ASUS' new Chromebook Flip convertible laptop can be yours for about ~$250, not too shabby for a tablet, let alone a laptop. However for this price a few sacrifices must be made, including the use of Chrome OS as it is a Chromebook after all. The hardware is a quad-core, 32-bit ARM chip from Rockchip called the RK3288C which can reach up to 1.8GHz. It also has 4GB of RAM and 16GB of local storage using eMMC flash and a two year subscription to Google drive to give you 100GB of additional storage. The Tech Report were quite enamoured of this little 10.1", 1280×800 IPS touch screen device, it may not be the fastest machine out there but for the price they felt it to be quiet impressive.
"Asus' Chromebook Flip is an all-aluminum convertible PC that runs Google's Chrome OS. Its $240-ish price tag puts it in contention with the budget Windows PCs we usually suggest in our mobile staff picks. We put the Flip to the test to see whether it's a worthy Windows alternative."
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Don’t forget though, Chrome
Don’t forget though, Chrome OS is getting Android apps on many of the devices eventually (hopefully this one too) – making it less of a limited platform.
Don’t forget though, Chrome
Don’t forget though, Chrome OS is getting Android apps on many of the devices eventually (hopefully this one too) – making it less of a limited platform.
Yes now you can enjoy all
Yes now you can enjoy all those terrible mobile apps on a larger screen. Plus all the fun of cash shops on your downtime.
Chromebooks: a $250 paperweight.
I would not call this a
I would not call this a laptop, or even a netbook, it’s a tablet that comes with a keyboard, and it’s a 32 bit ARM SKU, probably an ARM Holdings reference design 32 bit core! Wake me when they get some new Arm holdings reference design A73(at least CPU 6+ cores) based designs with the New Mali/Bifrost GPU micro-architecture! Or they get some AMD custom K12 based designs with an ARMv8A ISA running custom core based APU SKU with custom CPU cores that look more like Zen on the inside but are engineered to run the ARMv8A ISA!
That said, that new ARM Holdings Mail bifrost micro-architecture looks to have a lot of asynchronous-compute ability similar but slightly different from AMD’s GCN based graphics, so I’d expect that any SKU that uses the Mail/Bifrost GPU IP to do great with HSA workloads, even if ARM holdings is only using the Vulkan API/SPIR-V, and not HSAIL, as they are very similar in reach for compute workloads. Vulkan uses the very same SPIR-V IL that OpenCL uses so Vulkan can be considered HSA, just as much as the HSA foundation’s HSAIL, with Vulkan also providing a Graphics API framework/functionality.
This SKU with the Rockchip based SOC looks to be bound for the cutout bin more so than on anyone’s must buy list. But wait for AMD’s K12/Polaris graphics, or any ARM holdings A73(at least 6 cores, better 8)/Mali Bifrost(top end option) designs to actually be worthy of being more like a netbook/laptop SOC. AMD’s K12 custom core will probably make Apple take notice, but Apple has its own in-house ARM design engineers. That AMD K12 will probably make for a fine laptop CPU/APU SKU that runs the ARMv8A ISA and Polaris/newer graphics.
I would not call this a
It’s definitely not in the same class as what I think of as a “laptop”.
Even if it does everything some people would expect from a laptop -(good for them)- it’s still only a chromebook.