Gadgetory

this video is brought to you by Intel if you want to be entered to win a new Asus Taichi two and one just tweet what inspires you about PAX East with the hashtag Intel inspired by April 18th hey guys this is Austin and today here's the review of the new asus chromebox is this little $180 computer worth it the first thing you'll notice is just how small the chrome box is measuring in at just under five inches or twelve centimeters wide it's downright tiny for a complete desktop and there's even an included vase amount if you want to hide the chrome box behind your monitor it's nothing too fancy material-wise just some somewhat thin plastic for considering the price I'm totally fine with a safe little black box you've also got plenty of ports with a pair of USB 3.0 up front and an SD card reader along the side in addition to a couple more USB ports around back you also have both HDMI and DisplayPort to connect your monitor flip it over and you'll find a small event for air flow which thankfully isn't a major issue as the chromebox stays very quiet even when working hard the stock configuration comes with a single two byte laptop Dem however upgrading it with another two gigabytes is a great idea that should only cost you twenty dollars or so inside you'll find pretty modest specs with a dual core Intel Haswell based Celeron processor that two gigabytes of RAM and a 16 gigabyte SSD since you're basically just running a web browser this is actually a good amount of performance as I never felt like I was waiting around for the chrome box to catch up the 2d the bytes of memory is probably the biggest weak point and even that's not too bad I was able to consistently keep around 10 tabs open and still have things being nice and responsive one welcome addition is the built-in dual band Wi-Fi which was consistently able to keep a strong signal on my network which is definitely important for a computer that's almost entirely reliant on the Internet there are a few offline apps such as Google Drive and games like Angry Birds but for the most part you need to be connected all the time speaking of games while the chromebox tablet isn't meant to be a gaming PC you do have a few options Bastion is able to run inside the browser decently although frame rate is definitely a little choppy where Angry Birds will run perfectly fine inside Chrome as someone who hasn't used chrome OS since the cr-48 it has come a long way so if you guys aren't familiar Chrome OS is essentially an alternative to Windows there really is pretty much entirely built around the Chrome browser there's a traditional desktop and taskbar and even a quick way to arrange your open windows which is very similar to Windows 7 what you won't be able to do is install your normal programs like Word or Photoshop which depending on your needs could either be no problem or a complete deal-breaker considering just how much time most of us spend in the browser it actually works pretty well and one upside to this is that since you never install typical programs viruses and malware are essentially not an issue if you're already using Chrome all your preferences and bookmarks will pop up and you'll have an entirely set up new computer in just a few minutes once you're up and running it's basically like using Chrome on any other computer watching YouTube even an HD is no problem in sites like twitch and Hulu work right out of the box as well as streaming music services such as Spotify and Pandora you'll find flash and html5 support which covers the vast majority of content on the web however you are missing Java and Silverlight it's also possible to install Linux if Chrome OS isn't your thing and you want an awesome little media PC for one or $80 I think Asus nailed it with the chrome box a lot of people live in the browser and if you do Chrome OS just make sense so what do you guys think is the chrome box worth it let me know in the comments below anyway thank you guys so much for watching and I will catch you in the next one