The Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook has been unquestionably one of our favorite Chromebooks, holding its place on our Best Chromebooks list for over a year now, and the Duet 5 Chromebook improves on last year’s offering in almost every way – as long as you’re looking for a laptop more than a tablet.
At 13.3 inches diagonally, the Chromebook Duet 5’s keyboard is much more like those found on Ultrabooks, which still don’t have the most spacious keyboards, but are still much more accessible. At this size and with a 16:9 screen ratio, however, it’s much more of a laptop that can function as a tablet, as it’s a bit heavy. This is in contrast to last year’s 10.1-inch, 16:10 ratio model, which was a better tablet than a laptop, due to its cramped keyboard.
The keys on the Chromebook Duet 5’s keyboard are not backlit, like its predecessor, and the keyboard itself is still quite fragile, like its predecessor. The trackpad could also use some improvement. Our fingers encounter enough friction that swiping and gestures are inconsistent, but it’s not bad enough that you can’t get used to it and adjust the amount of pressure you apply appropriately.
Last year, the Duet Chromebook featured a 1,920 x 1,200 IPS LCD display, which was remarkable for a 10.1-inch screen. The Duet 5 Chromebook has a lower resolution of 1,920 x 1,080, but the screen has been upgraded to OLED, which makes it exceptionally bright and vivid.
Although both Duets have a brightness of 400 nits, the difference with an OLED display is simply incredible. The display isn’t the only thing that’s been upgraded this year, as the Chromebook Duet 5 has moved to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen2 processor, versus the MediaTek P60T chip in last year’s Chromebook Duet.
Both are high-performance ARM chips, and neither will offer the same raw performance as an Intel Core i3 processor, which some of the most powerful Chromebooks are equipped with. The Snapdragon 7c Gen2 is still a significant improvement over the MediaTek P60T. The Snapdragon 7c Gen2 finished the Kraken JavaScript benchmark in 1,845 ms, compared to 3,940 ms for the MediaTek P60T. That’s just over twice as fast as last year’s Chromebook Duet.
Still, the Snapdragon 7c Gen2 lags behind other Chromebooks in terms of benchmarks, but it still felt reasonably snappy when we actually used it. So unless you’re really looking to directly compare the Duet 5 Chromebook with the Asus Chromebook Flip C536, Google Pixelbook, or Acer Chromebook Spin 713, you’re not likely to see a performance lag – though it will still be there.
