The laptop’s sizeable 383 x 255mm footprint leaves plenty of room for the keyboard, and the keys are large and well spaced. As you’d hope for on a laptop at this price, there’s no flex in the keyboard tray, and there’s enough travel and feedback to the keys to make accurate typing easy. Even better, every key is backlit, so typing in the dark is easy. The one disappointment is the spacebar, which feels very spongy compared to the other keys.

Asus has gone all out on the touchpad, and the result is generally excellent. Its smooth surface allows for accurate positioning of the pointer, and the definite click of the buttons meant that my presses never failed to register. In addition, the pointer also stayed perfectly still when clicking with the touchpad buttons, rather than wobbling about infuriatingly as I’ve seen on some other laptops.The touchpad has a number of gestures, which I was able to use with varying degrees of success. Two-finger scrolling works fine both vertically and horizontally; I found the Edge browser provided by far the smoothest multi-directional scrolling.

Asus ZenBook Pro UX501VW 9Pinch-to-zoom is also useful, if rather sensitive, and a handful of three-finger gestures are included to switch between apps, show the desktop and bring up the Task View. I found switching to the correct app with a three-finger swipe left or right was almost impossible, but swiping up with three fingers to open the Task View was much easier.

I’m a fan of Asus’ Mobile Control app, which lets you govern the laptop via your phone over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth – Bluetooth being particularly useful if you want to use your phone as a remote control for a presentation and don’t want to be reliant on someone else’s Wi-Fi network.The UX501VW’s screen is exceptional. I’m only just becoming acquainted with seeing 4K screens on desktop PC monitors, and to have one on a 15in laptop is something else entirely.

Having this many pixels crammed into such a small area makes for a pixel density of 282ppi, and all text and vector graphics are super-sharp. I compared the Asus laptop side by side with a Dell laptop featuring a 13in 1,920 x 1,080 display (169ppi), and the difference in sharpness was obvious. To put this into context, the Asus screen has 60% more pixels than the 15in MacBook Pro, with its 2,880 x 1,800 Retina display.

Windows is far better at scaling than it used to be, which is fortunate since here you'll need to jack up the display scaling to 250% to make icons and text a reasonable size.The main problem with such high ppi screens is that they make non-optimised applications look terrible. Text often appears blurry and smeary and, in the case of LibreOffice, icons are comically blown-up and blocky. Web browsers work fine, however, and Windows application support for ultra-high resolutions is improving all the time.

The IPS display has a reflective surface, which is good for contrast at the expense of vulnerability to reflections from overhead light sources. Our test photos looked great, with vibrant colours and plenty of detail in light and dark areas.However, the results from our colorimeter tests didn’t quite live up to Asus’ claims. The company claims the display can show 100% of the sRGB colour gamut, but our equipment measured only 93%. This is still an excellent result for a laptop, if not quite as colour-perfect as I’ve seen from the best desktop displays. Viewing angles are superb, though, so you won’t have to fiddle about with the screen tilt to avoid colour shift.

These days, it's essential for students to find a good laptop for school that won't break the budget. Starting at just $189, the 11.6-inch CTL J4 Plus Chromebook for Education sells at a welcome price for cash-strapped pupils. Loaded with Google's easy-to-use Chrome OS, it's a simple, no-nonsense system that'll help you get through a lesson or paper, and with its surprisingly colorful display, this laptop also offers a treat for your eyes. Unfortunately, the superlatives end there, because with its anemic Rockchip CPU and lackluster battery life, the CTL J4 Plus Chromebook just doesn't offer the same value as some similarly priced competition.

• Dell Y6142 Battery
• Dell 9X472A00 Battery
• Dell UG679 Battery
• Dell 3R305 Battery
• Dell C1295 Battery
• Dell 312-0455 Battery
• Dell U4873 Battery
• Dell 312-0429 Battery
• Dell WW116 Battery
• Dell KD476 Battery
• Dell 312-0416 Battery
• Dell 451-10298 Battery
• Dell PC764 Battery
• Dell JKVC5 Battery

When it comes to sub-$200 laptops, I'm not looking for wows, just solid build-quality. And aside from a little flex in its lid, the J4 Plus delivers. Besides, you can't ever really go wrong with basic black. On the laptop's lid, there's a subtle crisscross pattern that gives the system a little texture, and on the inside, there's a black, brushed-aluminum deck that provides a cool place to rest your wrists.

CTL J4 Plus Chromebook ChasisAt 11.46 x 8 x 0.76-inches, the J4 Plus is around the same size as other 11-inch notebooks, including the Lenovo 100S Chromebook (11.81 x 8.23 x 0.78-inches and 2.52 pounds), HP Chromebook 11 (11.7 x 7.6 x 0.7 inches and 2.2 pounds) and Acer Aspire Cloudbook 11 (11.5 x 7.95 x 0.70-inches and 2.41 pounds). However, weighing 2.46 pounds, the J4 Plus is a quarter of a pound heavier than HP's 2.2-pound Chromebook 11.

Even though there's not a ton of room to work with, the J4 Plus features a pretty spacious keyboard. The problem is that with this laptop's short 1.2mm of key travel, I often bottomed out when typing. So while I was still able to hit my typical typing pace of 75 words per minute, my fingers felt a little abused after long typing sessions.

CTL J4 Plus Chromebook KeyboardThe 3.8 x 2.1-inch one-piece touchpad features a matte plastic surface, and with a thin strip of polished chrome running around its perimeter, the touchpad is the flashiest component on the notebook. Both left and right clicks registered quickly and accurately, as did multitouch gestures, such as two-finger scrolling.

The best thing about the J4 Plus is its screen. While this display is nowhere near as good as that of a typical ultraportable, it is a bit brighter and more colorful than the panels on comparable systems. When I watched the trailer for Rogue One, the 11.6-inch, 1366 x 768 display did justice to the brilliant crimson bolts shot from the lumbering AT-ATs, as well as the dirty, orange jumpsuits of the Rebel pilots.

CTL J4 Plus Chromebook DisplayThe J4 Plus' display put out 256 nits of brightness, which is better than Lenovo's 100S Chromebook (244 nits) and Acer's Cloudbook 11 (250 nits), but slightly behind HP's Chromebook 11 (267 nits).The J4's display also showed off a wider range of colors, as it covered 74 percent of the sRGB spectrum. The HP Chromebook 11, Lenovo 100S Chromebook and Acer Cloudbook 11 were all more limited, at 61 percent or lower.Lastly, the J4 Plus claimed an advantage in color accuracy, too. It earned a Delta-E rating of 0.4, which is very close to a perfect 0. The closest competitor was the Acer Cloudbook 11 (3.9).

I generally try to refrain from describing laptop speakers as being tinny unless that quality really hits home. And in the case of the J4 Plus, it does. It's actually kind of sad, because the J4 Plus' speakers pump out a ton of volume, but when everything sounds shallow and metallic, it's pretty hard to like what you're hearing. When I listened to Ronald Jenkees' "Stay Crunchy," his whirlwind of synth guitar riffs sounded like they were being played through a bullhorn.

• Dell NM631 Battery
• Dell PT434 Battery
• DELL T1G6P Battery
• Dell 2XRG7 Battery
• Dell 312-1242 Battery
• Dell M5Y0X Battery
• Dell T54FJ Battery
• Dell U011C Battery
• Dell U164P Battery
• Dell WU946 Battery
• Dell T117C Battery
• Dell 312-0273 Battery
• Dell G1947 Battery
• Dell 0N996P Battery
• Dell 50TKN Battery

The J4 Plus, like most Chromebooks, doesn't push out much heat, and it easily stayed below our 95-degree-Fahrenheit comfort threshold on our heat test (15 minutes of streaming HD video). The hottest spot was the on bottom, at 92 degrees, while the top remained even cooler, at 87 degrees between the G and H keys, and 79.5 degrees on the touchpad.

CTL J4 Plus Chromebook Webcam SelfiePorts on the J4 Plus are pretty spartan: It's limited to two USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, a headphone/mic jack and a microSD card reader. The laptop's webcam takes some pretty sparse images. Even in our well-lit office, a selfie I took was so dark it turned my navy-blue shirt black.

While most laptops rely on processors made by Intel or AMD, the J4 Plus features a 1.8-GHz quad-core Rockchip CPU instead. The laptop was perfectly usable, but I noticed some lag when surfing the web or using Chrome apps.The J4 Plus' benchmark results backed up my impressions. It completed the Sunspider Javascript browser test in 735.3 milliseconds, slower than the Lenovo 100S (589.9ms), Acer Cloudbook 11 (463.9), and HP Chromebook 11 (556.7ms). (Smaller numbers are better.)

On the newer Jetstream Javascript test, Acer's Cloudbook had the lowest score, at 42, although once again, the J4 Plus' score of 44.25 was worse than the 100S Chromebook's score of 51.82.When compared to other Chromebooks, the J4 Plus lagged a bit on Basemark's Browsermark test, with a score of 2,379 versus the 100S's 2,393. HP Chromebook 11 was even further behind, at 2,362.As for the graphics, the J4 Plus reversed its cycle of middling performance by pushing out 58 frames per second on the WebGL Aquarium test while rendering 50 fish. Lenovo's 100S Chromebook mustered 45 fps at the same settings.

Battery Life
To say that the J4 Plus' battery life is disappointing would be an understatement, especially since one of the few advantages Chromebooks tend to hold over their Windows counterparts is endurance. On the Laptop Mag Battery Test (continuous surfing over Wi-Fi at 150 nits of brightness), the J4 Plus lasted just 6 hours and 39 minutes. That's an hour and a half less than the ultraportable average of 8:10, half an hour less than the mediocre HP Chromebook 11 (7:10), and almost 4.5 hours less than the Lenovo 100S Chromebook (11:19).
Even though the J4 Plus is meant for schools, it doesn't come with any notable education apps besides the standard set of Google apps, such as Google Docs, Sheets and Slides. However, like with all Chromebooks, you do have access to the large number of apps in the Chrome Web Store, so you can download Microsoft Office apps or learning apps like Little Bio Digital and Planetarium. The J4 Plus' warranty is a standard one-year deal that includes replacement for broken or defective parts.The only options for the J4 Plus are variations on the warranty, which can tack on extras such as one-year accidental-damage protection starting at $29, all the way to a four-year complete suite warranty for $225.

Bottom Line
The J4 Plus has one of the best displays I've seen on a notebook in this price range, and the laptop's build quality should be able to survive whatever a student can dish out. However, this Chromebook's below-average battery life and less-powerful Rockchip CPU make it hard to recommend it over competing systems. Overall, we prefer Lenovo 100S Chromebook ($199), which offers longer endurance, a more comfortable typing experience and peppier processor choice, all for just $10 more.
Lenovo launched its lightweight, budget-friendly notebook called Ideapad 100S in India on April 12.

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