Like the mediocre quality of the display, the touchpad is also rather middling. I’ve used worse, but its plastic surface isn’t as smooth and responsive as glass ones. The click mechanism is loud and requires too much effort to press. It's also loose, so you can depress the touchpad without registering a click. All of this is common in cheap laptops, and over time, it’s something I think I could get used to. But when you jump back to something more premium, you’ll notice a huge difference. The keyboard isn’t quite as troublesome, but the keys do feel squishier than I like. I don't mind the grippy texture on the keycaps.

There’s a solid selection of ports, including HDMI 1.4, USB-A 3.2, USB-C 3.2, a USB-C port for charging, and a headphone jack. It’s well rounded, but there’s a problem: They’re all on one side. You’ll only find a Kensington lock slot on the right side of the device. Unfortunately, that means you’ll only be able to charge the laptop from the left side.

Just Enough Power

There are two versions of the Asus Chromebook CX14 available right now. My review unit was the more expensive configuration, which comes with more of everything—a faster CPU, twice as much RAM (8 GB), and twice as much storage (128 GB). The processor is the Core 3 Series 1, otherwise known as the Intel Core 3 N355. It’s an interesting chip, using only eight efficiency cores and no performance cores, compared to the conventional dual-core setup of the Celeron chips.

Performance isn’t anything to write home about, though it was 38 percent faster in the Speedometer 3.1 benchmark than the Celeron-based Asus Chromebook CX15 I tested last month. That means web applica...