Closer Look
Looking at the Chromebook from the front reveals a beautiful silver and black color scheme with a full-sized keyboard. The Asus C200 sports a LED backlit glossy screen at 1366×768, which differs slightly from the C300 with its a non-glossy screen of the same resolution. Also seen is the 720p front facing camera and mic.
The full-sized keyboard is nicely spaced out and is a joy to type with due to a subtle tactile feel. Every key, with the exception of the arrow keys, is of adequate size, which is surprising considering the C200’s small size. At the top is a myriad of media keys placed where the function keys typically go on a Window’s mobile device. Included are handy buttons such as brightness and sound adjustment, back and forward buttons, and a refresh key.The next great feature we see is the C200’s massive touchpad for mouse control. The two touch technology allows for easy scrolling, swiping, and mouse maneuvering, regardless of whether you are using the C200 laying down or on a table. My main concern with the touchpad is how stiff it is to press down, because it requires a decent amount of pressure to use. The large touchpad allows me to move the cursor from one side of the screen to the other without removing my finger.
To the left of the C200, we see a nice variety of connections. Going from left to right we have the 19 Volt power connector, a full sized HDMI, a USB 3.0, SD card slot, and a 2-in-1 headphone and mic jack. At this angle, one can also see one of the best features of the C200: its thinness. At just .8” in thickness, the C200 still manages to remain rigid.
Moving on, on the right of the C200 we have a Kensington lock and a USB 2.0. I feel more USB ports could have been added in this area for users who prefer to use many peripherals.
The underside of the C200 features the hidden speakers. Surprisingly, the C200 is capable of delivering audio at a high volume, although the quality is questionable. Due to the down facing speakers, audio sounds a lot better when the C200 is on a table since it reflects from the surface. When being used on a lap, the audio tends to distort.
Taking off the back cover completely, we get to see the C200’s guts and the technology that makes it so small. Some people may realize that there is absolutely no moving parts, not even a fan! Utilizing Intel’s Bay Trail chipset, Asus was able to deliver a fan-less, long battery life laptop. With normal use, the C200 barely gets warm to the touch on the underside. With the small size does come some setbacks, such as no hard drive. Instead you get 16GB of flash along with Google’s cloud services which may require a subscription in the future. For regular web browsing or light gaming, the included 2GB of RAM is more than enough, just don’t expect super-fast performance when dealing with heavy workloads which ultimately defeats the purpose of the web based Operating System. On the bright side, the C200 boots up in mere seconds.
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