While the ASUS C200 Chromebook is now up for pre-order on Amazon and scheduled for a shipment date of June 10th, the ASUS C300 Chromebook has yet to be given any official launch dates. The C200 Chromebook and its larger sibling are both powered by Intel Bay Trail processors and both have pretty similar specs. Both devices have 2GB of RAM and come with a 16GB internal SSD. Both have Wifi and Bluetooth 4.0, and both Chromebooks have two USB ports, one 2.0 and one 3.0. From pretty much every angle, both devices are the same, Except the 13-inch model is said to come in a tad bit of a higher end model as well, that ups the SSD storage to 32GB and comes with 4GB of RAM instead of 2GB.
For right now there isn’t a confirmation on that, nor is there any confirmation on the exact pricing, although at least a couple websites have the 13-inch ASUS C300 listed up for pre-sale. Both Excalibur PC and Promevo have the ASUS C300 listed for pre-orders on their website, but both sites also seem to be listing different versions of the laptop. While Excalibur PC has the C300 listed for $249 on sale from the original list price of $299, Promevo has the C300 listed for a higher price of $329, but the model they have listed also comes with the higher end specs we just mentioned. That includes 4GB of RAM. 32GB of SSD storage space, and interestingly enough it also states that the units would start shipping by the end of May. The thing to pay attention to though is that they also mention that is an estimated date. So at this point in time it looks possible that both the C200 and the C300(both variants)Chromebooks could potentially ship by the same date. For now though take this with a tiny grain of salt until it’s confirmed.
Promevo has spent time with the ASUS C300 which is where they may have gathered their information about the 4GB RAM version of the device. They give key impressions of how certain things work, like the audio, stating that the speakers were surprisingly loud. They also made notes of the battery life for the Chromebook, and while the C200 is listed as being able to provide 10 hours of battery life, the C300 model that Promevo had tested was said to last them just shy of 5 hours. That’s less than half of what we would have expected, but battery life is subject to individual use as well so if you’re picking one of these up your own results could vary. Check out the video below to see Promevos hands on time.
http://youtu.be/m28jOITC-w4