ASUS Chromebook Flip CX5: What Real Users Say

$500 for Ryzen 3, 4GB RAM, and 64GB eMMC. What a ripoff. A similarly priced Windows laptop would have Ryzen 3, 8GB RAM, and 128GB real SSD. Not to mention for about $100 more, you can get a Ryzen 5 Windows laptop. Not sure why Chromebook vendors keep shipping very under equipped Chromebooks. At least throw in 8GB ram.

I bought the upgraded version from Costco. It has the AMD Ryzen 5 3500U Processor, 8GB ram and 128GB PCIe NVMe M.2 Solid State Drive. The performance was every bit as bad as reported elsewhere. I was able to do a side by side comparison with the i3 version from Best Buy.

LoL people still calling these things expensive... It can only run websites.. and android apps.. and Linux apps.. and virtual machines.. and have a full desktop UI and have all the previously mentioned open at the same time. I've had the pixel slate for 3 years and I'm definitely getting the cx9 as my main PC. Stop downplaying Chromebooks already. I personally like it better than iPadOS, Windows, and MacOS.

No specific familiarity with that machine, but seems pretty under spec'd for the price. I'm new to Chromebooks, running a Lenovo Flex 5i with i3/8gb/128gb SSD. Paid $270, now can be had around $340. Handles the workload you describe smoothly. I think most people will recommend 8gb RAM for good operation with that workload.

It's £600+ for an i3 in the UK. Not exactly budget.

Best Buy has it for $469.00. This CB has some interesting features: 8GB Ram, SSD (not eMMC), 2x USB-C, HDMI, USB-A, backlit KB, and I think there is a numeric keypad built into the trackpad somehow.

I'm concerned with the severe performance throttling on these zork boards. Performance when plugged into AC power is decent, but when they're running off battery power, performance is really, really bad. There needs to be some major work done on tuning these parameters before I'd consider buying a zork board.

The $500 model having 4GB of RAM is a joke. I got the C302 with the same RAM several years ago for a slightly lower price.

I have escalated the performance issue up to the Google ChromeOS engineering team. They seemed surprised that it was so severe. I hope they can find a fix.

As for the battery you might need to condition or break it in. Use it for a bit trying to keep it between 20-80%, maybe two or three times, after that let it go into a deeper discharge around 5%. Let it fully recharge while it's off and keep it plugged in for a few hours after to trickle anything possible.

Installing Firefox from the app store? So you're also running Android (or maybe Linux) at the same time. Two operating systems on a 4gb machine. Turn off Android (and/or Linux) and just use the chrome browser.

The Spin 713 you found is outdated. The current devices have an 11th gen CPU. The CX5 is 16:9 with a lower resolution. I'm totally satisfied with my 713.

I have the Spin 713 but no experience with the Asus. For me, I've grown addicted to the Spin's 3:2 UHD form factor, which the Asus lacks. Will not buy a laptop in another factor now. The screen is dramatically brighter.

I love it even more two months later. The build quality is still fantastic. I was wary of the pen as I thought I preferred a passive stylus — but it is fantastic, great to handwrite with.

Personally, I love the garaged stylus and will only purchase Chromebooks with this feature. Just a hassle if you have to travel without it garaged. Even if you don't use the stylus often, it is great for those times that arise when you need it for a quick signature or something.

So far, not too warm. Just slightly. My wife just got the Galaxy Chromebook and that was uncomfortably warm/hot.

I guess if you want that much power. However, for the price, I don't think you can match this computer. ChromeUnboxed just did a review wherein Robby called it his new favorite.

ChromeOS is based on Linux. Google 'Linux ate my RAM'. Unused RAM does not make sense.

For hardly any more money you get a 10th gen i5 from Acer so have a nice day.

Great deal and exactly what I was looking for to make the jump into chromebook.

8GB RAM is the bare minimum for almost anything these days unless you truly are living in a single tab and doing almost nothing.

4GB RAM and eMMC? Well....

I'm in Canada and last year bought the Acer Chromebook Spin 713. The screen is fabulous, the build is great, the aspect ratio a real treat. The i3 is more than powerful enough for writing, reading, web surfing and photo and video editing.

I got the CX5 today. My only gripes are a) just how big it is, and b) I actually prefer not having a numpad on a laptop. It is a $300 difference, so they are in pretty distinct price ranges now.

Compared with the Asus mentioned above I'd take the Acer every time.

The i3 is working out great. Speedometer 2 is 125-128, Octane 2 is 53000 (but it varies). I previously purchased the Pixelbook Go i3, then upgraded to i7 and didn't see much difference for my usage.

So basically either way I should be satisfied, I take it — thanks!

I have the base model i3 with 8GB of ram and I consistently score 52000-54000 on Octane, unplugged and on battery.

Disable Android. It'll suck up most of your RAM even if you're not using a single app.

I have the C55, which looks like is almost the same model. It's two months old. My battery health is 98%, so reasonable. The RAM though, I have 3.5 GB out of 16 GB free. I don't know why. It's been asleep for a few days and has a bunch of apps open. So yeah maybe this line is greedy on RAM.

RAM usage numbers are meaningless. The OS grabs it all and the bits not running apps are treated as cache.

I have the C536 and tried to follow the instructions only to get 'insufficient CPU / RAM' which kind of makes sense on an i3 processor, but only if the CX5 actually has a core i5 processor, and maybe more RAM.

The AMD Ryzen version has significantly lower performance than the Intel i3 version. They are identical except for the CPU.

I have an Asus 3500u based 2-in-1 running Pop_OS — that throttling doesn't exist on the Linux side. Maybe it's specific to the 3500c. I booted zork through brunch from an external drive just to try it out, didn't seem sluggish but that was a while ago.

I guess at the time I was assuming the workload would be light enough. It's been a while since I used a machine with hardware like this... also may have been fooled by the nice display and overall outer packaging of the thing.

Have you looked at the ASUS CX5400? It has a 14-inch screen and seems to hit all the marks: touchscreen FHD NanoEdge display, Intel Core i3-1110G4, 128GB SSD, 8GB RAM, stylus, backlit keyboard, Wi-Fi 6.

Why did you go with the i3? I went with the i5 on my Pixelbook Go because I was worried about performance. How's it working?

I was looking at either this, Flex 5 (i3/8gb), or the Spin 713. Do you think the garaged stylus is good and worth the extra price?

Are you still happy with it 2 months later? How is the 16:9 ratio when in tablet mode? And the pen — is it good enough to draw/handwrite with?

Running Chrome OS and Android, sucking most of your 4GB just for that. Then 15+ tabs and probably some Android apps. You either want a much beefier Chromebook, or just stick to Windows.

I bought the cx5 after watching a review on Chrome Unboxed. Big mistake. Battery power is abysmal, battery discharges while off. The screen glitches. There have been some improvements with each update, but I still would not consider this a good buy.

Expensive for what it has to offer in spec. meh.