ASUS L406MA-WH02 14", Celeron N4000, 4GB, 64GB eMMC, Slate Gray

The ASUS L406 is a thin, light, and cheap laptop that's slower than your patience. Buy it only if your standards are as low as the price.

The Celeron N4000 is a 1.3GHz dual-core chip that sits in the 1st percentile for CPUs. That's not a typo. It's one of the slowest processors we've ever tracked. The 4GB of RAM is in the 2nd percentile, and the 64GB eMMC storage is in the 4th. Windows 10 alone will eat most of that drive. The 14-inch 1280x720 TN display is dead last in our screen rankings, which means washed-out colors and terrible viewing angles. The only thing that surprised us is that ASUS still sells this in 2024.

The L406's competitors are all in a completely different league. The MacBook Pro MVVK2LL/A and ThinkPad X1 Carbon are premium machines that cost 5-10x more, so that's not a fair fight. The real comparison is against cheap Chromebooks, which ASUS also makes. A similarly priced Chromebook will run circles around this thing because ChromeOS is actually designed for low-end hardware. Windows 10 on a Celeron N4000 is just a bad match. The HP OmniBook 3 and Samsung Galaxy Book4 are also far better if you can stretch your budget even a little.

At USD 209 in the US, this is almost defensible as a throwaway machine. But the EUR pricing is all over the place, ranging from EUR 339 to EUR 419 across four European listings. If you're in Europe, do not pay more than EUR 339 for this. Even at that price, you're getting a laptop with a dead-last screen and a CPU that belongs in 2017. The Microsoft 365 subscription adds some value, but it doesn't fix the hardware.

The ASUS L406 is a thin and light laptop that's really just a Chromebook wearing a Windows 10 costume. The one thing to know is this: it's fine for writing emails and browsing the web, but the Celeron N4000 and 4GB of RAM mean you'll be waiting on it constantly. At 1.30kg it's easy to carry, and the 94th percentile social proof score tells us people who bought it mostly knew what they were getting into.

If you're looking for a laptop that can handle video calls, multiple browser tabs, or any kind of photo or video editing, this isn't it. Go get a used ThinkPad T480 or a decent Chromebook instead. You'll get a better screen, more storage, and a CPU that doesn't make you want to throw the thing out a window.

Don't buy this unless you absolutely cannot spend more than USD 209 and you only need it for email, light web browsing, and maybe some Word documents. The Celeron N4000, 4GB RAM, and 64GB eMMC storage are a recipe for frustration. If you can find a used ThinkPad or a Chromebook at the same price, get that instead. The L406 is a laptop-shaped object that technically runs Windows, but it won't run it well.