Lenovo is launching a striking product with the IdeaPad Duet. Not only is it a tablet that runs on Chrome OS, but you also get a keyboard and stand for less than three hundred euros, so that you can also use it as a laptop. Too good to be true?
Lenovo IdeaPad Duet
Price €269 (64 GB) or €349 (128 GB)Processor MediaTek Helio P60T octa-core
Memory 4GB (LPDDR4X)
Screen 10.1 inch IPS touchscreen (1920x1200)
Storage 64 or 128 GB eMMC
Dimensions 24 x 16 x 0.7 cm (tablet), 24.5 x 16.9 x 1.8 cm (full package)
Weight 450 grams (tablet), 920 grams (package)
Battery 27.6 Wh
Connections USB-C (audio via adapter)
wireless Wi-Fi 5, Bluetooth 4.2
Website www.lenovo.com 9 Score 90
- Pros
- Excellent screen
- Good battery life
- sharp price
- Lots of functionality
- Negatives
- Headphone output with USB-C adapter
- Bright LED front camera
- What a difficult standard
The Lenovo IdeaPad Duet already stood out when it was announced. A Chromebook that is designed as a tablet and is sold including a keyboard cover for a competitive (street) price from 269 euros sounds very interesting. Cheap combinations of a 10-inch tablet and the accompanying keyboard are of course not new. However, those were mainly Android tablets, and Android was never particularly suited to desktop applications. For example, the implementation of the mouse cursor was usually mediocre at best. This does not apply to Chrome OS, of course, and Google actually went the other way around. Chrome OS started out as a desktop platform where touch control came later.
Cover with stand
The concept of the Ideapad Duet is reminiscent of a Surface: you have a tablet, fold-out stand and a detachable keyboard. However, there is a big difference, because the folding stand is not integrated into the tablet itself. Instead, the stand attaches magnetically to the back. Fortunately, the magnets are strong and the back sticks well. Unfortunately, this makes the tablet a lot thicker and heavier, something that is especially annoying if you want to use the tablet separately. The separate tablet weighs 450 grams and the standard adds 220 grams.
More irritating is that you have to grasp exactly the right edge to unfold the stand. It often happened that I grabbed the edge behind it and tried to fold the entire cover. This did not lead to any problems during the test period, but I can imagine that the cover will break if you do that too often. In short, Lenovo would do well to apply a larger or clear tab in a next variant, for example.
Keyboard
In addition to the back, you also get a keyboard. You click this magnetically onto the bottom of the tablet. That keyboard is of course quite compact, but it still taps surprisingly well. The touchpad is logically on the small side, but works well in itself. However, I do recommend making sure that Tap-to-Click and Tap & Drag settings are disabled. This means that to click you actually have to press the touchpad (and hold it for dragging) where you feel a clear click as feedback. With tap-by-click enabled this is not necessary per se, but then the touchpad occasionally does not respond as expected. The keyboard is quite sturdy, yet it is difficult to use it on your lap. The flap that connects the sturdy keyboard to the sturdy tablet is just a bit too flexible for this, making it even less pleasant to sit on your lap than, for example, a Surface.
Build quality
The build quality of the tablet is excellent. The back is partly made of aluminum and, presumably because of the wireless signals, partly made of light blue plastic that if you look very closely has a nice speck.
In terms of connections, Lenovo has only provided the essentials, because as a user you only get a USB-c connection in addition to the keyboard connection. So there is no headphone jack. Fortunately, it is possible to connect wired headphones out of the box, because an adapter is included. However, you cannot charge the tablet at the same time. Contrary to my expectations, the USB-c port even turns out to be multifunctional and you can connect a display, but in 1080p the refresh rate is only 30 Hz. That doesn't offer the most comfortable work experience, but it's nice that it can be done for an emergency or connecting to a TV to watch movies on the big screen.
Screen
The IPS screen has a physical resolution of 1920 x 1200 pixels and a remarkably high brightness. It's just a great touch screen. Chrome OS does a scaling by default that makes image elements a bit larger and makes it look like 1080 x 675. You can adjust the resolution to show a little more information in the image at the same time. The full resolution is very small, but an intermediate step like 1350 x 844 is nice in terms of workspace.
Cameras
Lenovo has equipped the IdeaPad Duet with two cameras. Both the rear camera and the front camera are nothing special. You can shoot images with it and that's about it. Do not expect that you can take beautiful photos, photos are quickly under- or overexposed and the average smartphone shoots much better pictures. Now you will probably only use the photo camera on a tablet in an emergency and you will mainly use the front camera intended for video calls. The camera is more than adequate for video calls. Only the white LED that indicates that the front camera is active is really annoyingly bright.
Performance
The IdeaPad is equipped with a MediaTek Helio P60T ARM processor in combination with 4 GB of RAM. Compared to other modern Chromebooks, that processor is not very powerful. In the benchmark CrXPRT, the IdeaPad scores 91 points, where we saw scores of 162 and 244 points with other recently tested Chromebooks. For a tablet, however, the whole thing feels smooth enough as long as you don't open too many tabs at once and you limit yourself to a maximum of eight. The battery life is excellent with a working time of almost 11 hours. However, the supplied charger is only a 10 watt charger and it takes about four hours to fully charge the tablet. That also applies to the first piece of charge, so after an hour of charging you have charged about 25 percent. In practice, given the long battery life, this is not very annoying, but it is something to take into account. There is no such thing as a quick charge before you step out the door.
Chrome OS
Chrome OS is originally a desktop operating system and provides a great experience as long as you can live with the limitations of Chrome OS. That limitation is mainly due to the fact that you cannot install 'real' programs on Chrome OS and that it is best to use Google's office suite. This allows you to work on your documents both online and offline. You can install Linux programs like LibreOffice these days, but that's still functionality that's more for those who like to experiment.
Chrome OS is slowly becoming a tablet operating system in addition to a desktop operating system. Not only has Google made Chrome suitable for touchscreens, you can also install Android apps. This works well for most apps, but you can encounter apps that do not work quite well under the Android variant in Chome OS. Besides the suitability for touch control, another advantage of Android apps is that they can usually also be used completely offline.
If you pull out the keyboard, Chrome OS switches to a tablet mode in which all applications similar to Android are shown as icons on the desktop. Some controls such as menus do not change in tablet mode. So depending on the resolution you've set, anything can be a bit tricky to operate with your fingers. If you use tablet mode a lot, it is best to leave resolution at the default setting.
An advantage of Chrome OS: Google is clear about the support duration of devices and will provide the IdeaPad Duet with updates until June 2028.
Conclusion
There are certainly some criticisms to be made about the IdeaPad duet compared to something like the Surface Go. For example, the cover with a fold-out foot may not deserve the beauty prize and the keyboard is a bit wobbly. But there is a very big advantage: at the time of writing you already have the IdeaPad Duet for 269 euros (list price 299 euros), which, unlike many other similar devices, already includes a keyboard. It is also nice that the build quality, the screen and the battery life are excellent. Because Android tablets seem to get little attention these days, a device like the IdeaPad Duet is, in my opinion, the Google tablet 2.0 with a lot of potential. As a tablet, Chrome OS is even less polished than Android and certainly iPadOS, but this is made up for by an excellent desktop experience. Interestingly, Apple seems to be making iPadOS more suitable for desktop applications. So if you are looking for a small device with which you can do light office work everywhere and that you can use as a tablet for entertainment, the IdeaPad Duet is an absolute must.
