Lenovo Chromebook Duet (2020) Laptop Review

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet is a 2-in-1 tablet with a detachable keyboard, similar to Microsoft's Surface Pro and Surface Go lineup. The most notable difference is that the kickstand is built into the back cover, which attaches to the back of the tablet magnetically. The tablet itself has a two-color scheme; Lenovo calls the two colors Ice Blue and Iron Gray. The back cover is covered in fabric to make it more comfortable to hold when using it as a tablet. Both the back cover and keyboard are included in the box. If you don't like the kickstand and detachable keyboard style of the Duet, and you prefer a 2-in-1 Chromebook with a 360-degree hinge, check out the Acer Chromebook Spin 311 (2021).

The build quality feels decent. The tablet is a mix of plastic and aluminum, and it feels pretty strong overall. The weak part is the keyboard attachment, which feels somewhat flimsy and quickly picks up oil from the fingers.

The kickstand's hinge is okay. There's enough resistance that you'll likely need two hands to open it, but that amount of resistance also makes it stable enough that you can type on the on-screen keyboard without much wobble. The 158-degree hinge range we posted is the maximum angle of the tablet when using the kickstand, but you can go further and lay it flat if you close the kickstand. You can't set the angle at less than 90 degrees because it would slam shut.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet is a very compact device that fits easily into most bags. The measurements we posted are taken with the keyboard and back cover attached. The keyboard and back cover add quite a bit of bulk to the device, doubling the thickness; however, it's still a very portable device overall. Here are the measurements for the tablet itself:

• Thickness: 0.7cm
• Width: 23.9cm
• Depth: 15.9cm
• Volume: 266.007cm³
• Weight: 0.47kg

It's worth mentioning that 2-in-1 devices with a keyboard attachment and kickstand are usually not very lap-friendly. The keyboard can be unstable, and the screen can tip over easily because it's where most of the weight is. The Lenovo Chromebook Duet's compact size might also make it uncomfortable to use on a lap for some people.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet isn't serviceable. We couldn't open it without risking severe damage to the tablet. We expect everything to be soldered on and non-upgradeable. Opening the tablet and making changes to the hardware may void the manufacturer's warranty.

• Lenovo Chromebook Duet
• Keyboard cover
• Back cover with kickstand
• 10W power adapter
• USB-A to USB-C charging cable
• USB-C to 3.5mm audio adapter
• Quick start guide

While the Lenovo Chromebook Duet's full HD resolution isn't particularly impressive on paper, it does result in a very high pixel density on such a compact screen, so images and text still look very sharp. Its 16:10 aspect ratio gives you a bit more vertical space in landscape orientation, which means you don't have to scroll as much, and it also gives you more horizontal space when using it as a tablet in portrait mode so that it doesn't feel overly narrow. The bezels are pretty thick by current standards, but at the same time, they provide a place to hold onto in tablet mode. It's touch-sensitive, and it also supports USI (Universal Stylus Initiative) pen input. If you want a similar device with a larger display, check out the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5 (2021).

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet has a basic 60Hz refresh rate with no VRR support, which is expected for a media consumption and light productivity device. As you can tell from the amount of ghosting in the motion blur photo, the response time is quite slow, so it isn't ideal for viewing fast-moving content.

Note: The horizontal stripes (moiré) in the photo are caused by the camera and aren't visible in person.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet has an okay contrast ratio, typical of most IPS panels. It means blacks look grayish in dark environments. The round spot in the photo is a reflection of the camera lens, not a screen defect. Chromebooks have a built-in Content Aware Brightness Control feature, a type of adaptive brightness, but it doesn't seem to affect the checkerboard pattern that we use for testing. The contrast ratio can vary between individual units.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet can get pretty bright, close to the advertised 400 cd/m². It's enough to combat glare in most settings, but visibility might still be a problem in direct sunlight. It gets very dim at the lowest brightness setting to reduce eye strain when viewing content in the dark. Like the Google Pixelbook Go (2019), the Content Aware Brightness Control doesn't seem to do much.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet's reflection handling is decent. It can be hard to view dark scenes if there's a bright light shining on the screen, but it's not too bad when viewing well-lit scenes with the screen at max brightness.

Our unit's black uniformity is just okay. There's clouding throughout the screen, and some backlight bleed at the corners. It's only noticeable when viewing dark scenes in a dark room, though. Black uniformity can vary between individual units.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet has good horizontal viewing angles. The image remains accurate when viewed from the side, great for sharing the screen with someone else.

The vertical viewing angles are decent. The image remains accurate as long as you don't tilt the screen too far.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet's out-of-the-box color accuracy is okay. Most colors are only slightly inaccurate, but white balance is visibly off. The color temperature is quite cool, which results in a blueish tint. The gamma doesn't quite follow the sRGB curve; most scenes are too bright, while dark scenes are too dark. Color accuracy can vary between individual units. If you want a laptop with a similar color gamut that displays much more accurate colors, check out the Acer Chromebook Spin 713 (2020).

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet has an excellent color gamut, with full coverage of the commonly-used sRGB color space. Its Adobe RGB coverage is great but likely too low for professionals working in that color space. Likewise, it has very good DCI P3 coverage, but not enough to provide a good HDR experience or for content creation. The Rec. 2020 coverage is sub-par, though very respectable for its class.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet's backlight is entirely flicker-free, which helps reduce eye strain for some people.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet 10.1 has a disappointing keyboard. It feels cheap, and it's too small and cramped even for people with small hands, making it hard to adapt to. The keys are fairly stable, with a good amount of travel for a type cover keyboard, but they feel tiring to type on for extended periods. If you're looking for a similar 2-in-1 laptop that provides a better typing experience, check out the Microsoft Surface Go 2 (2020).

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet has a bad touchpad. It's small, and you can only click on about 3/4 of the touchpad. Palm rejection isn't very good, so it occasionally picks up accidental touches when typing. Also, it doesn't always respond to gestures, and dragging and dropping items doesn't work at times.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet's speakers are bad. Although most laptop speakers lack bass, it's particularly noticeable in this case, so the overall sound is treble-heavy and slightly piercing. They also don't get very loud. If you want a Chromebook with better-sounding speakers, check out the HP Chromebook 14 (Intel Celeron N4000, 2021).

The webcam's video quality is sub-par. The image is too dark, causing a loss of fine details in the darker colors and shades. The microphone records good quality audio overall, but there's a lot of static in the voice. If you want a Chromebook with a better webcam, check out the Google Pixelbook Go (2019).

The Lenovo IdeaPad Chromebook Duet has a single USB-C port that supports video output with a maximum resolution of 720p, charging, and USB 3.2 Gen 2 (up to 10Gbps). A USB-C to 3.5mm audio adapter is included in the box because there's no headphone jack, but since there's only one port, you can't charge the device or connect an external display while using it for audio.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet's wireless adapter is a Qualcomm Atheros Model L QCNFA324.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet has a single CPU configuration, the MediaTek Helio P60T. It's a low-power ARM-based mobile SoC with four performance cores to handle demanding workloads and four efficiency cores to conserve power when performing simple tasks. It's powerful enough for light productivity like word processing, web browsing, and checking emails, but don't expect it to do heavy-lifting like video editing. It can handle most Android games from the Google Play Store except very graphically demanding ones.

The Mali-G72 MP3 is an integrated GPU in the MediaTek Helio P60T SoC. It can handle light tasks and most Android games from the Google Play Store, but it isn't powerful enough for demanding tasks, like 3D rendering, video editing, or graphically intensive games.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet only comes with 4GB of RAM, and it isn't upgradeable. It's enough for light productivity tasks and media consumption, but you'll experience some slowdowns if you have a lot of Chrome tabs open at once or have many things running in the background.

There are two storage options, 64GB and 128GB; both are eMMC drives. 64GB should be enough for most people, but it might be worth getting the 128GB option just to have some headroom.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet has a terrible score in the Geekbench 5 benchmarks, as expected for a device running on a low-power mobile SoC. We can't run the GPU compute test on our version of Geekbench 5 because it doesn't support the proper graphics API, though it's very likely that it'll perform poorly as well because it only has integrated graphics. If you want a similar laptop with better performance, check out the Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3 (2022).

Cinebench R23 doesn't work on Chrome OS. That said, we expect the CPU rendering performance to be poor.

We can run Blender through Linux on Chrome OS, but it can't detect the CPU or GPU. We're not sure why that is as it's a 64-bit SoC, though it's likely that Blender just doesn't support the MediaTek Helio P60T. As it's a low-power mobile SoC, we don't expect the performance will be sufficient for any practical purposes.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet scores terribly in the Basemark GPU benchmark. It can handle most Android games from the Google Play Store, but it struggles with very graphically demanding ones.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet's storage performs poorly, with very slow read and write speeds, as is expected from an eMMC drive. However, the system still feels responsive because Chrome OS is a lightweight operating system, and most tasks are web-based. You'll likely only see slowdowns when loading a demanding game or transferring files. Unfortunately, the 128GB storage option is also an eMMC drive.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet 2-in-1 has excellent battery life. Although it has a small battery capacity, it still manages to last well over a full workday of light productivity. It doesn't last as long for video playback, though, and even less if you play CPU or GPU-intensive games. Battery life can vary greatly depending on your usage.

Borderlands 3 doesn't run on Chrome OS. It's very unlikely that the Lenovo Chromebook Duet can maintain playable frame rates in such a graphically intensive game anyway.

Civilization VI doesn't run on Chrome OS.

CS:GO doesn't run on Chrome OS.

Shadow of the Tomb Raider doesn't run on Chrome OS.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet has superb thermal and noise performance. It doesn't get very hot even though it's a fanless device, and since all the components are on the screen side, the heat doesn't extend to the keyboard. The heat from the screen isn't an issue when in tablet mode either. You can see the tablet's thermal imaging here.

We can't run the performance over time test because the software we use isn't compatible with Chrome OS. If there's performance loss, it'll only be noticeable if you're performing heavy, sustained workloads.

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet doesn't have any additional software other than those that typically come with Chrome OS. Chrome OS is a lightweight operating system designed to run web apps through a Chrome browser and Android apps from the Google Play Store. You can also run Linux apps within Chrome OS. However, you can't install any x86 applications coded for platforms like Windows or macOS without a third-party solution. If you need a similar 2-in-1 device that can run x86 programs, check out the Microsoft Surface Go 3 (2021).

Every Chromebook has an 'expiration date' at which it stops receiving software updates, and according to Google's official document, the Chromebook Duet's end-of-life is June 2028. Google may extend this date as they have in the past for other Chromebooks; it's best to check their official document for any changes.

Our Lenovo Chromebook Duet doesn't have any extra features, but you can get a model that comes with a USI (Universal Stylus Initiative) stylus for pen input. Even if you get a model that doesn't include one, it'll work with any USI stylus.