 I want to show you something disturbing. In 2016, when the GTX 1080 Ti released, it went for $700. Two years later, when the RTX 2080 Ti released, it went for $1,000. Two more years after that, when the 3090 released, it went for $1,500. And this year, with the RTX 4090 releasing, it is going for an MSRP of $1,600. However, if you've actually tried to buy it, then you know that it is impossible to find it for anything less than $2,000. Now, why would I tell you this? It's not like I'm trying to make you aware that the newest model graphics card has gone up in price every two years for the last decade and inflation is on the rise, making gaming an incredibly expensive hobby, or am I? I'll get to the point. If you're a gamer, trying to buy the newest model graphics card every time one comes out gets ridiculously expensive. If you're someone that upgrades your graphics card every time a new one releases, in the last decade alone, you've spent $5,000. What I'm trying to say is that your money is valuable and you deserve to be made aware of options that could save you more of it. Before we continue, I just wanna let you know that the sponsor of this video is ASUS and we're gonna be featuring their ASUS Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip as something that you should consider buying, but it will also help us demonstrate a point. So allow me to reintroduce a topic you may have heard of before, cloud gaming. In 2019, this idea was pushed out there for gamers who wanted to be smarter with their money. The way it works is that you sign up for a cloud gaming service and that service will have a remote data center with all of the hardware needed to play games, which you get to use from the comfort of your own personal computer. So instead of paying thousands of dollars to build your own computer, which you will inevitably need to upgrade, you can essentially rent someone else's for a fraction of the cost. Now there are arguments against cloud gaming, the main one being a lack of control because the hardware is out of your hands. However, ultimately I believe it's up to you to decide how much that control is worth. Is it worth thousands of dollars and the upkeep that you will need to be in charge of? Are you a college student? Are you employed? Do you move around? Having a larger physical desktop computer might not make the most sense for you. The thing is, no matter what your solution is, you probably play video games and I have a solution for you. The Asus Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip. Now, before you click out of here, hear me out. I'm gonna do the math for you. I'm gonna weigh an average gaming setup versus the Asus Chromebook and the cost of the cloud gaming service so that you can determine for yourself just how much this physical desktop might not be worth it anymore. Before I do that, let me show you what we're working with. The Asus Chromebook goes for $729. At first, you might think, well, I'm gonna be doing cloud gaming so why wouldn't I just get a cheaper option? Well, this Chromebook actually has a 144 Hertz monitor which can also be doubled as a touchscreen if you choose to use it that way. This is huge because if you weren't already aware, it doesn't really matter how many frames your system can output in the video game because if you don't have a monitor to support it, you'll never actually be able to see those frames. Besides, $729 is cheaper than most gaming laptops go for anyways and assuming you do stick to cloud gaming, this is a very small price to pay considering you will never actually have to physically upgrade your system. So here's the math. Let's say you buy or build a gaming PC that could cost you anywhere from $1,000 to $1,000 for something fairly decent. So I'll put it in the middle at 1,500. Then you're gonna need to buy a mouse, a keyboard and a monitor and if you get something decent in the middle, you're probably gonna add another $300 to that cost. That's a little higher than what I was going for. This on average is probably gonna cost somebody $1,800, give or take. Now let's say you buy yourself the Asus Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip. You're gonna be looking at $730. Plus whatever cloud gaming service you go for, I'm just gonna go ahead and say safely it would cost you $20 a month. And then to compare this fairly, let's say every three years, you're gonna upgrade something in this gaming desktop that you might buy as opposed to this. 36 months times that $20 equals 720. So in total, you are spending roughly $1,500. Now you might think to yourself, oh okay, well I'm only getting a savings of around 350 bucks. No. Once those three years pass, you're probably gonna look to upgrade something in your system because of the advancements that will be made in hardware at that point. I'm not saying you're gonna have to upgrade the entire computer that you would have built but you will probably at least get one or two parts changed. My point being this physical gaming setup is gonna cost you more and more money whereas the Asus Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip is going to cost you the same thing and it's only gonna cost you whatever you pay for your subscription. Now that you're aware of the money reasons, here are a few more details about the product. The Asus Chromebook Vibe CX55 Flip has a gaming design and color blocked WASD keys. It also has an anti-ghosting keyboard with Wi-Fi 6 installed for better stability. That being said, Ethernet is still recommended for a better online gaming experience. Now if you do choose to get this Chromebook through Amazon or Best Buy, you will be able to get a three month free subscription to one of many cloud gaming services. Like GeForce Now and Amazon Luna plus you will also get a free steel series gaming mouse included. Now, here's the big question. What does it actually feel like when it comes to gaming? Now I'm not gonna lie, I haven't touched cloud gaming since 2019 and back then I was not very impressed. It had its moments but even with the Ethernet connection the experience wasn't the greatest. So I definitely went into testing this time expecting much of the same but this is where it got interesting. Asus actually set me up so I didn't have to go in testing alone. Datto from who I'm told is the best Destiny 2 content creator on the internet was actually forced to play with me so we could see what the experience was like together. Now from what I've seen from my own personal benchmarks as well as those online, Destiny 2 is actually a fairly difficult game to run in terms of hardware. Now when you combine that with the potential latency issues when it comes to gaming from a server, you would think that this would make for a bad experience when it comes to gaming on a Chromebook. But before I could actually look closely at those benchmarks, we had to get Datto's content first. Respawn restricted. What? Why is respawning restricted? Oh, did you want to start from like the beginning? You're good, you're good, you're good, you're good. Door's open. What do we do? Jump over here as well with it. All right, or I'm going to come right back. All right, let's try it again. All right, great jumps. Oh, I slayed down. Here, here, here, hang on, hang on. Let's hug it out. Where the fuck am I supposed to? Oh, there's no tricks here. You got it. There's no tricks here. Oh, make some room for you. I just saw the holes in the hallway. Really, it just kills people outright. That's one of the first times I've ever seen the barrel. That's great, I'm so glad that this game keeps giving you new opportunity. So after pulling out the rest of my hair, Datto and I were able to make it to the final boss of this raid, which involved some intense fighting. Throughout the fight, there were multiple instances where there were many enemies on screen with tons of particle effects. I would say this qualifies as a pretty intense test to see if the Chromebook could hold up with our cloud gaming service, and it did. Over the course of the dungeon, the average frame rate for the hour it took us was just over 100 FPS throughout, and in the most intense moments of team fights, we would see it drop to as low as 80 regularly. This is not counting the 1% lows, which of course every gaming experience has. In the end, it's up to you to decide if this is a playable option for you. But again, for the money that is spent on this type of performance, it is definitely a viable option. So what's the conclusion? Destiny 2 is definitely one of my favorite video games. And secondly, honestly, there were times that I forgot that I was gaming on a Chromebook. Now I won't sit here and tell you it was an amazing experience that changed my life. There were some moments you could tell that there was an issue server-wise, but I would say that the experience was so immersive that it actually took moments like those to remind myself that I was gaming on a Chromebook. If you're used to gaming on a PC, operating system-wise, it's gonna take a little bit of getting used to, but when you think about the money you're saving and the money that you're spending, financially, this Chromebook is a really good option. Look, it's up to you what you wanna do with your money. But with the savings that you will have by going through this option if you choose to, that's extra money for bills, vacations, gifts, whatever you want it to be. It is something that you should consider. Anyways, if you wanna get one of these for yourself, I will have links to it down below in the description. I hope that you did find this interesting, entertaining, or informative in any way, shape, or form. And as always, have a great day.