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Chromebooks have undergone rapid evolution in the past two years or so. High-end models like the Galaxy Chromebook, the Acer Chromebook Spin 13, and the Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630 are competing with Windows ultrabooks in both hardware and price. At the same time, Chrome OS has expanded its functionality with features such as compatibility with Linux applications, better native printing, and improvements in tablet mode.
Asus unveiled the Chromebook Flip C436 earlier this year, and while it’s a great laptop (if you like Chrome OS) with fantastic performance, the insanely high price makes it a tough recommendation.
Design and hardware
The Asus Chromebook C434 was a radical change in the design of the Flip C302 that it replaced, but the jump from the C434 to this new model C436 is not a huge leap. It still borrows heavily from the design of Asus Zenbook laptops, with a lightweight aluminum body and minimal display bezels. True to the name ‘Flip’, you can flip the screen and use the Chromebook like a giant tablet.
Although this is a minor design iteration on the C434, there are some major changes. First, Asus has removed the single USB Type-A port, leaving only two USB Type-C connectors. However, there is still a microSD card slot, as well as a headphone jack – grab that, Galaxy S20. This new model is also thinner (13.76mm compared to the C434’s 15.7mm) and has front speakers.
There are two color options available for the C436: silver and ‘airgel white’. Asus sent me the last option, but only the top is white – the bottom half of the laptop has the default silver color.
The Asus Chromebook Flip C436 is one of the first Chrome OS devices with Intel’s 10th generation Core mobile processors. Models are available with Core i3-10110U, Core i5-10210U, and Core i7-10510U. However, despite the brand, these Comet Lake-U chips are almost identical to the eighth-generation Core CPUs you’ll find in many other Chromebooks.
Keyboard and trackpad
The keyboard on the Chromebook Flip C436 is acceptable. Personally, I’m not a fan of Asus keyboards as they feel a bit more complicated than my Dell XPS 13’s keyboard, but I don’t think most people complain about that. On the plus side, there is still a decent amount of key travel, and the design doesn’t feel tight.
There is a fingerprint sensor in the upper right corner of the keyboard, which can be used to log in to Chrome OS. It is definitely a good feature, although you still need to enter your full password on first boot, just like with Android phones. I’m happy to see that Asus has taken notes from Apple and given the C436 a massive touchpad. It feels great to use, and there’s plenty of room for gestures.
Performance and battery life.
Chrome OS works fine on $ 200 laptops, so perhaps not surprisingly, it is absolutely flies on the Chromebook Flip C436. The laptop goes from a cold boot to the login screen in under five seconds, and I never noticed a slowdown during my usual workload of a dozen Chrome tabs and some Android apps.
However, I have also used many Chromebooks in the $ 400-500 range, and all of them offered performance similar to C436. If you were hoping that Intel’s shiny new 10th generation Core CPUs would take Chrome OS to the next level, I’m sorry to disappoint you. As I mentioned earlier, the Comet Lake-U processors used in the C436 are slightly refined versions of the 14nm chips that Intel has been using in ultrabooks for years. The Core i3 in the base model is still a 2 core / 4 wire CPU.
If you’re interested in benchmarks, the Core i5 Chromebook Flip C436 scored 105 on the web-based 2.0 speedometer test. In Geekbench 4, it received a multi-core rating of 3137 and a single-core rating of 952 (full results here).
The battery life on the C436 is acceptable, but not surprising. Asus claims up to 12 hours per charge, while my experience was closer to 6-7 hours, with my usual combination of more than 10 Chrome tabs and one or two Android apps running at the same time. However, that’s much better than the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook’s four-hour battery life, according to The Verge review. Despite the C436 having the same 10th generation Intel chips as the Galaxy Chromebook, the C436 only has a 1080p LCD screen, far less battery life than the 4K OLED on Samsung’s laptop.
software
If you’ve used Chrome OS before, you’ll feel right at home on the Chromebook Flip C436. The software experience is identical to all other modern Chromebooks, complete with support for the Google Play Store and Linux applications. However, GPU acceleration for Linux apps doesn’t seem to be available (yet), so Linux-based video and game editors won’t work well.
Google says that the C436 will receive system updates until June 2028, making it one of the most compatible Chromebooks to date. I still think a fixed software lifetime on a laptop close to $ 1,000 is ridiculous, but most people probably don’t use the same laptop for the better part of a decade.
Even Minecraft in low settings can’t reach 60FPS without Linux GPU acceleration
The only software bug I noticed in this model is that the scale in Android and Linux apps doesn’t seem perfect. Word processing in Android apps was sometimes fuzzy, but the behavior is inconsistent. Linux generally doesn’t have great high DPI support, so that’s not a problem with Google software, but it resulted in unusually small buttons or occasional fuzzy text in apps like GIMP.
Should you buy it?
Asus Chromebook Flip C436
7 7/ /10
Not until it goes on sale. The Asus Chromebook Flip C436 is arguably one of the fastest Chromebooks ever made, but even if you really like Chrome OS, there is simply no way to justify the current starting price of $ 800. The design and overall experience hardly change from the C436. from the previous generation, which has cost as little as $ 400 in the past. If you don’t mind the 2-in-1 form factor, the Pixelbook Go is $ 150 cheaper than the Flip C434 and offers similar performance.
At this time, I am not entirely sure who is the target market for this laptop. Even for fans of the Chrome operating system, the C436 has very little benefit over any high-end Chromebook released in recent years, except for small additions like the fingerprint scanner.
Buy it if:
- Someone is buying it for you.
- You get it for sale for $ 150 or more from the original MSRP.
Don’t buy it if:
- You already have a mid / high-end Chromebook released in the last 2-4 years.
