Meanwhile, tapping an unresponsive track pad will quickly become frustrating for some people since there's no feedback to tell if a "click" is even physically registering. Receive mail from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors? From start to finish, we got a fully-operational Linux command line terminal up and running on the Duet in about 5 minutes. As powerful as Android and iOS have become, mobile operating systems are still far more restricted than a Windows, MacOS, or Linux OS. Not until now. It is, of course, a touch screen, compatible with Universal Stylus Initiative (USI) pens like the one Lenovo says it will sell soon, joining other vendors such as HP and Chicony. Enjoy all the apps you love, superfast boot-up, automatic updates and USI stylus support. Future Publishing Limited Quay House, The Ambury, This just isn't the kind of battery performance you ever see in the wild. ... solidly built Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Chromebook ($249.99). These aren't earth-shattering failures and fixing it is as simple as slapping the cover or keyboard back on, but it happened often enough that we can see some people getting frustrated with it. The main area of the keyboard isn't too squished—the Q through P keys span seven inches instead of the regulation seven and three-eighths—but the keys toward the right edge, like the comma and period, semicolon and apostrophe, and left and right brackets, are only half a key wide, which takes some getting used to. Jet stream: 32.554 The outward-facing side of the Duet's kickstand panel also has an attractive fabric cover that gives the device a much classier look than the typical silicone or faux-leather exteriors of other tablet cases or the hard plastic or metal finishes of a traditional laptop. The Lenovo Duet Chromebook strikes the perfect balance between tablet portability and Chromebook utility, all while keeping the price ridiculously low - and somehow packing in a Lich King of a battery that simply refuses to die. Please deactivate your ad blocker in order to see our subscription offer, We check over 130 million products every day for the best prices. I could say the same about the screen; this is, again, a 10.1-inch device, after all. The biggest shortcomings of the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook come in its design. We were really, really exhausted by the end. (The Celeron and AMD A4 systems set a low bar; I didn't choose any Core i5 machines.). As for the keyboard, the keys are packed in very tight, given the limited real estate it is working with. England and Wales company registration number 2008885. The display offers a sunny 400 nits of brightness, good contrast, and reasonably rich, well-saturated colors. Camera: 8MP auto-focus (back), 2MP fixed-focus (front) The roughly half-inch black bezels around the display are noticeable, but not egregiously so. The magnetized kickstand cover and keyboard felt firmly-secured to the tablet as we tested it, but we still found ourselves pulling the keyboard free without meaning to or pushing the entire back cover off while trying to extend the kickstand. Storage: 128GB eMMC You want a high-performance system The gestures don't work when the keyboard is attached. This helps keep things simple beneath the surface, which is always good for performance. As you use it, you keep discovering things—from the cameras to the screen brightness—that are better than you expected. PCMag is obsessed with culture and tech, offering smart, spirited coverage of the products and innovations that shape our connected lives and the digital trends that keep us talking. There is a USB Type-C port, which is good to see, but otherwise, that's it as far as ports and physical controls go. Besides being a bargain, it's a thoughtfully designed and well-crafted detachable, especially for Android phone owners; the tablet and its peripherals have the look and feel of a product costing much more. All rights reserved. And in every way from comfortable typing to smart tablet gestures, it's a nifty productivity and streaming entertainment device. With only 4GB RAM, letting your Chrome tabs get out of hand can quickly slow the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet's performance, as will running a dozen apps in the background while playing a game or watching a movie. Speedometer: 26.85 As far as Chromebooks and 2-in-1 laptops go, this is the best value you're going to find in a portable device of its kind, hands down. A tech journalist since the TRS-80 and Apple II days, Grevstad specializes in lightweight laptops, all-in-one desktops, and productivity software, all of which he uses when commuting and telecommuting between PC Labs and a cat-filled home office in Old Greenwich, CT. Email him at homeoffice.eric@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @EricGrevstad. Best Hosted Endpoint Protection and Security Software, Tablet, Chromebook Demand Soars as Pandemic Prompts Need for Affordable Computers, Handy tablet gestures and Android phone integration. Battery: 7,180mAh/27.6Wh (max)/7,100mAh/0Wh (min) Since the Lenovo Duet has just the single USB-C port and nothing else, you'll need the included USB-C adapter to use standard headphones. While Microsoft's Surface Go 2 starts at $399.99 with a Pentium CPU and without a keyboard, our recent test unit was $729.99, or $859 with matching Type Cover. The keyboard and track pad also don't have the same degree of tactile feedback that a lot of other laptops have. Terms of use. For our formal benchmarks, I compared the Chromebook Duet to two compact convertibles, the HP Chromebook x360 12b and the Lenovo Chromebook C340-11, which use the same Intel Celeron CPU; the Acer Chromebook 315, which has an AMD A4; and the Intel Core i3-powered Asus Chromebook Flip C436. And not the 9-to-5-workday-plus-a-commute that people usually mean when they say their battery lasts all day - we're talking about an actual, fully-rotate-the-entire-frickin-planet-on-its-axis kind of day. This … Google has added to … Those issues aside, unlike the Microsoft Surface Go 2, Lenovo at least gives you a kickstand cover and keyboard instead of selling them as separate peripherals. This sleek, light 2-in-1 Chromebook switches from business to fun as easily as it switches from laptop to tablet mode. ... as well as the Chromebook 14 and the Chromebook Duet mentioned earlier. Nothing is perfect, however, and the Lenovo Duet definitely comes up short in some important areas. Unfortunately, the biggest problem with the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook will be a dealbreaker for some people: the restrictive size of its keyboard and - to a lesser extent - the responsiveness of the track pad.