Specs at a glance: Asus Chromebook Flip Screen 10.1" 1280×800 LCD (150 ppi) OS Chrome OS CPU 1.8GHz quad-core Rockchip RK3288 RAM 4GB DDR3 GPU ARM Mali-T624 HDD 16GB eMMC SSD Networking Dual-band 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0 Ports 2x USB 2.0, micro HDMI, microSD, headphone jack Size 10.35" x 7.18" x 0.61" (262.8 x 182.4 x 15.6mm) Weight 1.96 pounds (890g) Battery 31WHr Warranty 1 year Starting Price $249.00 Price as reviewed $279.00 Other perks Webcam

Not to sound like a broken record, but the “perfect” Chromebook doesn’t yet exist.

Each one of these laptops has one or two really great points counterbalanced by one or two unfortunate compromises. Usually, you’re either trading performance for general aesthetics and build quality or the other way around. Chromebooks with nice screens tend to have slower internals, and Chromebooks with better internals are usually generic plastic laptops with faded, cheap LCD panels. And of course, there’s always the Chromebook Pixel, perfect in pretty much every way except that $999 price tag.

I’ll say this up front: the Asus Chromebook Flip does nothing to change this equation. In most respects it looks and feels great, but its performance isn’t incredible and its size isn’t a problem. Luckily for it, the fact that there’s no “best Chromebook” for everybody leaves it a chance to find an audience that appreciates what it does well.

Look and feel

There’s definitely a lot to like about the design of the Chromebook Flip. It’s got a sturdy aluminum finish where most Chromebooks use passable-but-creaky plastic. It looks and feels like a much more expensive system than it is. Our one criticism is that the lid has a lot of give to it if you press down on it. It’s not a problem in regular use, but we’d be careful about setting things on top of the laptop.

The finish on both the top of the lid and the bottom of the base is smooth, and both metal pieces have shiny beveled edges all the way around that make the laptop stand out. The palmrest, also metal, has a light brushed metal texture and the beveled edge helps keep it from digging into your wrists too badly.

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

The Flip’s touchscreen also stands out compared to other sub-$300 Chromebooks. It’s got very large bezels—not uncommon in small, cheap touch laptops like these—but the quality of the 1280×800 IPS panel is much better than the comparatively faded TN panels used elsewhere.

Touch input seems quick and accurate, though it’s easy to cause the little LCD “ripples” around the edges no matter how lightly you tap. Chrome OS still does little with touch input, in general—no edge swipes or gestures to speak of—but it’s useful for the smattering of Android apps that have begun migrating to the platform. The OS has recently picked up a software keyboard that pops up when you’re using the Flip in tablet or tent mode.

This is new since the last time we looked at a touch Chromebook, so we’ll spend some time with it here. Visually it looks more or less like Android’s Material Design-era software keyboard. It will accept voice and handwriting input, both of which appear to work fairly well—voice input uses the same Google Now backend as all of Google’s other products. The handwriting mode uses the typing suggestions bar to guess at what you’re trying to scrawl across the screen.

The keyboard also supports things like extended and Dvorak layouts, emoji support, auto-correct and keypress sounds (both off by default), and the ability to add multiple languages. Our main knock against it is that the key sizes are a bit small, but on a Chromebook you’ll presumably be using it less often than you would on a tablet.

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Andrew Cunningham

Finally, if you’re using touch to scroll up and down Web pages, the Rockchip SoC isn’t always quick enough to load text and images and scroll smoothly at the same time. Touch, in other words, is still an added feature on a Chromebook and not really something that should make your decision for you all by itself.

All the laptop’s ports are located on its right side toward the front. It includes one micro HDMI port, two USB 2.0 ports, and a microSD card slot. Not the most impressive array of ports (and we could wish for USB Type-C), but Chromebooks are meant to lean on Internet connectivity and cloud storage more than physically attached peripherals. We aren’t inclined to judge it too harshly.

What we are inclined to judge harshly is the keyboard, which recalls the early days of the netbook in all the worst ways. The issue isn’t with the travel, which actually feels pretty good for a laptop this cheap. Nor is it with the layout, which is blessedly free of dumb changes or additions. The keys have a matte texture that feels good under your fingers, no issues there. The problem is the size and spacing of the keys, which are noticeably smaller and more cramped than the keyboards in other, larger Chromebooks.

Asus says that the keys are 97 percent of full size (what "full size" represents in this case isn't clear), but typing on the Flip is always a bit of a claustrophobic experience. It's partly key size and partly key spacing, but it doesn't help matters that the palmrest in a 10.1-inch notebook isn't quite large enough to comfortably rest one's palms upon.

You can get used to pretty much any keyboard, and more casual typists may not notice or care about a cramped keyboard. As we said, travel is actually pretty good, as is most everything else about the keyboard. A slightly larger version of this would feel great, which we suspect is part of the reason why notebooks in this general size and price category aim for an 11.6-inch screen rather than the netbook-y 10.1-inch screen. A larger screen gives you more room in the design for other things, full-size keyboard included.

The trackpad is likewise small (which helps with palm rejection, at least) but we didn’t have any problems with it. It tracked fingers, registered clicks, and handled multi-finger swipes and gestures without any major problems.

The webcam and speakers on laptops like this tend to be pretty perfunctory. That describes the webcam perfectly—its grainy, discolored video is going to be fine for video chatting and not much else. The speakers, mounted on the bottom of the laptop, actually sound pretty good if you put it on a hard, flat surface. There’s not much bass to speak of but they get pretty loud and don’t distort at high volumes.

Listing image by Andrew Cunningham