Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook
The Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook is everything that netbooks should have been.
When it comes to the 2-in-1 laptop market, the Lenovo Duet Chromebook is easily one of the biggest surprises of the year by far. Though not without its flaws, the Duet’s shortcoming simply can’t take away from the functionality, portability, and longevity that this tablet-laptop hybrid packs into its tiny frame. If you are a Chromebook skeptic, this just might be the device that wins you over.
Design
The biggest shortcomings of the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook come in its design.
The magnetised kickstand cover and keyboard felt firmlysecured 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.
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.
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.
By laptop track pads’ alreadylow standards, the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook’s can be sluggish and even lifeless at times. As for the keyboard, the keys are packed in very tight, given the limited real estate it is working with.
The keyboard and track pad also don’t have the same degree of tactile feedback that a lot of other laptops have. That means that touch-sensing your way as you type can leave you all over the place for a while as you acclimate yourself to the key spacing.
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. The vast majority of the time, the track pad responds just fine, but when it doesn’t, we have no real sense as to why.
A much bigger issue is accessibility. For those with lower manual dexterity – such as those with a physical disability or even just older folks who’re not as nimble as they used to be – these problems aren’t just amplified; in some instances, it would be all but impossible to ever overcome them.
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.
Performance
On paper, the performance of the Lenovo Duet Chromebook lags behind its bigger and more expensive cousins, but nobody is out here trying to play Metro: Exodus on a 2-in-1 Chromebook.
When it comes to general web browsing, video streaming, and basic productivity use, the Duet does exactly what you want it to do without so much as a hiccup. You can’t load up on Chrome tabs with reckless abandon, but you can still have a handful going at once and not grind everything to a halt.
The Lenovo IdeaPad Duet even manages to put out a very respectable performance when it comes to light-to-moderate mobile gaming. This isn’t a gaming laptop by any means, but if you can play it on your phone or dedicated tablet, you can play it just as well on the Duet.
We absolutely can’t talk about performance without bring up the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet’s battery life. Our TechLife movie test looped an HD film at half brightness and half volume until the Duet died.
Similar devices typically shut off after eight to 12 hours, with around 10 hours being the average battery life of a typical Chromebook. The Duet blew way, way past that mark, completely lapping the Chromebook average with a total time of 21 hours and 29 minutes. This just isn’t the kind of battery performance you ever see in the wild.
Clearly, no two batteries are exactly the same and performance will degrade over time, so you shouldn’t expect a nearly 22-hour battery life to be typical. Still, repeated testing and anecdotal evidence indicates that the Duet’s longevity isn’t a fluke. Even though it is officially rated by Lenovo for 10 hours of general use, in reality the Duet will run for significantly longer than that out of the box.
Software
When it comes to lightweight 2-in-1 laptops, the available software options can be hit or miss, and even then your options are more limited than with a traditional Windows laptop or MacBook. Fortunately, Chromebooks have access to the entire Android app ecosystem - the largest digital marketplace in the world.
Contrast this to the Surface Go 2, which has to go through the less-popular Microsoft Store (which has some pretty slim pickings), and the Duet comes out way ahead on the software front.
In fact, there is so much available software that you will find yourself running out of storage pretty quickly if you’re not mindful of the size of the apps you’re downloading. We definitely recommend spending the extra cash to get the higher capacity unit with 128GB rather than the meager 64GB offered on the base model. You will use every bit of that space before long.
We are particularly excited about Google’s ongoing implementation of a Linux virtual machine in Chrome OS, the beta version of which is accessible on the Duet. Installing it is as easy as flipping a switch in the system settings.
From start to finish, we got a fully-operational Linux command line terminal up and running on the Duet in about five minutes. That opens up even more software options by adding in a large chunk of the Linux software ecosystem into the mix, which for many is one of the strongest points in the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet’s favor.
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.
John Loeffler