Lenovo Chromebook Duet - InDepth user rundown [Unboxing, performance, gaming, emulation, etc] By Beau-Urns

I got this item from Lenovo in the mail today. This here is actually a Chromebook. I to be honest, never thought I would get a Chromebook. I always looked at them as like um. You know kind of I guess pointless for me, but I realized that you know I do use a tablet for media consumption quite a bit, and it would be nice to have something like this- that I can just quickly pop on a keyboard and use it. If need be.

You know it has all the advantages of a Chromebook. It was actually really cheap. You know, surprisingly, cheap. I think it was like 260, Canadian or something along those lines, uh, which is quite good what it is. So you know you're looking at like pretty respectable tablet price at that point, and this here is actually basically a tablet, slash a Chromebook, so it's the Lenovo duet, it's a two-in-one laptop, slash tablet.

I would call it one of the tablet. To be honest, it calls it a laptop actually calls a laptop right there, but I would call it more of a tablet that has a know: keyboard as part of it kind of like the uh. You know the Microsoft Surface tabs and things like that, so it has a better processor than that uh tablet. I was using there's, apparently a person least blowing outside my window, and he will probably return many times yeah. So it has a MediaTek p60t, which is a moderate upgrade to the tablet that I had generally, and the graphics is one of the things that it's actually better than on that tablet.

Um, and this one, I think, is the one yeah 128 gigabytes, um it can get smaller. I wouldn't, if you're going to use this, as you know, even something remotely close to like a primary laptop or even a backup, even for a tablet, because it's not expandable the lot of tablets and that Lenovo tablet was expandable. This one is not, so you're stuck with what you got. It does have a nice screen, though it's 1920x1200 resolution, it's an IPS screen, obviously, and I believe the nits on this was 400 yeah, so as expected with Lenovo, they have simple packaging, but nice packaging kind of just to the point uh shipped quickly, so I'm in Canada uh. The nice thing is for Canadians, um uh.

If you're ordering from Lenovo directly, or I guess eBay, I ordered this directly from Lenovo. You don't often pay any type of import taxes or duties or whatever, because Lenovo a lot of their products are made in USA, and we're part of the North American free trade agreement. So it goes both ways. Americans can get made products and Canadians can get American made products without paying all those fees which is really nice. So that's the tablet.

Let's have a look. What else is here? First, that's probably the keyboard, so that's just the user information guide and all that, I'm assuming probably a charger of sorts in here uses USB, so you can probably just use whatever this might be. I feel like this was like 10 watts or something like that. It doesn't actually say there: it is five or five volts, two amps yeah, so it has a headphone dongle, that's a very apple type thing, so the USB port uh, you just attach it, and you get a headphone dongle um. So I guess it doesn't have a headphone jack, which is in some ways I guess a downgrade for some people, but whatever it's how we live nowadays, uh.

This cable feels pretty good it's long enough. What is that three feet? Probably approximately or just shy of a meter uh the keyboard. So look at the tablet first, so it's basically the same size as the m10 tablet that I had that I just sent um feels almost identical. It's approximately 10-inch screen. I believe it's a 10.1 um, so you know some standard kind of larger tablet size. The bezels are a little larger on this one than on the m10 tablet um, but that's fine.

It is what it is uh it has one that'll be for the keyboard. There that'll, basically just be the latches um USB. That's the only like port on this, which can be annoying after using it. As a main computer- but you know you can get these like dongle things for pretty cheap again, I think I got this on an Amazon Qom. It has like a HDMI port converter, two USB type, a SD, and you can get more robust than this.

This one was just cheap and that's what I need so yeah. You can use that um. I believe the battery life on this is perfect from what I read. I think it was like eight to ten hours somewhere around there for just like standard use. So you know you could plug that in you don't need to charge all the time power volume up volume down speakers on the top there, which apparently aren't great, but it's a tablet, so whatever I'm fine with that, we'll get that in a sec.

So I guess this is the top cover yeah? How does that? I guess it's magnetized. I have to figure that out. This is the bottom, so this one does come with the um is called USI universal pens. That can be it's like a new initiative where they can be used on multiple devices. You can buy them separately.

This one was included which increased the value quite a bit for me because I will actually use it like that. So my partner has a Logitech one for her iPad, and it's basically identical it actually doesn't have a touchpad on that. This feels really nice actually touchpad feels quite nice. Nice click to it. Um- and this has the keys- are high enough and have enough travel to be fine.

I wouldn't have any problem using this. I mean it's 10 inches people are going to complain, but it's fine. The pen apparently is quite nice feels nice. Let's have a look at it. It's got good weight to it, so it is magnetized that felt quite nice.

Actually so look at the actual device. You know it's got this kind of almost feels like paper, it's nice. This is metal. This is like, like a plastic thing, it's nice that has a nice feel to it. Pops on really nice.

It does add a fair bit of weight, though so you know, without that, it's quite light. I don't know, maybe not, I wouldn't even say a pound. Maybe a sub pound um. This here weighs probably almost as much as the tablet. So when you add that on you're at probably two pounds when you add this on yeah I'd, say that's yeah around two and a half pounds, I would say maybe two pounds: um clicks on really nice, just strong magnets.

That's the one thing I like about Lenovo, like people have likes and dislikes about different laptops and devices, but their stuff is just feels good. Apparently, oh right there, so that actually separates out its tight on this side. It's just got a click to it and there you go there, we're basically set up. Did it really come uncharged? So I've never used chrome OS, not even once so. This is the first time for me.

So I guess it's like kind of like a hybrid between you know, a Windows machine and an android device um. So you do get often like the full version. So this is like full. Google Chrome. I guess this just popped up on its own um.

What is all this stuff? Weird? It already has a bunch of tabs here that I no idea um but yeah, like you, get the full version of a lot of apps um. You know like say, for example, you don't you can't run Netflix app or whatever I mean you can. But let's say you couldn't, you could go in here, and you could run Netflix in the browser, for example, uh being able to run a lot of android apps. Also, on this is really useful for me, because you know there are a lot of android stuff. That's free! I'm going to end up playing at least testing a bunch of emulators here, so I know, I often use tablets for emulation for gaming for like retro consoles, so I'm going to test that out at some point you know I'll install a bunch of stuff from the play store and see if those work out the same as they do.

So I just loaded up this thing. Called google canvas. One of the things I actually will use this for is um well, actually doing art. I guess this is the thickness here. Opacity size is that the thickness is in size yeah.

So whatever um you know, I've I've seen a couple reviews on just more actually more on the pen in general, I've seen a few on the pen and the hp universal pen as well. Basically they're talking about um. You know like how good is it, and I've seen that there's basically better apps for like way better apps that you can get for this type of thing so um but yeah, it's like that's a thin, and then you press harder. It does actually get a little. It doesn't get darker, but it gets wider.

So I guess that's just that's a typing program: let's test the keyboard. What was it? The quick was a typo already brown fox jumped over the lazy dog. Is that how it goes? The typing experience is fine. Um, the keys are a little smaller, not significantly so, but a little smaller and not as like a huge amount of separation. So I will, I'm also typing on an angle, but I suspect that you know if you use this for a day, you get the hang of it.

Some of these buttons here are reduced, but the actual you know like alphabet keys here, the qwerty keys are fine um. So I suspect, if you type for a little while you would uh get used to it after a while yeah. It's fine already. It's right, fine, um volume buttons in here which is cool. They seem to work, mute volume up or sorry, volume down volume up, that'll, probably sleep or lock the tab.

I'm not gonna. Do that brightness, um, okay! Well, it goes right off. Basically, um. That's pretty dark um! That's a task switcher, which is cool full screen. It seems snappy, I guess a redo button or an Endo back forward.

Those won't be for this. It seems snappy enough. I mean from what I've seen. Chromebooks are pretty snappy as it is. You can get.

You know Chromebooks with like intel processors and more powerful ones, but this is a tablet. This is exactly what I want. I want to be able to you, know pop this off here and just like scribble with it and use it as a media tablet and if I immediate device- and then, if I want you know, take it out of tablet mode attach the keyboard. I can type something up: real, quick and I'll just set up like a sync cloud or something like one drive or something or whatever, google. Whatever their thing is called Google Drive, let's go to the play store, and I'm not sure if there's like these just give you android apps or what's an android app that I've used uh, I'm still addicted to this game.

So, let's test it, and I'm curious, it will say like. Is it okay, it's supported or off bat um, I think oops. I think a lot of these games have come a long way towards being supported, chrome OS, I mean google's a massive company, and you know they do what they do. So I suspect it will be. You know, similar to an android experience, not fairly modern android experience not going to be like you know, 2021 brand new uh tablet.

Excuse me: um brand-new tablet, experience um, but you know top of the line type thing, but it's going to be pretty good because you know chrome OS is pretty lightweight from what I read Bob Ross is always good it does that snapping thing I think yeah there we go. Does that snapping thing? How do I make like a new tab? I'll just do this for now. Oh, just right there. So let's do YouTube again stay in chrome. Oh, he wants to open up YouTube out.

That's why which I'm not going to do it's my brother's video. I highly recommend obviously because he's superior to me in every way, and he's funny. So it's handling that perfect um. Lets watches this is the uh YouTube app? So just I guess I automatically went to the YouTube app, but you can also not run like I was doing before you can run in the window. So if you find that the YouTube app, you know if you don't want to run it that way, or you know you don't want to run Netflix in the actual app you can run it on the one of them and you browser sit back, and you watch the laughs.

Come in. Here's looking at you kid, the 90s man. What a time to be alive sounds fine, uh! It's crisp enough! Um, let's drop out here um from his video and let's go to something. That's bass! I mean these speakers sound fine. The bass is there, I'm not going to pick it up on my phone very well, it's not like a subwoofer, but it's doing totally fine with the base the low end.

The high end is actually pretty strong. So you know it's a little tinny or pitch, but uh sounds fine. It's better than the m10 tablet, like leaps and bounds better than the m10 tab that I had holy eyes. Jeez uh, it's fine! This is the channel by the way. Um sounds good.

So let's leave that running. I think it will keep running, because this is not like an iPhone or an android. So technically it should run one of minimize. No, it still wants me to pay for premium or whatever, because it's the app, but I suspect, if you run it in the browser, this is speculation here yeah. So now you can play in the browser.

Let's see if it will continue there, you go so that you know that's overcoming that whole YouTube premium thing where it wants you to you know if you have the app minimize it'll get out of there, because it doesn't want you to stream. It wants you to pay um, it's quite loud, so you know you can get around that with this type of device um. But you know you can run in browser, or you can run an app so which is pretty dope um my opinion, because you can actually run it normally. One thing I found a little odd was the actual um scrolling when you're, using when you're, not using the pen when using the touchpad um, so the touchpad itself is actually really nice, it's small. Obviously it's a small device, but it feels fine people would complain about it.

I guess no matter what, but in my opinion it's nice um. However, for me, it seems reversed, so I don't know going down that way, yeah that that just backwards to me, so you can just come in here and go to settings. Let's try that reverse scrolling yep. So the two finger gesture thing works great for me now, that's that's how I like it. So I just reverse that, and it feels perfect.

I'm just looking up a nice sketch program here, and it feels good, like you have lots of control here. It feels really, really nice so just popping in real, quick um to look at the storage amount. So it looks like here. This is stock. I've installed that one game um just you know that was like a gigabyte.

So it looks like you know, with the 128 gigs you're, looking at probably around four or five percent from stock um, which is pretty good. Actually, it's not bad um yeah, that was oh 300 megabytes. So basically it's stock. Okay! So now, let's test the camera. Um, if you can see that that's set up there, it looks fine um.

My hair is a little funky video zooms in a bit of photos. Fine um, the front-facing camera isn't going to be anything special, but it'll be fine, for you know conferencing and things like that. Actually, this looks better than you know like a generic webcam on a laptop. I don't know how good the sound is, but it looks fine to be honest um. So that's actually really impressive that webcam for what you're getting out of it.

Let's flip that around with the kit yeah as we stay with the case on um, it's fine, let's get something with some detail on it. Like a pen here, it's you know it's nothing! Special! It's not going to be. Like a know, a new flagship, iPhone or android device, but um, it's fine. It looks responsive enough. You know it's auto, focusing you can see things off in the background it looks pretty good yeah, not bad um better than I expected.

To be honest, I didn't expect it to be that good. I expected it to be awful, so uh yeah. That's actually a nice surprise that the camera is pretty good there. Okay, so here's a quick test of the front-facing camera with light coming in it looks fine uh yeah. It seems to adjust pretty quickly.

Let's see if we get something up close, it definitely prioritizes the face. I don't know if that's like google, AI or if that's just the way that it is, but it's definitely prioritizing your face. You can bring things in, and it won't focus as much on them. Like macro focus, it seems to focus right on your face. So I guess that's good for things like conferencing.

Are you curious? Why I'm filming you it's because you're such a pretty boy, we'll just do some quick playback right on here, so we can see the difference, and I'll, you know so. Playback is quick, really, really snappy. So good enough. I have no issues with that at all. Actually so I'll upload it, so you can actually see the difference there uh.

You know it's actually directly in the video okay. So the next thing I want to do is actually try out some emulation. Um. There is a couple of games, I'm going to try as well as native android games, but let's go through some of them. Let's try n64 man there's some little like audio sounds there you can hear but uh, that's probably through emulation, rather than the tablet itself yeah.

So it runs perfect, nice and smooth. This is not the most optimal. I guess I could set up the keyboard but um. You know you'd probably want to play this with like a game pad or something, but the looks good. The emulation is smooth.

The sound actually is fine. Here is just those menus. Okay, so here we are in some era.64. again, you probably won't use a game pad trying to use analog controls on here is just not good. Okay, so I mean there's no point in attending.

This is working perfect uh. The sound is near perfect. I'm doing here there we go. The sound is near perfect, um really no issue, so that works great n64. I kind of expected it to run well.

Um android has been able to run n64 for a long time. Okay, let's try uh strike crisis score to start. Apparently the ice was corrupt, but it's not working fine. So, so far, it's actually running great. The sound is excellent and uh.

It's loading super quick. I mean it's loading substantially quicker than running this on a veto or a PSP. Actually, okay, so here we go getting a little of in-game. Footage should pop over now Zach speaking, making progress that what's going on here. Why are we fighting Shira troops right, crazy, concentrate, I'm feeling it so low temperature, great relax? Listen if plans change I'll, let you know nothing better than shippable intros.

This is going to be brutal to control on the screen here like this, but so, as you can see, it's flawless speed's great a couple hitches sometimes that's just loading in new level assets but yeah. This is great yep. So that's working great. So clearly, PSP works flawlessly. Okay, so here's some dolphin emulator.

It didn't run very well on that Lenovo m10 tablet that I had I mean game cube is pretty challenging for a device like this anyways, and this also may not be the best emulator doesn't seem to be doing anything actually um. It actually doesn't have the best reviews on the android store. Oh there, it goes, it doesn't have the best reviews on the android app store um, so I mean there's, probably better emulators out. This is kind of what I used way back, but we'll give it a try. If it even remotely works on this.

You know, there's probably going to be other emulators you can use, but all right, so here's some backing some gameplay um. The sound is a little funny, but not terrible. It's lagging out there, and I wonder if that's loading in assets or if that's going to be continual, there's a bit of slowdown. I mean it's playable, okay, so here we are back in some wind water after that brutally long intro. I can't remember how to here we go seems to be running decently.

Um I mean. Obviously, these open world games are more challenging than you know, something that's 2d or a little more primitive. I guess, but if it runs on this there's a little of slowdown, the audio is perfect uh. This is a little slow down from time to time, but this is playable. You need a game pad to make it actually playable, but yeah.

So, as I suspected with a lot of these games, you know audio is where you get a little of funny business uh, but the actual game itself is running fine, as you can see, there's a know: a few frame drops here and there like when it loads in that back area there all right, so now we'll just try like an actual native game here, so we'll just try PUBG, because I tried it on the other tablet to see how it plays, and I've seen people do this with benchmark videos. So again, I've never played other than for a few seconds on my tablet, but it seems to be the way to go okay. So here we are loading up some pub g. We wait to board the plane. Okay, the extent of me playing this game was um playing on that tablet for two minutes, so not exactly well.

This actually is running quite a bit better, though than that tablet was just. I think you can change all the graphic settings here, so it's already set like it looks like it's set high here, so frame rate set too high. Let's set the graphics to HDR, see what happens, so I think I'm supposed to aim or something here: let's, okay, so the graphics are set relatively high here, and it's not choppy at all so far, let's actually go a little even higher sure, let's put ultra on ultra, see what happens. Oh, it didn't like that one. So I guess that the screen can't handle that, so we'll go HDM we'll go with ultra here and, let's see how it plays marked location.

Is that me doing that, or I don't think so yeah? So there's no chop here so whatever settings? Those are, you know basically as high as it lets me go seems to be fine uh. The other tablet had some load in when you were going to a new area would pause for a moment. It was fine, but it would have a moment to load in this. One seems to just be nice and smooth. Am I supposed to get these things? Sure? Somebody's shooting me uh, how's that, okay, I guess I killed somebody knocked out.

She is dead now cool. I killed somebody um. Can I get that anyways, so yeah? I never got to try to figure out what I'm actually doing here. It looks like the compatibility is perfect on a Chromebook. For you know, a lot of this emulation is pretty good.

Overall, I would say um there's, obviously devices that are going to do better if they have a dedicated GPU and a more more potent CPU, but this runs fine um. So there you go um. You know the gaming side of this actually seems to be pretty solid overall yeah. Actually, that's because maybe it will load quicker, see how quickly it loads in assets here uh totally fine. I don't see any lag actually whatsoever because it loads anything.

Another thing that we can do with the Chromebook to test it out for gaming. Are you know we can do some uh? I guess they call it PC gaming via dust box um. We can use dos box, and we can also use scurvy. So, let's actually use scurvy first, you know you can do this on any android device. I used to do it with my NVIDIA tablet, but you know this is having a built-in keyboard that works.

Naturally, uh seems to your know, work just generally. Quite well, so you know you can play older dust games? You can probably play some fairly recent ones too, but uh, let's test this out here. So the sound is good. You know we're getting the uh. I guess it's kind of ad-lib kind of sound keyboard works perfectly uh, so you know we're getting a lot of basically we're just using right away.

Movie in general works quite well um with devices um. It works well on android devices, but you know the sound is great noise. Is there it's not having issues recognizing it and the speed is perfect. You know I've played this game ad nauseam um, my youth and I guess out of hood as well, but uh yeah. The speed is great.

Everything seems to work fine, you know so really any of these uh. You know scum, vm, based games. Anything that's going to be. You know sierra or Lucas, arts they're going to work great. So you know you have access to hundreds, if not thousands of games in that sense, which is beautiful, um, and you know, I've played around with dos box, and you know you have access to dust basically, and it seems to automatically mount perfectly fine um.

I have dos box in my uh, basically my downloads, so you know I have a few downloads there, a few images there in my downloads um. Basically I had a video that I tested out, which is the webcam but yeah. It seems to be working quite well. Another sierra game actually forgot. This was made by Sarah there's a little of weird sound in the dos box, but I mean there's a lot of settings.

You can change in little light in dos box super loud huh, great sound though I don't know how good it comes across on camera, but it sounds great to me. The mouse is not necessarily integrated right now. I have to play around with that, but I know it'll end up working. Eventually, oh, you can use touch screen. So if I'll to figure out, if I can get the know the trackpad to work, but I'm sure it's usable, but you can use that, or you can use this, but actually touchscreen is really nice actually yeah.

That's the one start machine yeah, so you know it works fine. So you know that's another thing to consider you don't just have access to. You know, windows, games or to uh android games. You have access to, let's just close that right here you have access to basically dos across the board. Furthermore, you have access to um.

Furthermore, you know older text based games, action games, you have access to point and click games. They all run really, really well, so you know you have access to thousands of games, and it seemed to work perfectly. So you have android at your disposal. You have a lot of different emulation of consoles. Oh, and it looks like you know.

You have apparently windows here um. What did it say, volume up, which is weird, I'm not sure what that meant? Um the mouse works legitimately within this. So apparently we have Windows 98 running on a chrome on chrome, OS, so yeah. So everything works there. You know the trackpad works.

Amazing. Let's check the keyboard. Keyboard worked perfect, no issues didn't change any settings, I just turned it on, and it worked you know, so the mouse works, which is the trackpad in this case you can use your finger, but I would actually just use the trackpad and I guess in theory could we play games on here? I'm not sure, so that was cool. That's a little curiosity but uh yeah, so basically you're capable of doing emulation, you're capable of doing android games you're capable of doing you know dos games and that too, so you have access to quite a bit with this tablet and everything seems to run really smoothly. I'm very impressed with it and having that you know tablet function is actually really nice and having the touch screen.

Everything is great, but overall I think this is a pretty killer deal. Actually it was for Canadian. I think it was sub 300 with taxes in maybe 260 or so, which is the price of like a pretty budget tablet. It is a tablet um when you pop it out of here. It's quite light.

Super mobile, nice, bright screen, really nice. I took it outside, and it works great looks nice and vivid um. The keyboard is fine, it's not the best keyboard in the world, but it's better than really any other mobile keyboard. You can get. You know Logitech's in those um, it's just as good, if not better than those.

So absolutely no problem there trackpad is great. I actually have I'm actually surprised by that. The keyboard is you know it's fine, it's nothing special, but the trackpad is really nice, actually um. Surprisingly, so, so wonderful um! The tablet is overall, very responsive. I've had no issues.

I've had lots of. You know: google tabs open uh. You know when I was gaming and doing some emulation there were things open as well. So you know, that's fine even only has four gigs of ram. That appears to be enough for what I was doing.

Um. You know the speakers are fine, they're, nothing special, not groundbreaking, but they were enough. I would say, camera also fine. You know this isn't a flagship phone and this isn't like a 1 200 iPad. So you know you can't expect something like that, but for sub 300 Canadian taxes in its pretty killer, actually um, and if you don't get the pen, you know you can pay 20 or 30 or 40 less, but why not? The pen actually worked really.

Well, I'm pretty surprised at how. Well this is working um. You know it's very responsive, um. You know finger you get like a nice coverage area, so you have to actually have to press with it. Furthermore, you can't just like gently touch the screen like that.

Like I'm, barely touching it doesn't respond. You actually need to put a little of pressure into it um and at which point it works totally. Fine, I'm probably going to get a glass screen protector, which I don't suspect will affect the performance of the um, the pen. But if it does, I will update with that I'm going to order. It'll probably take a couple of days to get here, so I'll.

Do that, and I'll record set this video up in the meantime and by that time I will have installed it and see how it works, but yeah looks like android. Apps have good, really, really good compatibility overall, no issues there, so you know you're, basically getting the benefits of an android tablet you get, but you get chrome OS, which is lightweight you're, not getting a lot of bloated crap in it. There's lots of benefits to chrome as well. It's not exactly going to replace a Windows machine because you know you can't play Windows games on it, but this could easily replace an android tablet and if I were getting a Chromebook in general, I would probably get this instead of getting like a dedicated Chromebook laptop, because at that point, if you're getting like an actual laptop, just buy a laptop, buy a Windows machine they're, not expensive, you're, going to get better specs. You might pay a little more, but you know it's just better overall um.

But if you want a tablet like this is a great buy. I'm actually very happy with this. I'm it's pretty substantial, upgrade to that android tab that I had, which was fine, but this is a pretty substantial upgrade in performance and just usability like you know, pen uh, you get the case here. Um it just protects it. You get a keyboard trackpad! You get all this kind of stuff, so it's actually perfect.

So I'm impressed with it um. I didn't. I honestly never thought I would buy a Chromebook. Furthermore, I used to kind of like be like what is the purpose of these, but once I saw when there was a tablet- and you know- runs android apps natively, that's basically my answer right there. So yeah, it's great! I actually do recommend it.

So anyways yeah, thanks for watching.

Source : Beau-Urns