Lenovo’s New Chromebook Duet Is an Wonderful Transportable Companion

For many of my grownup life, the concept of utilizing a laptop computer with a display underneath 13 inches made me reflexively recoil. That will appear a little bit unfair, however I got here of age when shoddy netbooks—with their tiny screens, low costs, and horrible efficiency—had been hitting cut price bins in all places. That have, together with having to speak a number of members of the family searching for a very good deal out of shopping for one, left a bitter style in my mouth.

I say all of this to convey how incorrect I used to be (and possibly educate a lesson about letting outdated biases go, however I digress). It’s not like there was a glut of sub-12-inch laptops on the market because the netbook market died, however its primary normal bearer, the Lenovo Chromebook Duet, has garnered excessive reward since its first iteration in 2020. Now, the corporate’s newest model is right here, and it completely gained me over.

The concept behind the Chromebook Duet is straightforward: It’s an ultraportable Chromebook with a removable keyboard that allows you to rapidly change between pill and laptop computer modes. The 11-inch Chromebook Duet Gen 9 carries that concept ahead, swapping in a MediaTek Kompanio 838 processor for a little bit extra energy. This isn’t meant to be your primary laptop, however a compact machine you possibly can rapidly toss in a bag and use nearly wherever with out a lot fuss.

Past the MediaTek processor, the Chromebook Duet Gen 9 comes with 4 GB of RAM and 64 GB of storage for $370 or 8 GB of RAM and 128 GB of storage for $400 (my assessment system is the latter). In both case, you’ll get an 11-inch LCD flanked by two audio system, together with an 8-MP rear digital camera and a 5-MP front-facing digital camera with a privateness shutter. The display is wrapped in a sturdy metallic chassis, whereas the removable keyboard has a metallic high deck with a grey leather-esque materials on its rear.