The Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 is at one of its lowest prices
The Verge Sheena Vasani
Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 deals are back, with three configs starting at $349.99. Nearly 3-year-old laptop, but still a solid budget pick with Gemini AI perks baked in.
Chromebooks rarely make headlines, but a nearly three-year-old model quietly holding its ground against $100 price cuts is worth a second look. The Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 has dropped to some of its best prices yet across three retailers, and the spread of configurations makes it easy to pick based on what you actually need rather than settling for whatever's cheapest.
Amazon has the highest-storage version for $399.99, down about $100, pairing a 12th Gen Intel Core i3-1215U with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage. Walmart undercuts that at $349.99 for a 128GB model that actually ships with a newer 13th Gen Core i3-1315U chip, so you're trading storage for a slightly fresher processor. Best Buy's version, also $399.99, swaps in a 13th Gen Core i5-1335U, which should noticeably outrun both i3 options despite matching the 128GB storage of the Walmart unit.
What makes the CX34 worth the discussion is that it doesn't feel like a bargain-bin machine, even with only 8GB of RAM. ChromeOS handles memory constraints far more gracefully than Windows 11 or macOS, and in testing the laptop stayed responsive with over a dozen apps open alongside background downloads and updates. The 14-inch 1080p anti-glare display and matching 1080p webcam punch above the price point too, and the port lineup — two USB-C, two USB-A, HDMI, and a headphone jack — means you're not scrambling for dongles to hook up an external monitor.
The Chromebook Plus badge adds another layer: access to Gemini plus a free year of Google AI Pro, which bundles Nano Banana, Veo, and 5TB of cloud storage. For a machine hovering around $350 to $400, that's a meaningful amount of software value stacked on top of already-solid hardware.
Elsewhere in the sale roundup, Walmart is knocking $70 off the Igloo Playmate KoolTunes cooler with its detachable Bluetooth speaker, Newegg has Anker's 100W three-port charger down to $47.99 with a promo code, and Roborock's own eBay store is selling a refurbished Q7 M5 Plus robot vacuum for $192 — less than half its original list price, backed by a two-year warranty.
My take
An 8GB RAM Chromebook still doing real work in 2024 says more about ChromeOS's efficiency than about the hardware itself, and it's a good reminder that spec-sheet panic doesn't always translate to real-world sluggishness. The AI freebies bundled into Chromebook Plus are also a smart Trojan horse for Google — get people used to Gemini on a $350 laptop and they'll pay for it everywhere else eventually.
Read more about this at: The Verge
