The Asus Chromebook C300 ($249) is a reasonably priced Chrome OS laptop with a relatively large 13.3-inch screen. It's a stablemate to the 11-inch Asus C200 Chromebook, with an identical set of internal components. If you need a simple, Web-bound system for everyday tasks, take a look at the C300. It's an all-day companion with good connectivity.

Design and Features
This modern-looking laptop has a matte-black chassis and nicely textured, faux-brushed-metal polycarbonate top lid and keyboard deck. Unfortunately, the look doesn't extend to the sides of the laptop, where the shiny plastic looks a little cheap. Thankfully, you won't have to look at the sides unless you're plugging peripherals into the system's HDMI port, headset jack, AC power adapter, SD card reader, single USB 2.0 port, or USB 3.0 port.

The chiclet-style keyboard is pleasant to use, as is the wide touchpad that supports multitouch gestures like right click and two-finger swipe. The system measures 0.8 by 13 by 9 inches (HWD) and weighs 2.87 pounds, so it's easy to carry around the house or to your favorite coffee shop. You can even fit it on an airline tray cable in coach to use the 12 free Gogo Inflight Internet coupons that come with the system. Other Google offers like a 60-day Google Play All Access subscription and 100GB of Google Drive storage (for two years) are also included. (Google Drive has a Chromebook-only holiday special: free 1TB of storage for two years if you register before January 1)

You'll need that cloud storage, since the C300 only comes with a 16GB solid-state drive (SSD) and 2GB of system memory. The 16GB SSD is typical of most Chromebooks, though the Acer Chromebook C720P-2600 offers double the system memory (4GB) and local storage (32GB) for around the same price. You can, of course, supplement local storage with an SD card, though there is no way to increase the C300's system memory.