Lenovo Chromebook Duet review: The perfect couch companion

Chrome OS has had a tablet mode for a really, really long time, but dedicated Chrome OS tablets have been few and far between. There have been some ugly, low-spec Chromebook tablets for the classroom, and then we had the HP X2 and the Google Pixel Slate. The X2 was a detachable, but it worked well, and while the Slate is powerful and (these days at least) stable, it was expensive, even more so once you added the kickstand case and keyboard you need to actually get work done at a reasonable speed.

This might be why when the Lenovo Chromebook Duet debuted at CES at the beginning of this year — I know, January feels like a century ago — it drew a lot of attention because it seemed like someone finally got it right and gave us the Chromebook tablet we deserved. It didn’t skimp on the storage like the education-oriented models. It came with a keyboard and kickstand in the box.

Best of all, it came at the reasonable price we expect for a mid-range Chromebook or tablet: $279-$299 depending on your storage option. The only question most of us had left is whether or not it could deliver the proper Chrome OS tablet experience we’ve been waiting years for.

I’m happy to say that, yes, the Duet is the Chrome tablet I’ve been dreaming of, and it’s the perfect couch companion for some casual research, reading, and Reddit.

Lenovo Chromebook Duet Price and release date

the Lenovo Duet released in May 2020 — right in the middle of 2020’s massive Chromebook shortage — but unlike most budget models, retailers have actually been able to keep the Duet in stock and at a reasonable price. This has made it one of the few Best Chromebooks entrants under $500 that’s remained widely available for purchase and largely resistant to the price gouging most other budget and mid-range Chromebooks are seeing right now.

This puts the Chromebooks Duet in a unique position as we head into Prime Day and the holiday shopping season: the 128GB Duet is available for $300 at Best Buy, but supply is steady enough that it could see some decent deals the same way we saw deals for the Lenovo C330 last year. At $250-$300, the Duet is already a great deal for the best Chromebook tablet, but if we see it down to $200, or even down to $150 to compete with the Prime Day tablet deals, it’ll make the Duet an absolute steal.

Finally, a Chrome tablet done right

Lenovo Chromebook Duet Tablet shape, Chromebook smarts

The Duet is a 10.1-inch tablet with a relatively slim profile and bezels around the entire screen that are the perfect size for holding the tablet as you breeze through Twitter while relaxing on the couch or on the back porch. The screen can get bright enough to read outside so long as you’re not in full Florida sunshine, but I spent most of my time with the brightness either around 40% or down at minimum brightness when using it as an e-reader in bed.

I like the two-tone look to the back of the Duet, not that you’ll see it much. While I was more than willing to ditch the detachable keyboard for my reading and game sessions (I’m a sucker for Microsoft Solitaire Collection), I usually kept the kickstand on because the fabric back offered a more comfortable grip for hours and hours of reading. This also allows for propping the kickstand up on my knees so that I don’t have to hold the tablet up the entire time.

This battery life is a dream come true.

Inside this tablet sits a 7,000mAh battery. I wasn’t sure that size battery would be able to keep up with me — I came from Chromebooks that usually have a 40Wh battery and last 8-11 hours on a charge — but I have been completely blindsided. Duet sips battery like a fine cognac; I got 3 days of use out of the box, and have consistently gotten 2-3 days per charge since then.

And I’m not talking light use with one or two tabs open and maybe an Android app when you’re not in Chrome. No, this was with 6-10 Chrome tabs consistently open, 1-3 apps in regular use, with 6-9 hours of use a day, with brightness ranging from 15-50% depending on which room I’m in at the time. If you intend to use this as a casual device — a few hours of reading here, a few hours of video there — you may see the battery last the better part of a week, but I can’t keep my hands off the Duet long enough to prove that yet.

The keyboard has been compared a lot to the keyboards we’ve see on a Microsoft Surface series detachable, but that’s being a bit too generous. The bar between the keyboard’s POGO pin attachment and the actual keys is too floppy, leaving the keyboard to slide around rather than neatly covering the keyboard when you have the Duet all folded up. This floppiness can also lead to some awkward angles when you’re using the keyboard attachment on your lap, but most of the time, it’ll be flat and straight as intended.

Microsoft also recognized that even if the keys end up being a little smaller, it’s still better to keep the same proportions for the keyboard rather than shrinking some columns more than others, the way Lenovo has. The keys on the Duet’s keyboard are about 85% of the size they’d be on other Chromebook keyboards — which in a 10-inch form factor was unavoidable — but Lenovo scrunched in the punctuation keys on the right side.

If you’re typing a lot of numbers that have a 0 or 9 — like prices — and use a lot of punctuation and brackets, then those super-narrow keys are going to prove annoying for the first few weeks of adjustment. If you were going to use a Duet as your only computer, I very strongly recommend getting a full-size keyboard to use when you’re at your desk; I have a mechanical keyboard hooked up to my super-small docking station, and it makes the Duet much more comfortable for longer periods of typing.

The trackpad here is small, but it’s big enough to do my two-finger right-clicks and three-finger gestures. It’s responsive, it’s the right amount of clicky when you press it down, and it does the job. I use the touchscreen most of the time because it’s just more intuitive, but the trackpad is there when I need it.

Lenovo Chromebook Duet Performance prowess and pitfalls

As someone who has worked full-time on $300 Chromebooks for the better part of the last four years, the Duet is about as powerful as you’d expect for its price tag, but still a little less powerful than I’m used to. Rather than using the Intel Celeron N4000 we’ve seen in Lenovo’s C340-11 and S340-14 — as well as most of its education Chromebooks last year — the Duet uses the MediaTek Helio P60T.

The P60T is capable enough for a tablet — especially one as resource-light as Chrome OS — and while I wouldn’t recommend it for full-time, full-bore work (especially if you spend a lot of time on video calls through Google Meet and Zoom), I can and have worked full-time on the Duet. That said, this is meant more as a companion device, not a daily driver. It can get work done if the family computer is in use, but it’s more at home lounging on the couch, flicking through Twitter feeds and tapping away at Freecell.

I’ve been using the Duet full-time since it arrived over a week ago, and 98% of the time, it works exactly as it should: it cruises along even with my usual 7-10 tabs open in Chrome, plus 1-3 Android apps in the background. It might hang during the initial load of some viral post on Reddit with thousands of replies, and it might miss a tap when I’m scrolling through a fanfic (seriously, the Duet is such a wonderful e-reader), but otherwise, it’s normally just fine. It crashed once in a Google Meet call and twice when loading a plethora of new research tabs at once, but Google Meet has crashed my Pixelbook before, so I’m not worried about long-term performance.

You’d think split-screening on a 10.1-inch screen would be cramped — and depending on the site, things can still be squished — but I’ve been able to work on a Duet just as well as any other Chromebook to cross my desk in the last two years. It’s not a powerhouse, but it’s enough for working all day and playing around at night while you wind down, which is all I really need out of the Duet.

The Duet was also the first to get the new tab strip for Chrome Browser in tab mode. This will come to all Chromebooks over time, and while it’s a slight adjustment, I’ll confess I’m a big fan of it — especially the way that pinned tabs become these small squares that are just the right size to tap without taking up too much of the strip.

Lenovo Chromebook Duet Where they cut corners

This is a $300 Chrome OS tablet that came with a kickstand and keyboard attachment in the box, so you know they had to pinch pennies somewhere. To that end, there is only one port on the Duet: a single USB-C port that’s only capable of 18W (9V/2A) charging and 1080p 30Hz video output (though you’ll get bumped down further to 720p 60Hz on most monitors).

There’s also no headphone jack and there’s no second USB-C port on the opposite side of the tablet the way we’ve seen on quite literally every Chromebook released in the last two years. 18W charging is annoying but manageable, especially since I can last 2-3 days on a charge even with 6-8 hours of use each day, but I really would have appreciated a second USB-C port.

Another small disappointment is the in-box charger, which is only 10W and uses a USB-C to USB-A cable. Do yourself a favor and leave that charger in the box as a “last resort” option. Instead, use any PD charger you already have in your home for regular top-ups. If you don’t have a Power Delivery charger already, this AUKEY 18W charger is the size of a quarter and will charge the Duet — and pretty much every modern smartphone — at top speed for the price of a large pizza.

Lenovo Chromebook Duet You should buy it

Lenovo brands the Lenovo Duet as a device that can do it all: it can work hard when you need it but gets out of the way when you just want to play games or watch movies. In experience, I’m not sure how many of us would want to use a 10.1-inch screen as our primary computer, but the Duet can hack it for my work — answering emails, research, writing, and photo editing — and I bet it can hack it for yours, too. Just grab yourself a full-size keyboard for when you’re using it at your desk.

Where the Duet really shines is as a companion device, as a tablet that you can use while the kids are hogging the family computer or you’re in the backyard away from your desktop. The Duet is a battery-sipping beauty that may not be the sleekest or shiniest tablet around, but it’s certainly the most practical tablet out there. In 2020, that’s exactly what we need.

4.5
out of 5

Chrome OS offers you a desktop-grade experience when you need to VPN into work for a quick report or knock out a few dozen emails while you wait for everyone to assemble for movie night, and it offers up battery life that stands out even among Chromebooks. While it’s not completely perfect, it comes pretty damn close for $300, and with it getting eight years of regular updates — something no Android tablet has ever been to match even half of — this is a tablet that can go the distance and is absolutely worth bringing home for a test drive.