Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook: REVIEW

The best laptop you can buy for a meagre price is the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook. Chromebooks don’t get old as quickly as Windows laptops, and this is still one of the best Chromebooks we’ve used. If you need more clarification about Chromebooks, the IdeaPad Duet Chromebook might change your mind. It can be used as a laptop or tablet because the keyboard can be taken off. The battery life is also perfect. It’s an excellent option for students who want something reliable, flexible, and cheap.

Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook Specifications

PROS

• Compact, portable design
• The keyboard cover makes it easy to type.
• Handy kickstand
• Chrome and Android apps have a lot of freedom.
• The Qualcomm CPU does a good job.

CONS

• No jack for headphones
• Pen sold on its own
• Battery life is short

The price and specs of the Lenovo Chromebook Duet

Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook costs $279, and has an ARM G72 MP3 GPU, 4GB of RAM, and 64GB of eMMC flash storage. The processor is a 2-GHz MediaTek Helio P60T with eight cores. You can get an extra 128GB of storage for $299. With only $20 separating the two options, you should choose the upgrade.

Lenovo Chromebook Duet design

First, let’s talk about the tablet. Without the kickstand cover and detachable keyboard, the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook is a plain tablet with thick, old-fashioned bezels. Iron grey and light blue are the two colors on the back of the tablet. You’ll also find a black Chrome logo that isn’t too fancy. The 8-megapixel back camera is hard to miss in the top right corner.

On a small, rectangular silver plate in the top left corner, the words “Lenovo” are written in black. The top of the tablet has two speakers and microphones, and the bottom has pogo pins to connect a keyboard. A 2MP front-facing camera is built into the top bezel. The tablet is a great place to leave fingerprints, so I’d suggest keeping the magnetic kickstand cover on to keep it clean. ]

The screen and sound of Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook

The 10.9-inch Duet 3 tablet has a glossy IPS panel with a resolution of 2,000 by 1,200 pixels, which looks suitable for its size. The resolution is improved by a 400-nit backlight, which gives the screen bright colours and makes it easy to see in all kinds of lighting. The OLED screen on the Lenovo Duet 5 is better, but it’s good enough for the size and price of the Duet 3. As a tablet, the Duet 3 has a touch screen that can handle multiple touches.

Lenovo goes one step further by letting you use a stylus. It doesn’t come with a stylus pen, but it does work with USI 2.0 stylus pens. Oddly enough, Lenovo’s accessory finder tool doesn’t list any compatible pens, but it does sell an older USI pen for Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook for $34.99. A pair of 1-watt stereo speakers give you enough sound to stream a show from Netflix or YouTube. But the quality isn’t great overall, and we’d recommend a pair of wireless headphones since the Duet 3 doesn’t have a headphone jack.

Lenovo Chromebook Keyboard and touchpad go together

We don’t like that the keyboard on the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook is black to the edges and can be taken off. But first, let’s talk about what’s good about it. The magnetic keyboard was easy to put in place, and the keys feel good and click when you press them. The 3.4-by-1.9-inch touchpad worked well with Chromebook gestures, like using two fingers to go back to a previous page and three fingers to open all windows.

Lenovo Chromebook Duet audio

The audio on the Duet is exactly what I expected from a cheap Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook: they’re just fine. The two speakers, on the top of the tablet, made a sound that was well-balanced and of good quality. The Duet’s two speakers did a great job of filling my medium-sized, socially distant room. But if the room is bigger, it will be hard for the speakers to take over.

The battery life of a Lenovo Chromebook Duet

Lenovo said that the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook battery lasts for 10 hours, which I thought was a bit of an exaggeration (see my article on how laptop battery life estimates are rarely accurate), but it turns out that Lenovo undersold Duet’s battery life.

Software and warranty for the Lenovo Chromebook Duet

Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook comes with Chrome OS and has a taskbar that lets you quickly open Chrome, Google Docs, and the Google Play Store. You can get all of your favorite apps, like Netflix, YouTube, and Disney+, from the Google Play Store. You can also use fun apps like Asphalt 9 to play some simple games.

Conclusion

Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook is a small 2-in-1 detachable Chromebook that can be used as both a laptop and a tablet. The battery life isn’t very good, though, which is a letdown.

FAQ

Performance of Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook

When it comes to basic web browsing, streaming videos, and basic work, the Duet does exactly what you want it to do without a hitch. You can’t just open a bunch of Chrome tabs at once, but you can still open a few without making everything stop.

How long do batteries last?

On average, a fully charged Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook battery will last about 10 hours. However, when we tested the Lenovo Duet, it looped HD video for nearly a whole day. We got 21 hours and 29 minutes, making it one of the laptops we tested that lasted the longest.

Is Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook Value for money?

As far as Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook, this is the best deal you’ll find on a device like this. It’s the computer netbooks tried to be but couldn’t quite reach, and it’s the next logical step for the Chromebook.