then add work emails as secondaries. For File Sync to work, you’d have to make separate Chromebook profiles for each Google account and then switch between them depending on what you’re working on.

Of course, none of that compares to File Sync’s true Achilles heel: if you’re using more Google Drive space than the Chromebook’s hard drive, File Sync won’t work at all. It’ll give you a storage error, then leave the prompt telling you to set it up sitting at the top of the Files app to mock you. I have 666.86 GB of data in my Google Drive account, so any Chromebook Plus I would ever be able to use File Sync on — even just to sync one folder of Google Docs — would have to have a 1TB SSD.

While most personal Google Docs accounts likely don’t have over 200GB of storage — it’s the only tier available between 100GB and 2TB — corporate accounts with shared drives and the need to keep records of everything can easily exceed this, as can anyone who backs up their music or totally legal movie library to Drive.

I’d hope these are just the teething problems of a newly launched feature, but I have to review what we have right now. And right now, File Sync is severely limited. As are the exclusive Chromebook Plus “Dawn to dark” wallpapers. Unless you set your Chromebook’s light/dark theme to Auto, these wallpapers don’t change with the time; they’re simply static images of daytime or nighttime.

Competition

The Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 has quite a bit of competition, considering it launched alongside five other Chromebook Plus laptops that also went on sale on October 8. That said, it’s one of only two $400 models, and the other is a 15.6-inch laptop that’s much larger (and thus heavier). I’ve actually been preferring the CX34 over the touchscreen Acer Chromebook Plus 514, as the touchscreen can’t outweigh how much more cohesive the design on the CX34, and it has twice as many ports.

If you really want a 2-in-1, the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5i Chromebook Plus has a better-looking touchscreen, an equally snazzy design, and the same core specs as the CX34, but it’s also $100 more, which will place it out of budget for many.

While there are certainly many $300-$400 Chromebooks out there that could compete with the CX34 on specs, the features and 10-year support life of a Chromebook Plus makes it an easy choice over an older model.

Should you buy it?

So long as you’re okay without a touchscreen, the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 is a perfectly adequate laptop for a perfectly adequate price. Yes, the speakers could be better, but isn’t it about time you got a pair of proper Chromebook speakers for your desk anyway? The solid build quality and long-lasting battery life combine to make the CX34 a laptop that you can rely on for years and years to come.