ASUS Chromebook Flip CX5 14 (2021) Laptop Review

The ASUS Chromebook Flip CX5 has a clean, minimal design with thin bezels and a silver-color, wedge-shaped chassis. Although this is a fanless device, the back of the laptop still lifts slightly when you open the screen to allow for better passive cooling. A stylus is included in the box, and you can dock it into its charging slot on the right side of the laptop, near the back. The speakers are on the bottom, near the front.

The build quality is great. The chassis is all aluminum with a finish that doesn't easily scratch or pick up fingerprints. There's some flex on the lid and display but almost none on the keyboard deck. The feet feel solid and stick firmly to the bottom. The hinges are okay; they're extremely stiff when opening the laptop but feel smoother once you go past 30 degrees.

The hinges are passable. Since this is a 2-in-1 convertible, you can flip the screen into tent mode for media consumption or use it as a tablet. As mentioned in the build quality section above, the hinges are stiff when opening the laptop. They become smoother once you go past 30 degrees, though you may still need to use both hands to make small adjustments. The screen wobbles a little bit when typing aggressively.

The ASUS CX5400 and its power adapter are compact and lightweight.

The ASUS Chromebook CX5's serviceability is passable. Accessing the internals is easy; you only need to remove ten Philips screws and pry open the bottom panel. You need to be careful when removing the panel, as it requires some force to pry open and feels like it could break. Unfortunately, the RAM isn't user-replaceable.

You can see the user's manual here.

• ASUS Chromebook Flip CX5 14 laptop
• 45W USB-C power adapter and cord
• Documentation

The ASUS CX5's display looks sharp and provides just enough space for light multitasking. Its 16:9 aspect ratio is great for media consumption since most videos are in that format; however, a taller 16:10 ratio would have been better for productivity, as the increased vertical space lets you see more information at once, reducing the need to scroll. 16:9 also makes the device feel narrow when using it as a tablet in portrait mode.

The ASUS Chromebook Flip CX5 is only available with a 60Hz display. Its slow response time causes noticeable ghosting, which isn't ideal for viewing fast-moving content or gaming. If you want a Chromebook with a high-refresh display, check out the ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip (2023).

The display's contrast ratio is decent and within the typical range for most IPS panels; however, it's still relatively low compared to VA and OLED panels. This contrast level makes blacks look gray in dim settings.

The display's maximum brightness is decent. It's bright enough for use in most well-lit rooms but not in direct sunlight or outdoors in broad daylight. It gets very dim at the lowest brightness settings, which is great for dark room viewing, as it causes less eye strain.

The display's reflection handling is good. Its glossy finish mainly struggles with bright reflections, like a lamp or open window during the day. The reflections are visible, even with the screen at maximum brightness.

The display's black uniformity is sub-par. The whole screen looks more blue than gray, and there's visible backlight bleed at the corners.

The display's horizontal viewing angle is decent. The image dims and washes out relatively quickly as you move to the side. The image quality is still good enough for viewing text documents and other casual content, but it's best to be close or directly in front of the screen for color-critical work.

The vertical viewing angle is decent. Like the horizontal viewing angle, the image dims and washes out from above and below. Again, it's fine for text documents; it's only a problem if you need perfect accuracy and don't have much room to tilt the screen to the best viewing position, like on a bus or airplane.

The ASUS Flip CX5's display accuracy is decent out of the box. Most color inaccuracies are minor and hard to spot. The white balance isn't as good, as there's a slight greenish hue at higher brightness levels. The color temperature is slightly cooler than the standard 6500K target, giving the image a small, almost imperceptible blueish tint. The gamma doesn't follow the sRGB curve; dark scenes are too dark, while bright scenes are too bright.

The display has a good color gamut. It has near-full sRGB coverage, the color space used in most content. It's only missing some greens, which is hard to notice with the naked eye. It has good Adobe RGB and DCI P3 coverage but not enough for professional print photography or for viewing and producing HDR content.

The backlight is entirely flicker-free, which helps reduce eye strain.

The ASUS Chromebook Flip CX5 has a decent keyboard. The layout feels spacious and is fairly standard, so it's easy to get used to. The keys have a good amount of travel, but they're on the mushy side. Also, the keycaps feel somewhat cheap and aren't very stable. Typing noise is very low and isn't bothersome in quiet environments. You can adjust between four backlight brightness levels or turn it off completely.

The touchpad is decent. It's reasonably large and feels very smooth for a plastic touchpad. It tracks all movements and gestures well, and there aren't any issues with palm rejection or actions like dragging and dropping or zooming in and out of images. You can only click in the bottom half of the touchpad, and the click mechanism feels cheap and not particularly satisfying.

The speakers get pretty loud with minimal compression artifacts at max volume. They sound clear, with very forward vocals and good instrument separation; however, there's very little bass, and acoustic instruments sound unnatural.

The webcam's video quality is sub-par. The image looks soft, with a fair amount of noise. The colors look relatively natural but slightly washed out. Voices sound loud and clear over the microphone, albeit with some background noise. The privacy cover is only physical; it doesn't disable the webcam or the microphone at the software level, meaning it can still record audio when closed. If you want a Chromebook with a better webcam, check out the ASUS Chromebook Plus CX34 (2023).

The ASUS Chromebook Flip CX5400 has a decent port selection. The USB-A port supports USB 3.2 Gen 1 data transfer speed of up to 5Gbps. Both USB-C ports support Thunderbolt (up to 40Gbps data transfer speed and up to two 4k displays at 60Hz), DisplayPort, and Power Delivery. The latter allows for fast charging of the laptop and other PD-compatible devices connected to the port.

The wireless adapter is an Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX201.

The ASUS Chromebook Flip CX5 is available with the following CPUs:

• Intel Core i3-1110G4 (2 cores/4 threads, up to 3.9 GHz, 6MB cache)
• Intel Core i5-1130G7 (4 cores/8 threads, up to 4.0 GHz, 8MB cache)
• Intel Core i7-1160G7 (4 cores/8 threads, up to 4.4 GHz, 12MB cache)

All three CPUs are designed for general productivity tasks like text processing, web browsing, and video playback, not demanding workloads like video editing or gaming. Although they can all provide a smooth experience on Chrome OS, it's best to skip the Core i3-1110G4 unless you have an extremely light workload, meaning you use only one or two applications or Chrome tabs at a time. This is because it only has two cores, which isn't a lot, even for Chrome OS. The four-core i5 and i7 will provide a snappier experience and give you more headroom if you need to do something more intensive. The Core i7 is only slightly faster than the Core i5.

The ASUS Chromebook Flip CX5 is only available with integrated graphics. The Core i3 has Intel UHD graphics, while the Core i5 and i7 have Intel Iris Xe. These GPUs can only handle light productivity tasks. You can play some games from the Google Play Store, but you may need to play with low settings in the most demanding games.

You can get this laptop with 8GB or 16GB of RAM. The memory isn't user-replaceable.

You can get this laptop with 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB of storage. The SSD is user-replaceable; the slot supports M.2 PCIe Gen 3 SSDs.

The ASUS CX5400 has a decent overall score in the Geekbench 5 benchmarks. Although its single- and multi-thread scores are lower than expected for an Intel 11th Gen CPU, it's still more than adequate for nearly everything you can do on Chrome OS. The system feels snappy and responsive. The GPU compute test doesn't work on this Chromebook. The integrated GPU likely performs poorly, and Chromebooks aren't designed for GPU-intensive tasks anyway.

Cinebench R23 doesn't run on Chrome OS.

The ASUS Chromebook Flip CX5 performs poorly in Blender. The CPU takes a long time to render, far too slow for practical purposes. If you need to render images professionally, it's best to get a Windows laptop with a discrete GPU or a MacBook Pro with Apple silicon, like the Apple MacBook Pro 14 (2021).

The ASUS Chromebook Flip CX5 performs poorly in the Basemark GPU benchmark. Its integrated graphics can only handle light, general productivity tasks. You can play some mobile games from the Google Play Store, but you may have to play with low settings to get smooth gameplay. Also, remember that most games from the Google Play Store are designed for Android smartphones and tablets with an ARM processor, so some may not run properly or lack keyboard, mouse, and controller support.

The SSD's performance is middling. Its fast read speeds allow the system to quickly boot up, launch locally-installed apps, and retrieve data. However, its slow write speeds mean it takes a long time to write anything to the drive, like when installing an application.

The ASUS CX5's battery life is okay. It doesn't last through a typical workday, but it's close, so you'll only have to plug it in briefly.

Borderlands 3 doesn't run on Chrome OS.

Civilization VI doesn't run on Chrome OS.

CS:GO doesn't run on Chrome OS.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider doesn't run on Chrome OS.

The keyboard is cool when idle and only gets mildly warm under load. There's no fan noise because this is a fanless device.

We can't test the performance over time because UNIGINE Heaven and Cinebench R23 aren't compatible with Chrome OS. There's likely some thermal throttling on the CPU and GPU, as this is a thin and light laptop with no active cooling (fan). The performance loss isn't noticeable if you only perform light tasks like web browsing and video playback, but it is when you push the system to near-maximum capacity, like when gaming.

The ASUS Chromebook Flip CX5 runs on the 64-bit version of Chrome OS. There's no other software besides those that typically come with Chrome OS.

Every Chromebook has an 'expiration date' at which it stops receiving software updates. According to Google's official document, the CX5400's end-of-life is June 2029. Google may extend this date as they have for other Chromebooks; it's best to check their official document for any changes. If you want a similar laptop that runs Windows, check out the Acer Aspire 3 Spin 14 (2023).

The ASUS Flip CX5 supports pen input and has a USI (Universal Stylus Initiative) 1.0 stylus. The pen is thin and uncomfortable to hold for extended periods, and it only supports pressure sensitivity, not tilt, so it's mainly for note-taking. The inking experience is just okay; the latency is low, but it feels like writing on glass. For charging and transport, you can dock the pen into its slot on the right side of the laptop, near the back.