ASUS ExpertBook CX54 Chromebook Plus: the new King of Chromebooks?

Out of nowhere, ASUS has announced and soft-launched a new Chromebook Plus model that is unequivocally the best device in this new class of Chromebooks. Well, in the group of branded Chromebook Plus models, I mean. If we add in all the certified Chromebook Plus models, we have to include the current King of Chromebooks: the HP Dragonfly Pro. But there’s a chance this new ExpertBook by ASUS could unseat HP’s staggeringly-good Chromebook.

A clean, thin, metal aesthetic

What is immediately striking about his new ASUS ExpertBook CX54 Chromebook Plus is the chassis. I was commenting just the other day that I wish ASUS would get back to the look and feel of devices like the CX5400 from a few years back, and it’s almost as if my wish has been granted with this new ExpertBook CX54. Just look at this thing!

At just 1.67cm (16.7mm) thick and only 2.84 lbs, the bottom portion of this Chromebook is the thickness of an HDMI port (which it has, thank you very much) and little more. The powdered aluminum looks amazing, the lines are gorgeous, the screen bezels are tiny, and the overall look is simply top-shelf. I’ve been drooling over this laptop all morning, and I’m just staggered by how great it looks.

My only initial hesitation is the resemblance it has to the CX9 from a couple years ago. That device was also packed to the gills with specs and built incredibly well, but it lacked that certain something that makes great Chromebooks feel great. The HP Dragonfly Pro has that quality in spades, and I really hope this new ExpertBook doesn’t feel detached and overly industrial in use, because on the screen right now it is so pretty.

Other standout features

The good stuff doesn’t stop on the surface, though. We’ll start from the top with the 8MP camera that will get all the Chromebook Plus treatment and even comes with what ASUS claims is “the largest light-gathering sensitive pixel area among current Chromebooks.” That’s a low bar to clear, sure, but with Google’s temporal noise reduction in Chromebook Plus models, this hardware could really shine to make for a fantastic webcam.

Then there’s the screen. It looks like it will come in both touch and non-touch and should ship at 14-inches, 16:10 QHD (2560×1600) and hit a whopping 500 nits of brightness. On the spec sheet for the non-US site, pen support is here as well, so we’ll have to wait and see which models have that and which ones don’t. ASUS also claims an 89% screen-to-body ratio with anti-glare and oleophobic coating to ward off glare and fingerprints. Whether the touchscreen variant will have these additions is unclear at the moment.

The keyboard deck is host to a full-sized, backlit keyboard with 1.4mm of travel and the trackpad underneath it looks massive. Seriously, this thing looks like it belongs on a 15 or 16-inch model. And I’m all for it! Hopefully it is glass and well made since there’s no mention of a haptic trackpad on this device. Additionally, to the right of the trackpad is a fingerprint scanner than I’m hoping is available on all versions.

The we have to talk about the ports! For a device this thin, I’m shocked at the port selection. While I don’t totally mind HP’s move towards simplicity in the Dragonfly Pro with their 4 USB Type-C 4.0 ports, I love a Chromebook with all the I/O needed to get stuff done right out of the box without a docking station. And the ASUS ExpertBook CX54 Chromebook Plus absolutely delivers with 2x USB 3.2 Type-A, 2x Thunderbolt™ 4 USB Type-C, a 3.5mm headphone/mic jack, full-sized HDMI 2.1 port, and Micro SD card reader. That’s a lot of connectivity options on a sleek, light device!

Intel Core Ultra inside

This is also the first Chromebook announced with the newly-branded Intel Core Ultra processors. ASUS says it will come with “up to” the Core Ultra 7, but the spec sheet for now only shows the Core Ultra 5 125U as the processor. The U-series of the latest Core Ultra chips come in 4 versions – 2 Core Ultra 5’s and 2 Core Ultra 7’s – so it would make sense for a version with each to eventually become available.

In Chromebooks, these new processors are obviously untested, but like we’ve seen with Intel’s past processor upgrades, you can expect a bit more performance versus the current 13th-gen Core i5/i7 and likely a nice boost in battery life. These U-series chips are set to get the now-standard Xe GPU, with the improved Intel ARC GPU reserved for the bigger H-series variants; and I think for Chromebooks that’s OK. While we’d all love to try Steam gaming on a device with a bit more oomph under the hood, I just don’t think that’s the real aim of this sort of device. For Chromebook tasks, these processors and Intel’s Xe graphics should be great.

Paired with up to 16GB of LPDDR5x 6400 MHz RAM and up to a 512GB M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSD, there’s no doubt this Chromebook will be the fastest, most powerful device available when it launches in 2024. For now, however, we don’t know exactly when that will be or how much it will cost. I’d wager we’ll see a Q1 release and likely a pretty high price tag. $999 and up would be my guess, and if there’s a config that maybe has 8GB of RAM, 256GB of storage, and the lowest Intel Core Ultra 5 chip inside, maybe that’s the one that hits consumer channels and stays near the one thousand dollar mark. We hope to know more soon, but this thing sure looks like a beast, and we can’t wait to get our hands on it.