Big performance from a small laptop
There have many attempts, by various manufacturers, to combine the best of both laptops and tablets. Some have been more successful than others, of course, but it's clear that there's interest in this market, and that's something that Asus is keen to exploit.
The Asus Chromebook Flip gets its name from the fact that the screen can rotate back over itself, much like the Yoga from Lenovo’s line of Chromebooks.
Inside the 10.1", frame you get a Rockchip quad-core RK3288C processor running at 1.8GHz, 4GB of LPDDR3 memory and a 16GB eMMC storage module where Chrome OS resides.
In terms of connectivity, the Flip boasts a decent selection of ports and extras. There’s a micro-SD card reader, HD web camera, a single combo audio jack, two USB 2.0 ports, micro-HDMI, 802.11ac wi-fi and Bluetooth 4.1.
The 10.1" WXGA touchscreen manages a maximum resolution of 1280 x 800, which isn’t as high as some examples we’ve seen in the past, but it does look exceedingly good in well-lit areas and offers a remarkable degree of colour depth for such a small screen. It’s also responsive and pretty accurate when it comes to pointing at the smaller sections of a web page, for example.
The flip part of the Flip is a good design. Whereas the Lenovo Yoga featured a pair of hinges connecting the screen to the keyboard section, the Flip instead uses a more solid single long hinge that runs to within an inch either side of the width of the keyboard section. This makes the movement feel much more sturdy.
Add to that the aluminium construction and the small but functional raised keyboard section, and you have a cleverly engineered Chromebook that’s light and capable of taking a few knocks during its lifetime.
Another surprising part of the Flip is the processor. The RK3288C is a relatively new CPU on the market and quite an inexpensive one at that. Its performance is on a par with the Atom and Celeron examples that currently inhabit the smaller laptops on the market. Couple this with a decent amount of memory and Chrome OS, and you’ve got a laptop that’s capable of keeping up with you.
Often in the past, we’ve found that some Chromebooks tend to drag when you ask them to stream video or music, or have several resource-hungry web page tabs open. The Flip, however, managed to keep up and even knocked out a very good ten hours of battery life too.
Currently, the Asus Chromebook Flip is available for around £249, which isn’t too bad considering you’re getting one of the more powerful hybrids on the market. Granted, the screen resolution could be a little higher, but overall it’s a good choice for someone’s first Chromebook or a general purpose laptop/tablet combo. David Hayward
A good example of a Chromebook.