One main omission from this mannequin is a backlit keyboard, which is disappointing if you wish to use it in the dead of night. Older CX34 fashions got here with a backlit keyboard, so, curiously, Asus opted to not ship one on this up to date model.
The excellent news is that, regardless of the shortage of a backlight, the keyboard is comfy to make use of for lengthy intervals. It has a strong quantity of journey and by no means feels onerous to kind on. If I needed to title one quibble, it’s the small dimension of the home-key ridges on the “F” and “J” keys, which make it a bit tougher to touch-type.
The trackpad is giant and spacious, although the fabric it’s fabricated from creates extra drag in your finger than I’d like. I additionally encountered one bug with the trackpad throughout testing the place it was unresponsive after waking the CX34 from sleep. This appeared to be a one-off and was remedied by a restart (a fast course of for Chromebooks), nevertheless it’s price noting.
For on a regular basis work and net searching, the contact show on the CX34 is implausible. It’s a 14-inch, 1,920 x 1,080 pixel panel that appears crisp and cuts down on a good quantity of glare with a matte end. It isn’t the brightest show on the market although, and it may well battle when working outdoor on a sunny day.
{Photograph}: Daniel Thorp-Lancaster
Whereas the 16:9 display screen ratio is fairly commonplace for laptops, I might have preferred to see Asus go for a barely taller 16:10 show right here. The elevated vertical area on a 16:10 display screen is nice for the productiveness work the CX34 is focusing on. You possibly can see this in motion on opponents like Acer’s Chromebook Plus Spin 714.
Port choice on the CX34 is fairly good, with two USB-A ports, two USB-C ports, an HDMI slot, and a normal headphone jack. The USB-C ports can cost the laptop computer with the surprisingly compact 45-watt charger Asus consists of within the field, however they will also be used for DisplayPort over USB-C connections to exterior displays.
