ASUS Googlebook 14 reviews: critics love the matte OLED and featherweight build, but Googlebook OS lags

The first reviews of the ASUS Googlebook 14, one of the first laptops to run Google’s new Android-based Googlebook OS, are in, and they split neatly between hardware and software. Reviewers at Pocket-lint, MobileSyrup and The Gadgeteer were impressed by the machine itself but found the operating system still early. In Canada, the laptop went on sale in stores on Oct. 4, according to ASUS Canada’s launch release: $1,799 with an Intel Core Ultra 5 325 processor at the ASUS Store, Amazon, Canada Computers, Costco and Staples, and $1,899 with a Core Ultra 7 355 at the ASUS Store and Best Buy. Both Canadian models have 16 GB of memory and a 512 GB SSD.

ASUS is one of five launch partners for Googlebook, alongside Acer, Dell, HP and Lenovo, iPhone in Canada noted. The 14-inch machine weighs 0.99 kilograms, is as thin as 10.9 millimetres and uses a magnesium-aluminum chassis with a nano-ceramic finish tested to the U.S. MIL-STD-810H durability standard. It has a 3K (2880 x 1800) OLED touchscreen with a 120Hz refresh rate, up to 1,000 nits of peak HDR brightness and Gorilla Glass Victus with a matte anti-glare treatment, plus six speakers, a haptic touchpad and a 70Wh battery rated by ASUS for up to 18 hours of local video playback.

Pocket-lint’s John Kanellakos gave it four out of five, writing that it is “sprinkled with hints of greatness.” He praised the build, the large haptic trackpad and the “absolutely gorgeous” display, and recorded Geekbench 7 CPU scores of 2,519 single-core and 11,050 multi-core. He reported a comfortable full day of use with the screen at 120Hz and 90 per cent brightness. His complaints were that ASUS skipped its Ceraluminum material, that a rear light bar called the Glowbar does little beyond pulsing when Gemini is in use, and that Googlebook OS is “still a work in progress.”

The software is where Kanellakos hedged. Android apps from the Play Store ran natively without hiccups in his testing, and he found the Magic Cue contextual suggestions genuinely useful, but the platform cannot run traditional Windows programs and has few large-screen apps that make use of the Intel chip. He also noted that some enterprise and education management features are not due until the second half of 2027. He called the laptop easy to recommend for web-based workflows, but said its app ecosystem is missing “many of the heavy software hitters” for now.

MobileSyrup’s Jonathan Lamont was blunter in his first thoughts, headlined “Great hardware, meh software.” He liked the textured chassis, the OLED screen and the touchpad, but said every attempt to install the desktop Linux version of Firefox had failed so far and that only the Android version of Photoshop is available. The much-promoted feature that mirrors phone apps onto the laptop “barely functions,” he wrote, with text rendering problems in most third-party apps he tried and noticeable lag. When he asked Gemini about an unfamiliar button, he said it gave an answer that was “very obviously wrong.” MobileSyrup says a full review is coming.

At The Gadgeteer, Vincent Nguyen gave the laptop an Editor’s Choice badge in his first impressions and called the matte OLED “gorgeous,” saying it comes close to the matte display on his MacBook Pro. He said the speakers “sound amazing,” described the haptic touchpad as excellent and liked the HDMI port and charging from either side. His gripes were smaller: he would trade one of the two USB-A ports for a third Thunderbolt port, Google’s Rambler voice typing lost his words when he clicked out of a text field, and the Magic Pointer feature stopped working when he switched the default assistant from Gemini to ChatGPT. He has not yet published battery measurements.

Two of the three reviewers were working with units supplied by ASUS, and none has finished long-term battery testing, so the verdicts are early ones. Eligible buyers in Canada also get 12 months of Google AI Pro with 5 TB of cloud storage. Retailers are running launch offers, according to ASUS and iPhone in Canada: until Oct. 31, Best Buy offers a choice of Pixel Buds 2a or $280 off a Pixel 9a; until Dec. 31, the ASUS Store adds a one-year warranty extension, a backpack and a mouse, Staples gives a $150 gift card, Amazon a $150 promo code, Costco a $165 gift card and Canada Computers a Logitech MX Master 4 mouse.

Sources: Pocket-lint review; MobileSyrup first thoughts; The Gadgeteer first impressions; ASUS Canada launch release (GlobeNewswire); iPhone in Canada.