Lenovo Chromebook Duet Gen 9 Review: A Tiny Laptop

For many of my grownup life, the concept of utilizing a laptop computer with a display screen below 13 inches made me reflexively recoil. That will appear just a little unfair, however I got here of age when shoddy netbooks—with their tiny screens, low costs, and horrible efficiency—have been hitting discount bins in all places. That have, together with having to speak a number of members of the family searching for 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 perhaps educate a lesson about letting previous biases go, however I digress). It’s not like there was a glut of sub-12-inch laptops on the market for the reason that netbook market died, however its predominant normal bearer, the Lenovo Chromebook Duet, has garnered excessive reward since its first iteration in 2020. Now, the corporate’s latest version is here, and it completely gained me over.

The concept behind the Chromebook Duet is easy: It’s an ultraportable Chromebook with a removable keyboard that permits you to shortly 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 just a little extra energy. This isn’t meant to be your predominant laptop, however a compact machine you may shortly 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 machine 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 screen is wrapped in a sturdy metallic chassis, whereas the removable keyboard has a metallic prime deck with a grey leather-esque materials on its rear.

{Photograph}: Daniel Thorp-Lancaster