The first in-depth review of the ASUS Chromebook C300 has gone online, and its conclusion is largely positive.
Promevo, the Google certified reseller who previously gave the world an advance peek at the C200, went hands-on with the education variant of the 13.3-inch Chromebook to judge its overall performance, build and battery life.
“The …long battery life, sophisticated design, and functionality is sure to make it a strong option in the Chromebook marketplace.”
The C300 is one of two Chromebooks from the Taiwanese computing giant, both of which are based on an Intel Bay Trail mobile chipset. Bay Trail offers comparable performance to the Haswell processors found in other Chrome OS notebooks, but with better energy efficiency and a design that allows it to work without a fan.
Under stress the device posted temperatures that were around 16˚F higher (reaching 102˚F) than the same heat readings for the ASUS C200 Chromebook.
Elsewhere, the retailer recorded the following stats:
- Average boot time of 7.74 seconds
- Octane benchmark score of 7,281
- No dropped frames during 720p YouTube video playback
The Octane result puts this device on par with the 11.6-inch C200, which notched an Octane score of 7,387 in previous tests. Stacked against the Haswell Celeron-based Toshiba Chromebook 13, which tops 10,400+, it sounds less tempting.
Raw numbers count for less than actual experience, and here the difference between CPUs will be largely imperceptible.
Buying The C300
Promevo is selling both the consumer version of the C300 (not reviewed), which runs at 2.1GHz and features 2GB of DDR3L RAM and a 16GB SSD, and the education variant (which is reviewed). The latter device packs in double the memory and storage at 4GB and 32GB respectively.
The company say Joe Public will be able to buy the EDU model for $329 from later this month.