ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip (2023) Laptop Review

Aside from the small orange accents here and there, the ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip's design looks relatively clean and doesn't go overboard with the gamer aesthetic, even though it's marketed as a cloud gaming Chromebook. The side bezels aren't overly thick; however, the top and bottom ones are pretty chunky by current standards. On the bottom, you'll find the speakers near the front and the air vents near the back. This is a 2-in-1 laptop, meaning you can flip the screen around and use it as a tablet. It supports pen input and comes with a stylus that you can dock into its charging slot on the life side of the laptop, near the back. This laptop is only available in this Pearl White color.

The build quality is good. It feels sturdy despite being entirely plastic; it just doesn't have that rigid, premium feel of a more expensive, all-metal laptop. There's some flex on the keyboard deck but almost none on the lid or display. The finish doesn't easily scratch or pick up fingerprints, and the feet feel solid and stick firmly to the bottom. The hinges are passable; they feel sturdy but stiff, as they have a lot of resistance.

As mentioned in the build quality section above, the hinges have a lot of resistance, making it impossible to open the laptop with one hand, and they don't feel very smooth either. On the upside, there's very little wobble, even when typing aggressively.

The ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip and its power adapter are compact and lightweight.

The serviceability is okay. Accessing the internals is easy; you only need to remove ten Philips screws and undo the panel's clips. You might have one or more of the screws under a sticker. The screws are of different lengths, so it's best to keep them organized to make the reassembling easier. Unfortunately, the memory isn't user-replaceable. You can download the user's manual here.

• ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip laptop
• 45W USB-C power adapter and cord
• Documentation

The ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip's FHD+ display looks sharp. Its 16:10 aspect ratio is slightly taller than the standard 16:9. The extra vertical space doesn't matter much for gaming; however, it does help with productivity, as it lets you see more information at once, reducing the need to scroll. The downside is that most videos will have black bars at the top and bottom.

This laptop is only available with a 144Hz display. The response time is pretty good, resulting in only a small blur trail behind fast-moving objects. Its high refresh rate helps with motion smoothness and input responsiveness when gaming; however, not all Android games support a high refresh rate, as many have a frame rate cap of 30fps or 60fps. Also, the display operates at 144Hz only when the laptop is plugged in. It's limited to 60Hz when running on battery. For cloud gaming, your internet connection is likely a greater source of latency than the screen.

The display's contrast ratio is decent for an IPS panel but relatively low compared to other display types, like VA and OLED. This contrast level makes blacks look gray in dim settings.

The ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip's display gets bright enough for use in most well-lit environments. You can use it outdoors in broad daylight but may have trouble seeing some darker content. Lowering the brightness to the lowest setting makes the screen very dim, which helps reduce eye strain when viewing content in a dark room.

The display's reflection handling is mediocre. Its glossy finish struggles with mirror-like reflections and doesn't do much to reduce the intensity of bright light sources, like a lamp or open window during the day. These reflections are visible even with the screen at maximum brightness.

The display's black uniformity is decent. There's some backlight bleed at the corners; otherwise, the rest of the screen is relatively uniform.

The display's horizontal viewing angle is okay. The image dims and washes out relatively quickly as you move to the side, so you need to be more or less directly in front of the screen to see an accurate image.

The vertical viewing angle is good. It's better than the horizontal viewing angle, but only slightly. The image still dims and washes out from above and below; it just doesn't happen as quickly. It's best to look at it straight on for the best image accuracy.

The display's factory calibration is good. Most color and white balance inaccuracies are minor and hard to spot. The color temperature is cooler than the standard 6500K target, giving the image a slight blueish tint. The gamma is close to the sRGB target curve in most scenes, though very dark and bright scenes are too dark.

The display has an excellent color gamut. It has full sRGB coverage, the color space used in most content. Its Adobe RGB and DCI P3 coverage is great but not enough for professional print photography or for viewing and producing HDR content.

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

The ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip has a good 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, don't require much force to actuate, and provide relatively satisfying tactile feedback. Typing on this keyboard for an extended period doesn't feel tiring. The only complaints are that the keys aren't very stable, and the keycaps feel somewhat cheap. It isn't overly loud, so it won't be bothersome in quiet environments. As for the RGB backlighting, there's technically one lighting zone, meaning you can only set a single color for the entire keyboard; however, it can show multiple colors if you use the rainbow preset (4 zones). You can adjust the brightness using the hotkeys or the brightness slider in the settings; the latter allows for finer adjustments.

The touchpad is decent. It feels very smooth even though it's plastic, and it tracks all movements and gestures well. It's reasonably large, though it could have been bigger—or taller, in this case—considering the amount of space available on the deck. The size is fine for general navigation but makes things like dragging and dropping or zooming in and out of images a little harder. You can only click in the bottom half of the touchpad, and the click mechanism is relatively satisfying.

The ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip's speakers get pretty loud with minimal compression artifacts at max volume. They sound clear but unnatural, with only a bit of bass, so they're best suited for speech-heavy content. The speakers sometimes stop working randomly; a computer restart usually resolves this issue.

The webcam's video quality is mediocre. The image looks soft and noisy, although the colors look relatively true to life. As for the microphone, voices sound clear and loud but slightly hollow. The privacy cover doesn't turn off the camera or microphone at the software level, meaning it can still record audio when closed.

The ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip has a good port selection. The USB-A port supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 data transfer speed of up to 10Gbps. The two USB-Cs also support USB 3.2 Gen 2 data transfer speed, as well as DisplayPort and Power Delivery. The latter allows for fast charging of the laptop and other PD-compatible devices connected to the port. Although ASUS advertises the HDMI as an HDMI 2.1 port, we list it as HDMI 2.0 because it can only output up to 4k at 60Hz.

The ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip's wireless adapter is an Intel Wi-Fi 6E AX211.

The ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip is available with the following CPUs:

• Intel Core i3-1215U (6 cores/8 threads, up to 4.40GHz, 10MB cache)
• Intel Core i5-1235U (10 cores/12 threads, up to 4.40GHz, 12MB cache)
• Intel Core i7-1255U (10 cores/12 threads, up to 4.70GHz, 12MB cache)

All three are low-power processors designed for general productivity tasks like text processing, web browsing, and video playback, not demanding workloads like video editing or gaming. These 12th Gen CPUs have a hybrid design with a mix of performance and efficiency cores; the i3 has two performance and four efficiency cores, while the Core i5 and i7 have two and eight, respectively. All three CPUs are adequate for general use and cloud gaming. That said, 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 Vibe CX34 Flip 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 for smooth gameplay.

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

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

The ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip scores well in the Geekbench 5 benchmarks. Its single- and multi-thread scores are lower than expected for an Intel 12th Gen CPU, but it's still more than adequate because Chrome OS is a lightweight operating system, and most tasks are done through the Chrome browser. 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 Vibe CX34 Flip performs poorly in Blender. The CPU is far too slow for practical purposes, and GPU rendering isn't supported. If you need to render images, 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 Intel Core i5-1235U's Iris Xe performs poorly in the Basemark GPU benchmark since it's mainly designed for 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. Even then, performance can vary depending on the game because 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 ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip's SSD performs poorly. It has reasonably fast read speeds, allowing 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 or transferring files to the internal storage.

The ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip's battery life is okay. It doesn't quite last through a typical work or school day on a full charge, but it's close, so depending on your usage, you may or may not need to plug it in for a quick charge. The battery life while gaming shows how long the battery lasts when playing a CPU- and GPU-intensive, locally-installed game. Cloud gaming is more like video streaming, so you can expect a slightly longer battery life.

Borderlands 3 doesn't run on Chrome OS. This laptop's integrated graphics can't handle such a demanding game, anyway.

Civilization VI doesn't work on Chrome OS.

CS:GO doesn't work on Chrome OS.

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

The keyboard is cool when idle. The area around the letters F and G gets warm under load; however, it isn't uncomfortable. The fan is audible at full speed, but the noise isn't overly bothersome.

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 relatively compact laptop with a single 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 Vibe CX34 Flip runs on the 64-bit version of Chrome OS. Except for the NVIDIA GeForce NOW app, there's no pre-installed software other than those that typically come with Chrome OS. You can see more information about GeForce NOW here.

Every Chromebook has an 'expiration date' at which it stops receiving software updates, and according to Google's official document, the Vibe CX34 Flip's end-of-life is June 2030. Google may extend this date as they have for other Chromebooks; it's best to check their official document for any changes.

This laptop supports pen input and has a USI (Universal Stylus Initiative) 1.0 stylus. It's a thin pen that's uncomfortable to hold for an extended period and lacks tilt support, so it's more for quick notes than actual drawing. You can dock the pen into its charging slot on the laptop's right side, near the back.