Asus C202 is a rugged, modular Chromebook designed for education

Asus Chromebook C202

At CES 2016, Asus unveiled a new Chromebook with easily upgradeable components, making it suited for education. In addition to the durable design, the modular construction of the Asus Chromebook C202 makes it easy to replace components if they fail or malfunction.

This allows educational institutions, parents and students to save money, as you don't need to replace the entire Chromebook should the keyboard or battery go out.

Asus claims that the Chromebook C202 is drop-resistant with its rubberized shell. Additionally, you won't need any specialized tools to access the internals of the Chromebook, making repairs easy.

Affordable performance

Don't expect to find high-end Intel Skylake processors on the Chromebook C202. With a target on the education market, Asus is making the Chromebook C202 affordable, with pricing starting at $219 (£149, AU$306) for a model with an Intel Celeron processor.

Asus claims that you'll be able to easily replace the power socket, keyboard and battery if these components go bad. It's unclear what other internal parts can be easily repaired in Asus' modular design.

The Chromebook C202 ships with 16GB of storage, which isn't a big deal as you'll likely be living in Google's cloud, and an 11.6-inch (1366 x 768) HD screen. The base configuration comes with 2GB of RAM, but you can upgrade to 4GB of RAM for just $10 (£6, AU$13) extra.

The Chromebook C202 is expected to ship next month and will compete against education-centric Chromebook offerings from Dell and Acer.