ASUS Chromebook Plus CX34 review: Keeping up with ChromeOS

Chromebooks have been kicking around for almost a decade and a half. In the time since then, the pitch for Google’s alternative to a traditional Windows or Mac laptop has changed more than the underlying hardware.

Initially, it was all about offering the best version of a basic computing experience at an unbeatable price. This proved to be a hit with the education crowd but everyone else? Not so much. Then, there was the era of ultra premium Chromebooks aimed at winning over those who felt turned off by cheap feeling hardware. There was even a brief wave of Chromebooks with GPUs that promised to make going with Google a more viable option for gamers. None of these have really stuck. However, with the arrival of Chromebook Plus devices like the ASUS CX34, it now feels like Google is trying to take the best of each incarnation and spin those strengths into something new.

Even if the ASUS CX34 often feels like more of the same, that familiar isn't necessarily going to be a bad thing if you’re already on-board with the concept of a lightweight laptop that lives and breathes everything Google has to offer.

In Australia, pricing for the ASUS Chromebook Plus CX34 starts at $1029. That's not quite MacBook Pro money, but it's certainly more expensive than the entry-level Chromebooks you might be used to. Still, you might be able to save if you shop around.

To save you the time and trouble, we've rounded up what each retailer is selling the Chromebook Plus CX34 for below.

Even if it doesn’t feel like a worthy rival to top-tier laptops like the Macbook Air or Dell XPS 13, the ASUS CX34 acquits itself fairly well.

While some Chromebooks have walked the line between 2-in-1 tablets and more traditional laptops, the CX34 is right at home in the latter camp. It comes in a cool and clean white (or grey) design that looks nicer than it feels. The chassis here doesn’t feel like cheap plastic, but it doesn’t convincingly sell itself as premium either. The build quality and material design involved sits somewhere between the two.

Looking past these not quite premium trappings, the natural centerpiece of the ASUS CX34 is the 14-inch FHD screen. It comes with anti-glare coating and no touch sensitivity. While the bezels are pretty slim, a chunky 80% screen-to-body ratio tells most of the story.

There’s a built-in FHD webcam that's about as good as you expect given the asking price. It's not going to blow you away, but it's more-or-less usable. The same goes for the CX34's built-in speaker and microphone. 

On the whole, I’ve more nice things to say about everything that sits below the screen on the CX34. The choices it commits to making aren't terribly original but they're not exactly bad ones either. The backlit keyboard is easy to read in the dark and satisfying to type on thanks to the 1.4mm of travel. The wider trackpad is a solid complement that makes for a portable PC experience that rarely falls short of your expectations on the fundamentals. 

It doesn’t hurt that the outlay of ports on the machine is as generous as it is. There’s a pair of USB-C and USB-C ports, plus a headphone jack and HDMI output. That arsenal is hardly exhaustive, but it’s a lot more than you’ll get on many traditional laptops nowadays. 

Unfortunately, the weight and heft of the hardware here is a little less endearing. At 1.4kg, the Chromebook CX34 isn't as lightweight than I’d like to be. That said, it does get a lot of mileage out of the ergo-lift hinge that ASUS brings to the table.

To sum things up, the nicest thing I can say about this design of the ASUS CX34 is also the most damning. It feels like the sum of its parts in both form and function. It’s not as nice as something like the Pixel Chromebook but if you’re looking for a Chromebook that’s built better than the entry-level ones, this will likely pass muster.

Under the hood, the ASUS Chromebook CX34 is powered by a 12th Gen Intel Core processor, 8GB of RAM and up to 256GB of on-board storage.

The cheapest configuration runs on the Intel Core i3-1215U while the more expensive models rely on the Intel Core i5-1235U instead. My review sample involved the latter so while I can’t speak to how the lower-spec model fares, I can say that the one I tested seemed mostly up to the task of dealing with my everyday workflow. It's everything outside of that remit that things go awry.

Still, in terms of how we'd rate it, the ASUS Chromebook Plus C34 sits in Essential territory.

As always, the closest thing that any Chromebook has to a killer app is Chrome itself. From Canva to Photoshop to Slack, more and more services are embracing webapps and that trend means that relying on a Chromebook much easier and less painful than it used to be. You still can’t install Microsoft Office on this thing but there are s a lot more workarounds to these software-adjacent bottlenecks than there was in the past. If you're someone whose workflow exists within the confines of a web browser, you'll probably be able to get by. Even so, those who need to juggle various applications will want to do their research well in advance of buying this particular PC.

Some of the old rules still apply. While you can run some Android games on the CX34, I wouldn’t really recommend it. Performance was extremely inconsistent, even for relatively undemanding titles like Diablo Immortal, Gwent or Hearthstone. Most of the games I tried were also looking for touch controls by default. While the Game Mode within the ChromeOS interface made it relatively quick to set up a custom control scheme that accounts for that detail, the fact that you have to go through that process at all says a lot about just how gaming-friendly modern Chromebooks like this one really are. 

Coming into reviewing the ASUS CX34, I expected big things when it came to battery life. The conventional is that opting for an operating system that has that much left cruft typically yields better results when it comes to how long the battery powering that experience lasts.

In reality, It took a whole 7 hours and 53 minutes of video streaming to run the battery inside the unit from 100% to zero. That's not really strong result, especially given how much battery performance you can expect from even an Snapdragon-powered Windows PC nowadays. Battery life isn't everything but it's kinda disappointing to see that Chromebooks like the CX34 lose their edge on that particular front.

If you’re in the market for a Chromebook in 2024, the ASUS Chromebook Plus CX34 is probably exactly the kind of thing you want. There’s not a huge amount of ambition on display here, but the foundation of the experience on offer is as sturdy as these things come.

That said, after spending a few weeks messing with it, I can’t help but feel like Chromebooks writ large have ended up in something of a computing cul-de-sac. Where the rest of the portable PC landscape has shifted in ways both big and small, it feels like Google is still trying to solve the problems of the early 2010s. The strengths on offer here are obvious but the weaknesses are very much the same as they were five, ten or even fifteen years ago.

If the ASUS CX34 is the best you can expect when it comes to better Chromebooks then I can’t help but wonder what a bigger vision might offer.