Right after HP entered the Indian market with new Chromebooks, Asus also launched a series of Chromebooks in India at very competitive prices. Asus Chromebook C223 is one of the entry-level Chromebooks in this lineup, and it starts at just Rs. 17,999. The Chromebook is aimed at students who want to attend online classes, browse the web, and more. Now, I have been using this laptop as my daily driver for two weeks and will take you through my extensive review of the Asus Chromebook C223. We will also see whether it can hold up against a Windows laptop in a similar price range. On that note, let’s go through the Asus Chromebook C223 review in detail.

We have enlisted all the segments that we have covered for the Asus Chromebook C223 review. You can expand the table below and jump to a particular section to quickly read about the performance, battery life, and other details.

  • Asus Chromebook C223 Specifications
  • Design and Build
  • Display
  • Performance
  • App Ecosystem
  • Keyboard and Trackpad
  • Ports and Connectivity
  • Audio & Webcam Quality
  • Battery and Charging
  • Asus Chromebook C223: Pros & Cons

Asus Chromebook C223: Specifications

Before I share my opinions on this laptop, let’s take a quick look at the specifications of the Asus Chromebook C223:

Design and Build

Beginning with the design of the Asus Chromebook C223, the laptop is lightweight, sturdy, and decently built. As it weighs only 1kg, the Chromebook is highly portable, and you can use it anywhere you want. It also gives an impression of a notebook due to its smaller footprint. It scales to 28.60 x 19.90 cm, and the display size is 11.6-inch, which makes it a great proposition for students and the elderly, who are looking for a compact and easy-to-use laptop.

Coming to the build quality, Chromebook C223 has a complete plastic body, but it does not feel cheap. The Chromebook feels sturdy to use, and the ports are laid out properly. For Rs. 17,999, you can’t expect premium material and top-notch craftsmanship, but Asus Chromebook 223 does not disappoint with its plastic body. Yeah, the bezels around the screen are simply massive for a laptop releasing in 2021, and the screen-to-body ratio is merely 74%. But, it’s no big deal.

The Asus Chromebook C223 comes with an 11.6-inch anti-glare backlit LED panel and has a resolution of 1366 x 768 (HD). It has a 16:9 aspect ratio, which is in line with the traditional laptop form-factor. And as I have mentioned before, this Chromebook does not have a touchscreen panel.

Talking about the display quality, I think it’s decent at best. The display has this slight bluish tinge that makes all the content on the screen look cooler. By the way, you can turn on Night Light to change the color tone and make the screen warmer. That means we don’t suggest you do any color-sensitive work on this display.

Coming to the most important part, and that is, how well does the Asus Chromebook C223 fare in the performance department? This Chromebook packs a Dual-core Intel Celeron N3350 processor clocked at 1.1GHz with Turbo Boost up to 2.4GHz. It is coupled with 4GB RAM and 32GB built-in storage onboard.

In my experience, the Asus Chromebook C223 performed superbly well – better than my initial expectations. I played YouTube videos at 1080p with Twitter, Play Store, and Telegram (Android app), all active at the same time. I even had 4-5 other tabs open in Chrome in the background at times, and the device did not stutter or slow down. I used Chrome OS gestures to move between apps and tabs, and the laptop smoothly handled all my actions with ease.

Apart from that, an interesting result came up when I compared the N3350-powered Chromebook against my 6th-Gen i5-based Windows laptop in the browser benchmark test. I ran the Speedometer 2.0 test on the Asus Chromebook C223, and it scored 24.1, whereas the Windows laptop scored 31.3. Yeah, the Windows laptop did slightly better, but it’s a marginal difference of 7 points. It shows that even with an aging Celeron CPU under the hood, Chrome OS works as well as an i5-running Windows laptop.

For the record, during my mild to heavy usage, the CPU temperature hovered around 39-degree Celcius to 42-degree Celcius. And that’s perfectly fine. Moreover, around 1GB to 1.5GB of RAM was freely available out of 4GB at most times. It goes without saying that this level of performance and efficiency is possible only because of Chrome OS, which is pretty lightweight and less demanding of resources.

While the performance is great, I still think Asus could have gone with a newer Celeron N4000 processor instead of the dated N3350 chip, which is past its prime. Asus has been using the same chipset on entry-level Chromebooks since 2018, while competitors like HP and Acer have moved to newer and better processors. It’s time for Asus to up its game if it wants to become a dominant player in the Indian Chromebook market.

As many users (especially students) will be buying a Chromebook in India for the first time, you should know what kind of apps you can run on your laptop.

Surprisingly, the keyboard and trackpad on the Asus Chromebook C223 are pretty good for the price. I personally use the HP x360 Chromebook, which has a top-notch keyboard, and switching to the Asus Chromebook C223 did feel like an instant downgrade.

As mentioned in the specs sheet above, you get a USB Type-A port and two USB Type-C ports onboard. The best part is that all ports are USB 3.2 Gen 1 type, meaning they offer faster data transfer speeds and other I/O improvements. Particularly, both the Type-C ports (one on the right and the other on the left) support display out, power delivery, and data transfer. You can use either Type-C port to charge your Chromebook, transfer data, or connect to an external monitor.

On the audio front, the Asus Chromebook C223 again exceeds expectations. It has got a loud sound output and the built-in stereo speakers produce a good resounding effect. I played many tracks and videos, both on Spotify and YouTube, and the sound was loud and clear. It was unexpected to see such decent sound quality from a small machine.

Battery and Charging

Finally, coming to battery life, which is a Chromebook’s strong suit. Asus claims that the Chromebook C223 can offer up to 10 hours of battery life with its 4,800mAh Li-ion battery. In my testing, I got around 7-8 hours of battery life with mixed usage. And while watching Full-HD videos and operating a bunch of Chrome tabs and Android apps, I got around 7 hours of battery life. Now, that is far better than what budget Windows laptops offer.

To sum everything up we have talked about the Asus Chromebook C223 above, here are the pros and cons of this machine:

  • Portable and lightweight
  • Sturdy build quality
  • Excellent performance
  • Great battery life
  • Extremely fast charging
  • microSD card slot is available
  • Bang for the buck

Cons

Asus Chromebook C223 Review: Should You Buy It?

If you are a student and want to buy a portable laptop for your studies, online classes, and browsing the Internet, then Asus Chromebook C223 is a fantastic and affordable choice. It offers great performance and battery life at half the price of a Windows laptop, and I have no reservations about recommending the Asus Chromebook C223. However, do keep in mind that you won’t get access to many full-fledged apps and will need to work inside a browser.