Lenovo Chromebook Duet review: Budget brilliance

Google representatives tell me that the Lenovo Chromebook Duet series is the best-selling Chromebook ever, and I believe them. With a low price, a Surface-style form factor, and a bit of an iPad look when all the extras are stripped off, it’s an appealing package, especially if you’re more comfortable with a touchscreen than with a mouse.

The new revision to the model is an improvement in almost every way. While it still doesn’t handle heavy desktop-style tasks or Android apps very adroitly, it’s an excellent budget device if you want a little more flexibility than a standard laptop.

Further reading: Best Chromebooks 2024: Best overall, best battery life, and more

Lenovo Chromebook Duet: Physical Design 

The newest ” Gen 9″ model looks extremely familiar to the first two models but with more refinement. It’s still a tablet first, at least in a purely physical sense, with a little more of a focus on conventional web browsing thanks to ChromeOS. And while I appreciate the included stylus, its value proposition isn’t quite as good as it used to be, especially if you want the 8GB memory upgrade. And trust me, you want that upgrade. 

The Duet is an 11-inch tablet and bare of all its accouterments, you might confuse it for a standard iPad at first glance. But a little handling time quickly puts that notion to rest. It’s horizontally aligned, with a wider 19:10 LCD screen and a webcam poking out from the side with a handy physical shutter. You’ll also notice two different USB-C ports, one on the left side if you’re using it in laptop mode, and one on the top. An extra port for accessories and charging, but what’s with that weirdo placement? 

It makes sense when you notice the updated magnetic kickstand. This design dispenses with the fabric, allows a hole for the magnetically-charging stylus, and crucially, has a bit of a kink to it. The slanted angle allows the Duet to stand up in either horizontal or vertical mode, and either way those USB-C ports are not obstructed.

It’s a thoughtful touch, though I have to point out that accommodating two different modes here means there’s only one angle for the tablet to stand up in either one. I’d prefer the flexibility of multiple angles in horizontal mode since that’s the way I used it by far.

Lenovo Chromebook Duet: Chromebook first, tablet second

ChromeOS has made big improvements in its touch interface, but this is still a “Chromebook” and not a tablet, at least according to the branding. So most of my time with the Duet was spent using it laptop-style with the kickstand and combined keyboard, touchpad, and screen cover attached. And I was surprised at how comfortable this was. One of the few low points of the original design was that the keyboard was a bit cramped and didn’t have a lot of give to the keys.

Lenovo seems to have addressed this with a new design. It still sits flat as a pancake, but the keys have increased travel distance and the layout keeps all the alphanumeric keys at full size despite the squished layout. That makes typing for extended periods surprisingly natural. It’s not as good as a high-quality keyboard with a full-sized layout, and it’s a far cry from Lenovo’s best-in-class ThinkPad keyboards. But considering the restrictions of both the form factor and the price, it’s pretty darn good.

Ditto for the touchpad, which is plastic instead of glass, but is more than serviceable for scootin’ your cursor across a tablet screen. The screen is also fine, if not outstanding. The 1920×1200 resolution is a lot wider than a standard tablet and a little taller than most laptops, which is a good compromise. It’s an IPS-LCD panel with good color accuracy and plenty of brightness. Again, nothing here is going to blow you away versus a more expensive device, but it’s all acceptably in the pretty-good zone for a gadget that starts at $360. 

Here are the specs, though keep in mind that since this tablet is running Arm-based hardware, it’s not an apples-to-oranges comparison to most x86-based Chromebooks.

• Model number: 83HH0000US
• CPU: MediaTek Kompanio 838
• Memory: 4/8GB
• Graphics: ARM Mali-G57 MC3
• Display: 10.95″ IPS-LCD, 1920×1200, 60Hz
• Storage: 64/128GB SSD
• Webcam: 5MP (8MP rear camera)
• Connectivity: 2 USB-C, proprietary keyboard, 3.5mm audio jack
• Battery capacity: 68Wh
• Dimensions: 255.3 x 166.84 x 7.69mm (with keyboard and stand, approximately 17mm)
• Weight: 1.21 pounds, 2.09 pounds with keyboard and stand
• MSRP: $359.99/$399.99

Lenovo Chromebook Duet: Mobile guts, mobile limitations

For that price, you get a MediaTek processor (Arm, but that’s okay, ChromeOS don’t judge) with four primary cores and four efficiency cores, a spartan 64GB of storage, and just 4GB of RAM. The upgraded model, which Google sent me as the review unit, boosts those last two to 8GB and 128GB, respectively. For that upgrade, you’re charged the princely sum of $399.99. That’s more than you’d pay for a base-model iPad, but well below that same iPad with a keyboard and stylus.  

The mobile hardware also gives this gadget mobile-style battery life, including a solid workday of runtime and standby that I was never able to exhaust even when the tablet spent days in my bag. In this area, it shines above most Chromebooks that compete with conventional laptops. It’s a trade-off for raw, number-crunching power, sure, but considering the audience this device is shooting for and the requirements it brings, it seems like a good one to me. 

Other hardware includes a 5MP front-facing camera and a single 8MP rear-facing shooter, which I imagine was thrown in with the Arm-based chipset, and which I can’t imagine many people using too often. The webcam isn’t great, especially since the default “laptop” angle has it pointing right up my nose. It’s sharp but washes out easily and doesn’t handle low levels of light well. The rear camera is a little better, but again, I doubt you’ll be using that one regularly. 

The tablet has a proprietary magnetic connection for the keyboard and a headphone jack, the latter of which was notably absent in the original design. The magnets connecting the keyboard and affixing it to the screen when closed are nice and sturdy, far less likely to move around — they clung to a coffee shop’s metal exterior table when I went on a walk. I don’t think that was intentional, but it’s reassuring nonetheless. I could wish for a MicroSD card slot to augment the low storage, but beggars can’t be choosers. And yes, a $400 Chromebook that doubles as a tablet qualifies as a beggar in this context. 

The Duet is surprisingly capable as a laptop, or as close to a laptop as something using the Surface form factor gets. The “good enough” display and keyboard combo lets you use it for hours without too much trouble, and any issues you might have with a smaller-than-usual display can be alleviated with a quick pinch gesture in Chrome or one of the apps that are pretending they aren’t just Chrome with another icon.

But you’ll have to be mindful of how many you’re using. When you load up Chrome with more than six or seven tabs, especially with something particularly heavy like Gmail (or the WordPress interface I’m typing in right now), it tends to chug a bit. It’s not surprising — even with a RAM upgrade, this hardware wasn’t designed to be used by a tab addict. But this is somewhat mitigated by the fact that the small size of the tablet means using a dozen tabs or apps at once isn’t practical anyway. 

The Duet is pointedly not a Chromebook Plus model, so you don’t get access to the full gamut of Google’s AI features. It gets a lot less power than, say, the equally recent Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus. Testing via PCWorld’s gamut of Chromebook benchmarks, it’s less than half as powerful…which seems okay, since It’s approximately half the price, and aiming for a very different use case.

• CrXPRT 2: 107
• Speedometer 2.0: 75.6
• Basemark Web 3.0: 502.99
• Kraken: 1164.15
• Jetstream: 108.516

I’m not exactly crying into my beer over that one. But on the flip side, the form factor does encourage you to use ChromeOS in the other direction: as a kinda-sorta Android tablet. 

Lenovo Chromebook Duet: As a tablet

And frankly, it’s not a great one. Compared to, say, one of Samsung’s Galaxy laptops, it feels slow and clumsy, even if it’s technically far more capable with its full-power browser. Android apps from the Play Store chug, even simple things like Google’s own Keep Notes program, and that goes double if you try to run them side-by-side with Chrome browser windows or other Android apps. Games do okay, as long as you temper your expectations. The recently released Balatro was nice and snappy, but the far more visually complex Hearthstone tended to stutter and skip, even on its lowest setting for visual fidelity. 

And while the screen is fine for video — albeit at a somewhat unambitious HD resolution — the stereo speakers are a let-down. They’re plenty loud for a tablet or even a small laptop, but tinny and lacking in bass. Imagine a budget phone at about double the volume. It’s fine if you’re just listening to someone talk, but enjoying music or a movie’s audio demands a good set of headphones. Oh and by the way, this model has a headphone jack, something pointedly missing from the older designs.

So if you’re looking for an Android tablet first and a Chromebook second, the Galaxy Tab or Pixel Tablet will serve you better, even if you have to spend a little extra on a keyboard and kickstand (should you want one). The Chromebook Duet works great as a handheld web browser, as Google’s done a lot of work to make ChromeOS’s touchscreen interface far more approachable. But if you prefer mobile apps as your means of interaction, it’s not the way to go. That’s especially true if you consider Samsung’s surprisingly flexible DeX system, which approaches this convergence form factor from the other direction. 

Lenovo Chromebook Duet: Another budget hit

This might sound like a lot of low points, and a lot of compromises. But considering this is a crossover device and a budget device, they’re basically all both understandable and forgivable. The changes that Lenovo has made are all improvements over the original and already very popular design, with the arguable exception of the double-mode kickstand. If Google and Lenovo have sold more of this design than any other Chromebook, I expect them to sell a lot more. 

Go for the upgraded RAM, you’ll want it, and the extra storage for Android apps is handy even if they don’t run great. Beyond that, make sure you keep your tabs under control and don’t demand too many extra fills or too much camera prowess. Everything else about the Duet is excellent, especially the value — and it doesn’t hurt that it’s already gone on sale a couple of times.