The two rely solely on magnets to lock them in place, so they will sometimes pull apart from each other during normal use when you least expect it. Our other major issue with the Lenovo Duet is the way its magnetic kickstand cover and keyboard attach to the tablet. Its responsiveness is noticeably lower than that of a traditional laptop's touch pad, which are already tricky widgets to begin with, so the track pad's problems become all the more glaring. The track pad is also lackluster, though functional. Unfortunately, this will be very difficult for nearly everyone accustomed to full-sized keyboards and, for some, it might be physically impossible to effectively use. The keyboard is the physical embodiment of a touchscreen's compact, virtual keyboard, so it definitely takes some practice to accurately use it. Nothing is perfect, however, and the Lenovo Duet definitely comes up short in some important areas. It's the computer that last decade's netbooks promised to be - but couldn't quite become - while taking the Chromebook to its next logical step. As far as Chromebooks and 2-in-1 laptops go, this is the best value you're going to find in a portable device of its kind, hands down. Not until now.įinally, it does all this for less than $300. Simply put, you just don't see this robust of an OS packed into a tablet.

Chromebooks now come with a downloadable beta version of a Linux virtual machine, so you can use an actual terminal interface and all the Linux software accessible through it.

This would already put the Duet well ahead of the competition, but it still has more to offer on the software front. So when the battery finally gave up the last of its charge 21 hours and 29 minutes after we began our test, it could very well have been out of pity.Īll that battery life gives you a greater opportunity to take advantage of the Lenovo Duet's full access to the entire Android app ecosystem on top of all the other Google apps built into Chrome OS.

We were really, really exhausted by the end. And not the 9-to-5-workday-plus-a-commute that people usually mean when they say their battery lasts all day – we're talking about an actual, fully-rotate-the-entire-frickin-planet-on-its-axis kind of day.

Lenovo ideapad duet 3 test