Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 evaluation: the brand new king of Chromebooks

The world of Chromebooks has its MacBook Air.

Lenovo’s newest Chromebook Plus 14 is an Arm-based thin-and-light with good specs, wonderful battery life, an amazing keyboard, all-around stable construct, and a improbable OLED display screen. However the very best half is that its shiny and punchy 14-inch panel comes normal on the bottom $649 configuration or as a touchscreen for $749.

That’s cheaper than each the OLED-equipped Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus and Acer Chromebook Plus Spin with an IPS display screen. It’s additionally sooner than both with extra RAM.

The brand new Chromebook Plus 14 might be a go-to laptop computer for nearly anybody — should you’re okay dwelling with ChromeOS within the first place, in fact.

The Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 begins at $649 with a MediaTek Kompanio Extremely 910 processor, 128GB of storage, 12GB of RAM, and that wonderful OLED. Our evaluation config prices $100 extra, however it appears worthwhile for double the storage, 16GB of RAM, a touchscreen, and a fingerprint reader. It simply weighs barely extra, at 2.78 kilos as a substitute of the bottom mannequin’s 2.58 kilos. It’s pretty skinny at 0.62 inches, and for ports it’s acquired two USB-C, one USB-A, and a 3.5mm audio jack. The USB-C ports can help you use as much as two exterior 4K displays in tandem with the built-in show, although they’re a sluggish 5Gbps.

{Hardware}-wise, this laptop computer is sort of faultless, particularly for the worth. You get an amazing high quality 1920 x 1200 / 60Hz OLED, which isn’t a standout when it comes to decision and refresh price, however the coloration and distinction actually are. There’s loads of RAM in comparison with most different Chromebooks, and the keyboard feels simply as nice as a lot pricier Lenovo notebooks. The audio system are additionally fairly good, rendering a full sound for music and podcasts, and so they can get fairly loud. My solely small hangups had been with the webcam, which appears high quality other than a greenish tint, and the loud, cheap-sounding click on of the mechanical trackpad.

The Chromebook Plus 14’s efficiency is spectacular, particularly because it’s a very silent, fanless design like a MacBook Air. The 8-core MediaTek processor paired with 16GB of RAM is highly effective sufficient to simply deal with operating many Chrome tabs throughout a pair desktops. I uploaded just a few paperwork to NotebookLM within the background, permitting it to generate some audio overviews, and by no means bothered to cease utilizing any of my open tabs or Android apps. The Lenovo didn’t break a sweat. I did handle to get the MediaTek chip to decelerate just a little, however solely a pair instances. One was an unintended mini torture check — spamming Ctrl+Shift+T just a few too many instances to reopen a bunch of Chrome tabs and Information app home windows.

Frankly, Chromebooks are mature sufficient as of late that you need to anticipate greater than sufficient efficiency for on a regular basis multitasking — and the brand new Lenovo delivers. You are able to do virtually something in an online browser as of late, and the power to run each Android and Linux apps can fill in a number of the remaining gaps. However some gaps stay.

Zoom — whether or not within the browser, the Android app, or the “Zoom for Chromebook” progressive net app — was a buggy mess. The Linux model of Slack didn’t work, since Slack doesn’t have a model of its Linux app compiled for Arm chips. I can get by high quality utilizing Slack in a browser, although I a lot favor it as a standalone app. So have in mind this laptop computer’s structure might complicate issues should you’re planning to make use of Linux apps.

Unoptimized apps can scale back battery life, however the Lenovo’s 60Wh cell and power-sipping chip make it a battery champ regardless. On a lightweight day operating Chrome tabs, progressive net apps, and the Android model of Spotify, I may simply use the Chromebook Plus 14 from the beginning of my workday round 8AM to deep into the night. I as soon as began my day with 77 % battery, used it for round 9 hours with minimal standby time, and crossed 5PM with about 20 % nonetheless left within the tank. You possibly can in all probability get a number of days out of this factor should you’re cautious.

This battery life, mixed with the Lenovo’s general efficiency and wonderful display screen, makes it a straightforward suggestion. An x86 Chromebook can have higher Linux compatibility, if that’s necessary to you, and it’s attainable a future Snapdragon X-equipped Chromebook might shake up this area even additional. However the truth that you may get the touchscreen model for $749, a lower cost than different, slower flagship Chromebook Plus fashions, makes this Lenovo the very best Chromebook providing. It’s not a two-in-one convertible just like the Acer Chromebook Plus Spin 714, however it’s extra highly effective and has a nicer display screen. Samsung’s Galaxy Chromebook Plus additionally has a pleasant OLED just like the Lenovo, however in my testing I discovered its 16:9 side ratio display screen irksome (these ought to have stayed dead on laptops in 2021), and its quantity pad makes the keyboard really feel cramped.

The Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 appears like a correct successor to Google’s previous Pixelbook, with an amazing display screen and borderline-overkill specs that might really final the entire 10 years of promised software updates. It’s particularly interesting if you need an inexpensive, principally hassle-free laptop computer — with the power to decide in to some problem if you wish to tinker with Linux. That is the brand new king of Chromebooks, and general only a rattling good laptop.

Images by Antonio G. Di Benedetto / The Verge