Chromebooks are becoming increasingly popular in education, and with sales picking up around the world, a recent report suggested that the overall market for such devices is expected to reach a whopping 17 million units by 2023. Although Chromebooks will still have a long way to go before they can catch up with the shipment numbers of Windows-powered computers, the devices have already created quite a niche for themselves in the education sector over the past few years. While companies like Samsung and Acer were pretty quick to jump on the Chromebook bandwagon several years ago with products like the Series 5 and the AC700, respectively, many other manufacturers have since started to launch computers powered by Google’s web-based operating system.
Taiwan’s ASUS is one of the global tech companies that releases PCs powered both by Microsoft’s Windows and Google’s Chrome, and its brand new Chromebook C301SA is the latest addition to its growing Chromebook lineup. The device has now been listed officially on the company’s global website, giving us a detailed look at its features and hardware specs. It was put up for pre-order on sites like B&H Photo Video last month with an ETA of ‘mid-September’. The range starts from $299 and includes the first-ever Chromebook from a mainstream vendor with 64GB of built-in eMMC storage. While 64GB may not be much for standard Windows laptops (many of which come with up to 1TB of storage), it is still significantly more than the 16GB or 32GB inbuilt storage that can be found on most Chromebooks in the market today. Not to mention that these are SSD drives, offering faster performance.
As for other hardware specs, the device will ship with three different processor options, from Celeron N3060 and N3160 chips on the base versions to a Pentium N3710 on the premium model(s). Display options will range from a standard 1366 x 768 panel to a 1080p screen, but both will be 13.3-inches in size. The rest of the tech specs will be identical, including support for Wi-Fi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0. The devices will also come with 2 USB 3.0 ports, 1 HDMI port and 1 multi-format card-reader each. The Chromebook will weigh just 1.35 KGs including the battery, and ASUS is promising 15 hours of screen-on time. As mentioned already, the Asus C301 Chromebook line starts at $299 for the base version, but the company is yet to give out pricing details regarding all the models.
