Review on 💻 ASUS CM5 Chromebook Flip - 15.6" Full HD Touchscreen NanoEdge Display, AMD Ryzen 3 3250C Processor, 64GB eMMC, 4GB RAM, Backlit Keyboard, Wi-Fi 6, Chrome OS, Aluminum, Mineral Gray (CM5500FDA-DS344T) by Joseph Hill

This is my first Chromebook. Ever since they were first introduced, a part of me has always loved the idea. I was an early adopter of cloud-based office suites like Drive for personal use. When the move to Google Kits started a few years ago, my incentive increased. So when my old word processor laptop finally breathed its symbolic last breath, I decided to go with the Switch. Unfortunately, my first impressions after 2 weeks are not particularly high. I did my due diligence before purchasing. During that time, I kept coming back to how low the baseline performance specs are, only to be comforted by the (sponsored, purchased, and probably fake) tech reviews that Chrome OS doesn't need all that fancy high-RAM bullshit for processor processing power , because . . it's Chrome OS! I knew better, but considering budget constraints, there weren't really viable options for a trusted brand + desired features + desired specs in my price range. Something had to go, and in the end it was the performance features. Out of the box, the device freezes stably when loading basic, elementary things. I'm not trying to run anything remotely intense, and there's still that constant pause that similarly priced (non-virus-laden) Windows machines don't have, let alone anything running Linux (MacOS excluded due to price range). ). This is solely due to the industry standard of cutting consumers down to specs. When memory is low, performance falls below the acceptable threshold faster and devices are replaced much more quickly. Ahh. planned obsolescence. How do you ruin the technological advances that reach the consumer. Unfortunately, this is a relatively minor issue compared to the weird fart brain that is Google developers. Do you know what happens when you try to use the Google Drive app suite on a Google Chromebook running Google ChromeOS? It's clumsy. It's anything but intuitive. It throws you up and tells you to install the other apps in the pack. that you have already installed. And then it forces everything to close. That does not work. You need to force close it, try uninstalling and reinstalling it. And you know what? This isn't the first (and probably won't be the last) time I've come across Google products that claim to be optimized to work with other Google products. optimized for other Google products and sometimes doesn't work at all. in other Google products. Yes, this part of the review probably won't be limited to the Flip CM5, and so the review only gets a 3-star rating, not a 2. Also, I can still use Google Drive in the browser, but that shouldn't be a problem anyway. But shouldn't one assume that Google apps work seamlessly on Google's operating systems (Android and Chrome)? Forgive me for expecting Google products to work well with each other. I should have known better. In the end, I was able to adapt my usage to the limitations of the device. This is good as a fancy trendy word processor with other features that can help develop my loved ones' personal interests (everyday digital art) before I move to a serious device for it in the future. Overall it can get the job done, but not as smoothly as I think it should be able to at its current price point, although a lot - and I suspect most - is on Google's developer side, not ASUS.