I spent some time working from my parked car while waiting at tennis, and the ASUS Googlebook 14’s display quickly became the part of the experience I appreciated most. There was plenty of daylight coming through the windows. I could still read, move between windows and see what I was doing comfortably.
I already liked the matte screen in my first impressions. ASUS uses Corning Gorilla Matte anti-glare glass, and the finish deserves a follow-up of its own in real-world use. A bright car cabin is a useful place to find out whether a laptop’s screen works for the way I actually use it.
Price: $1,299.00 at Best Buy for the 16GB/512GB model. Where to buy: Best Buy. Check the listing for current availability.
Excuse the phone shots! I took these on my Fold8 while waiting at tennis, not during a professional production shoot. They are resized and watermarked, but unretouched, with no color or exposure adjustments.
With GADGETEER open, the black text on its white page remained readable. I could also distinguish the different colored app icons along the bottom of the screen. That helps when I’m browsing and moving around the desktop, especially with light coming in from several directions.
Netflix looked really good, too. The warm colors in the movie scenes appeared bright and saturated. I opened GADGETEER beside the movie, so I had a white webpage, text and photos alongside a much darker image. I could read the article and still make out the scene next to it. That mix gave me a good sense of how usable the display was for both work and entertainment in that setting.
You can see reflections in the photos. At some angles, daylight spreads a pale haze across the panel, particularly over the darker movie scenes. I wouldn’t call it glare-free. What impressed me was that the screen remained useful with that reflected light visible.
The keyboard and trackpad have also been good, and the Googlebook feels zippy with my working apps open. The display is still the strongest part of the experience for me so far.
There is a connectivity caveat. After connecting to my phone’s hotspot earlier in the day, the Googlebook later repeatedly failed to reconnect. I don’t yet know the cause, and the connection failures have been disrupting my work.
Price: $1,299.00 at Best Buy for the 16GB/512GB model. Where to buy: Best Buy. Check the listing for current availability.
That problem needs resolving. My impression of the screen remains positive: for reading a webpage, keeping a couple of windows in view or watching something while I wait, the matte display has been a real highlight.
