Customer Ratings & Reviews

Pros: I'm glad we finally have an ARM-based Chromebook Plus. The MediaTek processor on this Chromebook is completely fanless, silent and power efficient while being faster and more powerful than previous MediaTek processors. You can easily go an entire work day without charging, since the battery life lasts over 10 hours with moderate use. The unit has a backlit keyboard and a 14-inch touchscreen that is a bright 400-nits. Another perk is the 16 GB of RAM which allows you to run as many tabs as possible and comfortably run Android apps and some Linux apps side by side without taxing the system. There is a fingerprint reader for extra security, a camera privacy shutter, two USB-C ports, a headphone port, and a USB-A port. The speakers are decent upfiring speakers. Like most Chromebooks, boot-up is almost instant and since I mostly use web apps (Google Docs, Zoom, Meet, Microsoft Office 365, Discord, Google Keep, and WhatsApp), it makes a fast productivity and office machine. The web apps feel like regular apps since they open in their own separate window as PWAs. Cons: Some web apps like Zoom unfortunately have less features than their desktop counterparts (but still work well), such as annotation during share mode. Another downside is that it doesn't run Steam (which runs on some Intel-based Chromebook Plus machines), but this is mostly due to the ARM processor. At the end of the day, as long as you know ChromeOS' strengths (lightweight, secure and speedy) and limitations (no heavy apps or gaming), it makes for a great machine that I find myself using more often than my PC or Mac.

It's amazing how far Chromebooks have came. Throughout the years, I have had the opportunity to explore a variety of Chromebooks across different platforms, ranging from Google's own Pixelbooks to HP and other devices, but this particular model distinguishes itself from all of those in so many ways. Dare I say it, Lenovo and Google may have created the perfect Chromebook. This thing excels across virtually every category of what a Chromebook is supposed to be. What exactly is a chromebook supposed to be, you may ask? Well, think of a chromebook as a minimal, yet powerful Macbook Air that does the daily tasks efficiently, easily and well. Sure, a Chromebook may not play your favorite game on Steam or help you edit a mass amount of photography photos, but other than those GPU intense tasks, a Chromebook is supposed to make everything else much easier. And this one does. ChromeOS is a minimal, yet robust OS that was built from the ground up to be easy to navigate. Starting with the build quality, it feels exceptionally high-end. The laptop is not only lightweight but also crafted in an efficient way, avoiding any awkward hinges or cheap-looking shapes and textures that often plague lesser models. It's not trying to win any style awards. Instead it's trying to up the quality not seen in Chromebook before. The keyboard offers a satisfying typing experience with clear tactile feedback, optimal key depth, and a backlighting feature that makes it convenient for late-night sessions. The trackpad is both responsive and smooth, steering clear of the tinny or hollow sensations that are frequently associated with budget laptops priced under $1,000. Speaking of price. This is $750, which does seem like it would be steep for a Chromebook, but the difference between the quality in this and my son's $200 HP Chromebook is night and day. And that's across every single category. Think about it this way: if you are happy with a $1000 laptop, that's great. But know that if you had the chance to go with a $2,500-3000 laptop, you would notice a lot of difference in quality, and that's the same idea here with a $750 Chromebook. Or if that comparison doesn't work for you, compare this thing with a MacBook Air. Both machines are powerful, but only one has the quality and power to outperform their asking price. When it comes to audio, the speakers deliver an impressively robust sound profile, hitting a fine balance between depth and clarity while maintaining good volume levels without distortion. While they may not completely match the audio fidelity found in a robus laptop, they still offer a notably superior experience for most users. This is especially true when compared to a tablet. The display, another standout feature, is an OLED panel that provides vibrant colors, deep blacks, and outstanding contrast. It achieves sufficient brightness for outdoor use in direct sunlight, although optimal visibility is maintained in indoor or shaded conditions. The resolution is at 2K. And that is where you'll find the one and only con (which isn't too big of a concern to me thanks to the great screen). We all love resolution, and once you experience 4K OLED or even 2.5-3K OLED, you may notice that 2K could be improved. But like I said, with the true blacks, vibrant colors, the OLED technology makes this a screen you won't complain about on its own. It offers 12 hours or more of battery life even under heavy usage, showcasing exceptional power management capabilities, thanks in large part to the powerful ARM chip that competes closely with Apple’s M-series processors. The laptop’s most outstanding qualities are undoubtedly its performance and battery life. Equipped with 16 GB of RAM and a high-speed MediaTek ARM chip, the laptop handles demanding tasks with ease. You will not have to worry about any slowdown with this machine. If you're an avid abuser of open windows you don't close, then you'll be enabled to keep doing you with this thing. ChromeOS, offers a clean, uncluttered user interface designed for maximum productivity and it shines with this powerful Chromebook. As with any Chromebook, the set-up process is super easy and quick. You'll be enjoying this thing within just a few minutes. If you're looking for either a productivity machine that can also be a great entertainment tool, but don't want to fork over $2K+ for a powerful traditional laptop, you will be happy with this Lenovo Chromebook Plus machine. It does everything you need it to do (unless you're a professional photographer or gamer).

ChromeBooks used to be just large Android tablets with a built-in keyboard. The category has steadily improved and they are now viable alternatives to a full Windows or Mac laptop for many uses. The lines are further blurring between traditional laptops and alternative models like this ChromeBook Plus with its powerful AI capabilities. They remain easier to set up and maintain than laptops, and this ChromeBook Plus is the fastest and most functional one I have used. The price is starting to creep into the mid-tier laptop range but for those who don’t need to run apps that only install on Windows Macs, this Lenovo Chromebook run longer and get the job done faster and easier. Highlights: * Thin and light with a cool metal lid. * Beautiful 14” OLED touchscreen. * Fingerprint reader for screen lock and authentication in supported apps. * Fast with plenty of storage. * Very good audio (Dolby Atmos with 4-speakers and downward firing woofers). * Roomy backlit keyboard with helpful function keys. * Compact 65W USB-C power adapter. * 1440p video camera for clear video calls. * 2x USB-C, 1x USB-A, 1x 3.5mm audio in/out jack. * Tons of on-device AI features that don’t require a subscription. Room for Improvement: * Folding prongs on the charger and a cable wrap would be nice. * Sliding camera cover is a challenge to use. * Price is getting close to or even surpassing full laptops. Setup Experience: There are only two items in the main box; the Chromebook itself and the charger. The charger plugs into either USB-C ports on the sides but only the port on the left side has a charging status light next to it. Plug it in and you should see a yellow light by the left port indicating that the notebook is charging. That light turns green once the battery is fully charged. Open the lid and press the power button. All further setup is done within ChromeOS and is pretty typical of other Chromebooks. If you already have a Google account or are upgrading from an older Chromebook, just sign in and your new ChromeBook will be set up to join your other Google devices. You can use either the trackpad or the touchscreen to continue setup and the keyboard makes it easy to type in passwords and other credentials. Once setup is complete, you can start browsing the built-in apps, download your favorites (if not already installed based on a previous account), and check out the various perks included with your new Chromebook such as the free 12-month subscription to Google AI Pro. Hardware Experience: The sleek metal lid is cool to the touch and easy to open using the bump that houses the camera. That cool metal touch continues down to the area surrounding the keyboard and trackpad giving the whole chassis a feeling of quality that plastic doesn’t typically convey. Starting at the top and working down… above the screen is the QuadHD (1440p) front-facing camera with dual microphones, an LED to indicate when the camera is in use and a mechanical shutter for privacy. The video quality is quite good even in moderate light and the microphones work well as long as you’re not in a public space where you really should be using a headset anyway. The camera can be blocked with a mechanical shutter by sliding a switch but that switch is really small and hard to see. Lenovo put a sticker on it to bring it to your attention, but that doesn’t make it any easier to slide even after you know where it is. When set for privacy, the lens is covered by a red disc that is more visible than the black lens normally is. I found it a tad distracting but nothing I couldn’t get used to in the name of privacy. The star of this Chromebook is the beautiful 14” OLED touchscreen. The bezels are slim but not the smallest I’ve seen. Regardless, you probably won’t care about bezel sizes since the colors are so vibrant and the contrast is so high. The screen maxes out at only 400 nits of brightness which isn’t quite enough to use it direct sunlight like outside, but it’s still bright enough to work well in a well-lit room or in the shade outside. The ambient light sensor automatically adjusts the screen and keyboard backlights as needed to balance clarity and battery life while ensuring comfort in dimly lit rooms. The keyboard is roomy and easy to type on with helpful special function buttons to do things like refresh the page, maximize the window size, take a screenshot, turn on dictation, mute the microphone and the usuals like adjusting the volume and brightness. Near the spacebar is the “G” key which opens the main system menu where can immediately type to search for files, settings or even Gemini. It’s super convenient to just tap that G key and type your question for a quick answer. The typical Caps Lock key can be set by default to instead be the “Quick Insert” function. The last thing copied is in there as well as the most recent files, the clipboard and quick ways to access other things that you might want to insert into whatever you’re working on. There’s an easy way to switch to the usual Caps Lock function if you prefer, but this Quick Insert menu seems far more useful to me. The stereo speakers flanking the keyboard face upward and the audio is licensed by Dolby Atmos. It was definitely loud enough to hear for close-up enjoyment but if you want a more private listening experience or need to amplify for a large or noisy room, you can pair any suitable Bluetooth headphones or speakers or plug in a wired headset via the 3.5mm jack on the right side. That 3.5mm jack also supports a wired microphone if you have one. The whole ChromeBook feels solidly built yet lighter than your average full notebook. The metal lid and keyboard feel cool and “genuine” versus plastic. The entire underside of the unit is ribbed rubberized plastic that should reduce sliding around on a table and be a bit more insulating on your legs. The feet are long strips which should aid in stability and make the whole thing more comfortable to use. The quoted battery life is 17 hours on a full charge. Of course, your mileage may vary based on how bright the screen is set to, how loud the speakers are playing, how strong your WiFi signal is and what tasks you have it doing, but that’s still a great number to aspire to. Software Experience: This particular Chromebook Plus has plenty of RAM and power under the hood - more than your typical Chromebook. It’s powered by the new MediaTek Kompanio Ultra chip which enables a suite of cool AI-based features that process locally for privacy and for use when the notebook is not connected to the ‘net. Sure, this thing performs when doing anything I threw at it including apps designed for Chromebooks as well as apps designed for Android phones or tablets. With its windowed interface, you can have multiple apps running at the same time and overlap or tile their windows to suit your working style. Like browsing the web and keeping an eye on TikTok at the same time? Set them up side-by side. Browsing your favorite teams while watching the latest game? Tile 4 different pages or apps on the screen at the same time. You have the freedom and flexibility to work or play as you want. The MediaTek Kompanio Ultra chip also beefs up some of the standard apps with new local AI features. In YouTube, you can ask questions about the video and the AI will essentially watch the video for you and answer your question based on the content. In YouTube Music, you can do fun stuff like ask for music that answers odd questions like, “Play that song with lyrics that are confused with Lucy is this guy with diamonds.” The Smart Grouping feature is currently exclusive to this Chromebook. Let’s say you’re researching an upcoming trip and you’re trying to decide between two places. You have tons of web browser tabs open; some for each city, some about hotels and some about things to do. This feature will automatically group things together by topic into virtual desktops named for that topic. Another fun trick by the local AI is on-device image generation. Updating your social media and need that perfect image of a Hedgehog making pizza? Just ask for it and paste it in. The audio Recorder app is super useful if you want to get your thoughts down by dictating them. With your new AI superpowers, now this app can listen for multiple voices, label who said what, provide a transcription of exactly what was said and even give you a summary of the whole conversation including who said what. The beefed up Gallery app now has the ability to remove backgrounds, erase objects, make a sticker out of something from the image, or even do web searches of anything from the image using Google Lens. Another super helpful thing for me is the ability to extract text from an image. Video calls on this Chromebook are really great. The higher-resolution video camera on the lid, the good microphones and the Dolby Atmos speakers really let the video call shine. Now you have some extra fun features to put you in new backgrounds during the call. Summary: This Chromebook Plus has all of the ease and familiarity of an Android phone or tablet with the power and flexibility of a traditional notebook computer. Powered by the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra, super helpful features are now possible in both new apps and apps you already use. The bright 14” OLED display and Dolby Atmos speakers make your content shine. How you get your stuff done is more flexible than ever between the roomy keyboard and trackpad and the touchscreen. For most people, this Chromebook Plus will more than get the job done faster and easier than a traditional notebook while being easy to carry and lasting long on a charge.

This Lenovo Chromebook Plus is nicely put together and extremely light. As of design it is not something that wows but is an attractive modern looking device. What really stands out are its specs. It features a 14 inch 2K OLED touchscreen that looks stunning, powered by a Mediatek Kompanio Ultra ARM processor, 256GB of Universal Flash Storage (UFS), and 16GB of RAM. Connectivity options include a USB-C port on each side and a USB-A port. Setting it up was extremely simple especially if you are already in the Android echo system. If you’re a new Android user all you need is a Google account. I currently have an Android phone and all it took was to scan the barcode with my phone, and my account was transferred fast and seamlessly. The screen looks amazing, sharp with vibrant colors. The touchscreen is smooth and highly responsive. Performance wise, this Chromebook handles multitasking like a champ, it is very fast, it swaps between programs with no lag. I was really impressed. The stereo speakers sound good, while not extremely loud but nice and clear with spatial sound. The touchpad is accurate and responsive, I also notice that the scrolling with multi fingers is not in reverse by default as before, swiping up scrolls up and vice versa. The keyboard feels good, the keys are soft and quiet and they are back lit. Adjusting the keyboard brightness, however, requires going into the settings menu unless it is set up to auto. The finger print scanner is quick and reliable . Battery life is also excellent, after several days of moderate use I still had over 50% left. What’s also great about this system is that it runs cool and practically in silence. Overall, this is an impressive Chromebook, fast, smooth, silent, and equipped with a gorgeous 2K OLED display. It’s lightweight and perfect for work, media, and travel. However, despite its premium performance and build, the design doesn’t particularly stand out, and the high price feels a bit hard to justify. In the box, you get the Chromebook, a power adapter, and manuals.

As someone who’s spent years in educational technology, I’ve been around a lot of Chromebooks over the years. About five years ago, I remember encountering my first “high end” Chromebook, and my takeaway then was that enhanced specs didn’t do much to really alter the fundamental Chromebook experience. I think subsequently Google has realized that with ChromeOS, creating the Chromebook Plus designation, which marks higher spec Chromebooks while also expanding their capabilities. This Lenovo Chromebook Plus is not only one of the nicest Chromebooks I’ve ever used, it really does finally give a reason to go beyond a more basic Chromebook, with the higher specifications tied to greater capabilities. It’s a beautifully designed machine. The aluminum chassis looks and feels great, with an undulating, scalloped bottom, and it feels light. (And at under 3lbs, it is.) I really liked the keyboard’s feel–not mushy at all. (And like all 14” designs, don’t expect a number pad.) The keyboard is backlit, although it’s subtle (you can turn it up in settings though). The keyboard is flanked by speaker arrays, which are prominently touted as Dolby Atmos with the on device badge. They were surprisingly excellent with far better bass response than I’d have expected, especially in a chassis this thin. The trackpad likewise had a great responsive feel, and to the right of that is a fingerprint reader for biometric authentication. Above the keyboard you find a 14” 16:10 (1920x1200) OLED 60Hz touchscreen display. Like all OLEDs, the contrast is of course superb (since it’s technically an infinite contrast ratio). The specs say it is rated for 100% of the DCI P3 color space, which is very impressive, but I do not have a colorimeter to test that. I can attest that it’s a very nice looking screen with fantastic viewing angles, but curiously I couldn’t get any HDR Youtube videos to be seen as such. I checked the flags settings in Chrome for HDR and only saw a toggle for external displays (of which this Chromebook can drive 2 additional), but nothing for the built-in display. Still, it’s vibrant and bright. Above the display is a raised notch which contains the webcam. This gives you a small area to grab when opening the Chromebook, and helpfully, the webcam has a physical privacy shutter. This Lenovo Chromebook is powered by Mediatek’s Kompanio Ultra 910 CPU, an ARM-based chip that appears to have some serious horsepower. Now it’s true that I've rarely encountered a Chromebook that felt “slow”, but this one does feel subjectively very fast. Everything opens instantaneously and it never feels bogged down. (Having 16GB of very high speed LPDDR5X undoubtedly helps.) The CPU is bolstered for on-device AI through a 50 TOPS NPU, which is pretty impressive. And all of this doesn’t come at the expense of battery life, which is just insanely good at up to 17 hours, which really seems to be pretty accurate. I’ve hardly had to touch the charger! So what can you do with all of this? Of course being a Chromebook you have full access to the panoply of Google services like Google Docs, Drive, and Gmail. But what’s much more front and center with a Chromebook Plus is the AI focus. This Chromebook Plus comes with a free subscription to Gemini Pro (advanced AI plus storage). The Gemini app and the amazing NotebookLM app are prominently featured on the dock. Additionally, the Gallery app can utilize on device AI to do edits on photos, and it did work pretty well on a test photo expanding backgrounds and removing others. Another interesting AI feature is within Meet, where you can use AI to generate backgrounds for your camera feed. It worked really well from text prompts, either alone or in conjunction with a preset. For example, if I used the tropical beach scene, and then asked for a medieval castle, it would generate a castle on the beach. Chromebooks have always been good content production devices for basic tasks, but with the addition of all the advanced AI tools, along with the just the higher quality elements like CPU and screen, move this Chromebook up the ladder (as the Plus moniker implies). There’s a lot you can do with this device between ChromeOS and the ability to also leverage Android apps. For an AI enthusiast such as myself the AI integration that comes with the subscription is very handy, and Gemini is one of my preferred LLMs. For anyone looking for a premium device, especially if invested in the Google ecosystem or is a heavy AI user, this model ticks a lot of boxes. A great screen, blazing fast responsiveness, and absurdly good battery life really make this a very compelling option. Recommended

When opening, and taking laptop out of the box, the first impression is the excellent fit and finish. Looking it over, it appears to be an all alloy exterior, except for the bottom which has a plastic cover. I see no ventilation holes so the laptop must stay cool enough to not need fan cooling Turning it on, brings up the set up screen, and went though the usual setup, update, and app installations. After setup, the first thing that really jumped out at me was the screen. At 14 inches, the 2K touch screen seemed bigger than it was. The OLED display didn't disappoint. It was bright at 400 nits, deep saturated colors, and with the 1920 X 1200 resolution, sharp and clear. Refresh rate is 60Hz, which will make movies, games, videos, appear smooth. The laptop has a MediaTek Kompanio Ultra Series, 8 core 8 thread processor, with 3.62GHz boost frequency. Along with 16Gb LPDDR5X ram, and a 256Gb UFS storage, this laptop is extremely fast and has plenty of plenty of storage for apps and personal files. However, one downfall - there is no media card reader. So if extra storage is needed, an external device will have to be used. The track pad is a spacious 3 inch by 4 ¾ inch. I found the pad to be very responsive and clicks accurate. The keyboard is backlit with continuously variable lighting level. Travel was reasonable with a good feel when typing. The sound from the 4 speakers is excellent for a laptop, with plenty of volume. Front facing camera is a 5 megapixel, and excellent for video calls etc. The only ports are 2 USB-C, 1 USB-C, and a headphone jack. USB-C port can be used as a display port. I jumped in right away to the app “NotebookLM” and just picked any topic – ukulele – and was blown away. The app downloaded a number of sources, displayed text, images, and then the AI combined and integrated the information into a single audio presentation. All the information provided online was covered, and was integrated in a logical fashion. The presentation was presented in a “conversational” manner, with a with a male and a female voice speaking back and forth, and sounded very natural. The Google assistant AI app – Gemini - can be used for many different interactions. Image generation can be done and modified simply by inputting a few key words. Research is easily done, and the AI can accomplish tasks such as integrating or summarizing information, generating texts, even images, etc. Extremely helpful for everyone – for home, professionals, especially to students or researchers, etc. While working, I kept all these apps open and also had the browser with multiple tabs open, and this machine didn't slow down at all. I downloaded apps, copied large files, music and pictures to the Chromebook. The laptop is blazing fast, and I was pleasantly surprised how quickly it did these tasks. When watching movies, videos, playing games, the OLED display brings them alive with saturated colors, and deep perfect blacks. Games were smooth and fluid, and as mentioned, the sound from the 4 speakers was full, and made everything come alive. My only second complaint, though, is the lack of any color balance or color temperature control. The screen has a “warm” coloration in white areas, even when the “Night Light” is toggled off. However, there are a few settings I have found that can compensate. Battery life is touted to up yo 17 hours, and that may achievable. I have had this on for 6 hours – at 85% brightness – and still have 65% battery reserve. So far, this Chromebook has zipped through everything I have thrown at it, and never missed a beat. This machine utilizes AI apps such as NotebookLM, Gemini, does research, surfing, email, plays games – every type of task I have tried – flawlessly. I would highly recommend for students, college grads – anyone.

I recently had the opportunity to test out the new Lenovo Chromebook Plus and my experience was much better than I had originally expected. This Chromebook Plus is the perfect blend of power, portability and value. So, let’s go over what the new Lenovo Chromebook Plus has to offer. Design: This laptop looks and feels premium but at the same time being compact, lightweight and travel friendly. Portability is no issue with this laptop being 14” and weighing only about 2.575 pounds making it ideal for on the go. Display: Let’s start off with the first thing you see when you turn this laptop on, which is the display. This Chromebook Plus offers a beautiful 14-in 2K OLED touch screen display (1920 x 1200 resolution) with a 60Hz refresh rate. The colors are vibrant, the text is clear and sharp, making everything from being productive to watching your favorite video a delight. Being a touchscreen laptop is just a plus. It’s super responsive and makes interacting with Windows even more intuitive, like scrolling through photos, surfing the web, using touch controls on videos, and even just simply using the icons on the screen. Performance: I wasn’t sure what to expect since this was my first time trying out a device with the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra chip 8 core processor 3.62 Ghz with 16GB of LPDDR5X, but I was genuinely impressed. This processor is clearly built with ChromeOS in mind, it’s quick, energy-efficient, and handles everyday tasks and multitasking without breaking a sweat. ChromeOS really shines on this setup. It runs super smooth, is simple to navigate, and the deep integration with Google apps makes everything feel effortless. Plus, being able to install and use Android apps adds a whole new layer of flexibility to what this Chromebook can do. Battery life: This is where this laptop shines. The battery life on this thing is phenomenal. One of the best things about this processor is how efficient it is. Chromebooks with the Kompanio 1200 Ultra can easily last a full day, believe me because it has been tried and tested. I took this laptop on a flight from Chicago to Miami which is about a 3.5-hour flight. I was able to be productive, watch a movie and even do some casual browsing on a single charge with battery to spare. Ports: 1 USB-A 3.2 2 USB -C 3.2 Audio Jack WIFI - 7 Pros: • 2K OLED touchscreen • Smooth performance • Long battery life • Quiet and lightweight • Surprisingly loud speakers Cons: • It’s ChromeOS, so it’s not ideal if you need Windows/Mac-only apps Overall, this is a great laptop for someone that is especially looking for the Chrome OS. It’s fast, efficient and ChromeOS is easy to use. It offers a premium display with great sound quality and overall offers excellent performance. If you are in the market for a Chromebook, definitely check this one out.

This is my first Chromebook and I gotta say, I’m a believer now! It’s not a perfect OS by any means, but it’s FAR BETTER than its reputation led me to believe. It did everything I needed it to and more! From documents, to media consumption, and even a little bit of development work in Python. I also found using Android apps pleasant too. I was able to play games, and it lasted a long time on battery. Honestly the Chromebook hatred seems overblown, but I’m only speaking for myself, I wish I took a chance on Chromebook sooner. I see this being a good option for college, if there's no special applications needed. For example, you can use a ton of online IDEs including VSCode without an issue, and who knows maybe there's a Chromebook specific one if you're not too keen on getting Linux environment installed. Praise - It has quite a great screen (though it doesn’t seem to have HDR, not sure if that’s a ChromeOS limitation or the displays), I loved the speakers, keyboard, and the build quality isn’t bad. It has deck flex for sure, but it’s pretty good overall. I really appreciate the battery life, and the performance, it’s quite good! I had no issues running Android apps, played games smoothly, both locally and streaming was great using Luna, GeForce Now and Xbox GamePass (Obviously it’s an Xbox). That said, the network card is really fast. I was able to get 1418 Mbps download speed using a speed test and I had a good time with it. Also the battery life is amazing. My first day with it I used it like a mad man! It’s a new toy afterall, and from unboxing it at 6 PM, to 11 PM at night, I ended the day with 76% left. As time progressed I stopped caring about the battery because it’s super good. Complaints - First and foremost, like I mentioned above, where is the HDR on this? Is this a ChromeOS issue or display issue? No matter what it is, it’s a bummer. Yes the blacks and colors still look amazing, but not having HDR is weird! Out of the box the keyboard lighting is low and because this is my first Chromebook, I didn’t realize there was a setting in settings for a long time that would address my keyboard lighting issue. The overall build quality is good, nice aluminum frame, but it feels very thin and cheap. There’s more deck flex than I’d like. I also don’t like the ‘Chromebook Plus’ branding on the lid. I wish it didn’t have that and was just by itself or just said “Lenovo” in the front. Because it’s an ARM CPU, I can’t install Steam sadly. It makes me a little annoyed there. But I can just install the Google Play Version. Can’t play games, but at least I can buy games and do basic stuff. And my final complaint is the feet of this laptop, it’s basically plastic. Which means it slides around like nothing. I don’t like it when laptop companies do this. Put proper grips on the bottom. And my final complain is the WiFi Card… I know I know I just praised it for its speed, but if you have a Mesh home network, it keeps saying “You’re offline” despite not being offline. I think it’s having issues with it hopping between nodes. I don’t know, but it’s more of an annoyance than a hindrance if that makes sense. Design - It appears to be aluminum, but mentioned before it’s on the cheaper side. Almost feels too thin. There’s deck flex, and it’s lighter than I feel like it should be. Perhaps you’ll like the weight of it. It feels nice overall though despite those observations. It doesn’t lay flat and isn’t a convertable, BUT it does have a touch screen. The speakers are nice and loud, but I don’t feel the ‘Atmos’ it’s advertising lol. Overall and the TL:DR - I like it, and I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a good, light weight, laptop that can do most of what you’d need it to. It has great performance, and I haven’t found any issues that were ‘game breaking’ so to speak. Happy I have this!

I have thoroughly enjoyed this Chromebook thus far. Specifically, the battery life, screen and processor are outstanding. This is an amazing all day laptop with great media abilities for the on-the-go user. The addition of ARM allows for great performance with Android apps overall while I experienced no compatibility issues with traditional ChromeOS apps or on Linux. This is the first Chromebook that has made me use it over my Windows or Mac computers due to its versatility and great specs. Pros: Great performance Good speakers Amazing OLED touchscreen It never gets hot! Cons: Keyboard flex Generic design No MicroSD slot Setup: Getting the machine running is extremely easy thanks to the way Chrome OS works. Essentially, you just log in to your Google account, download any updates and you are ready to go. If you have used a ChromeOS computer before, you will be happy that your apps are all restored to your profile in a fairly quick manner. AI/NPU: As this laptop has a 50 TOPS NPU built-in, there are a lot of neat features Google has baked into ChromeOS to support it. First, the Caps Lock key has a diamond with a plus symbol on it. When you click it, it will provide AI-based options on what to do based on where you have set the cursor. For example, if you click it while you are in the browser bar, it will give you simple options to search the text or edit the text. If I use it in a document, it will help me write options, create images, clipboard, date, calculations and more. It is a neat tool to try out but takes some time to get used to adding it to a workflow. Next, the laptop comes preinstalled with NotebookLM. This is a very useful tool which allows you to create a notebook for analysis. You load various documents into it, it provides a summary of all the documents and you can interact with it similar to a smaller LLM that only uses the sources you provide for context. I wish I had this in college to help sift through data! I believe it runs in the cloud but it is a great tool. Smart Grouping appears to be an on-device feature where you swipe up with three fingers on the track pad or press the F4 button to show all your windows. At the bottom you will see suggested groupings which can essentially be made into a new desktop. For example on this review, I have a bunch of tabs open in Chrome concerning this review along with a few apps like Keep. This can be saved for later in the grouping. If you have a lot of Chrome tabs in one browser, it will separate it for you for the new desktop display only. The audio recorder app received an upgrade where it will transcribe and summarize your audio very quickly. I had my daughter sing a song and it transcribed in real time while automatically adding punctuation correctly. The gallery app also received an AI upgrade. Editing a photo now has an AI tab which lets you expand backgrounds, add AI stickers, erase objects and more. Last, when you capture a screenshot, there are options for Google lens and editing the screenshot with AI. Another wonderful tool that migrated from phones to ChromeOS. Compatibility / Linux: I experienced no issues with the ARM based MediaTek Kompanio. Everything I downloaded on ChromeOS worked great and extremely fast. Running Android apps, every game and program I ran ran smoothly, if there were any frame rate hits I suspect they are due to lack of optimization or support from the developer at this time. For example, the game Diablo Immortal runs fine, but is limited to 30fps as the 60fps option is not supported. I am highly confident this processor can easily play that game at full settings but similar to some phones, a future update is sometimes required to support a new processor to run at full capacity. Benchmarks later in the review. Linux: The processor appeared to have no issue running Linux apps. Most of the applications I downloaded were via APT which will download Debian-based distributions. The only program I had to download through the website directly was Visual Studio Code. There, I downloaded the ARM64 Deb version which ran great after sharing and installing with Linux. Otherwise, Thunderbird, Firefox ESR, VIM, LibreOffice, GIMP, Audacity, Calibre, VLC and VS Code (with extensions) all worked without fail. The only program that had a slight issue was Chromium which ran just fine but had a weird window resizing issue when booting. Android apps: As stated before, all Android programs ran with no issue with one exception. I played Star Trek Fleet Command, Diablo, Galaxy of Heroes fine but the only game that didn’t run for me was Call of Duty as it Crashed after loading. Entertainment apps such as Crunchyroll, Disney+, HBO, Hulu gave me no issues. Netflix is not yet optimized for the laptop though as it only runs in SD with no HDR. It runs fine with all the bells and whistles in the Chrome browser. All my reading and podcast applications ran fine as well. Android based benchmarks had some lower than expected results but I suspect that even though the apps were made for ARM and running on an ARM processor, there is likely a performance hit running between layers from the ChromeOS to the Android OS, but I’m not an expert on that. Native Chrome benchmarks: Basemark Web 3.0 - 1728 Speedometer 3.1 - 21.4 CrXPRT 2 - 208 Android benchmarks: Geekbench 6 plugged in - 2069 Single / 7238 Multi Geekbench 6 battery - 2362 Single / 6441 Multi Geekbench 6 GPU plugged in - 17474 Geekbench 6 GPU battery - 16245 Geekbench AI NNAPI - 635 / 570 / 1305 Geekbench AI GPU - 12666 / 984 / 947 Wild Life Extreme - 4221 25.28 fps avg Steel Nomad Light 1559 11.55 fps avg PC Mark Work 3.0 - 17399 These are some of the highest benchmark numbers I have personally seen on a Chromebook so great job to Lenovo and MediaTek there! Heat management: The addition of an ARM processor means NO FANS! This helps keep the laptop slim and running cool all the time. The hottest I could get it to run was at 100C when I did the CPU stress test in the diagnostics menu. It never got hotter than that and I could never feel any heat other than some minor warmth near the top of the keyboard so the heat dissipation is extremely effective. The average temperature it runs at during simple browsing and document editing is about 44C internally. Also, with this design, there are no vents on the bottom with only a wavy pattern which helps grip when carrying it around. Battery: The ARM processor truly allows for all-day use. I watched 1 hour of Netflix within the Chrome browser and only lost 3% of battery. My projected remaining time varied from 8 hours to 12 hours depending on what I was doing. I did not see any noticeable performance hit on the battery or plugged in. Oddly enough my single core score went up in Geekbench 6 with multi-core going down. I would have no concern going to school or work without an AC adapter unless I was doing intensive battery draining work on it. Standby time seems to last forever. Display: The OLED display is perfect for my needs. Doing photo editing is great due to the brightness and color accuracy. It is high resolution so pixels are impossible for my eyes to see. The touchscreen is responsive and works well in games (though a full flip screen or pen would be nice). Audio: The top and bottom mounted speakers are loud and clear. The bass is a bit limited by the four 2W speakers until you turn the volume up, but they are amazing for the size. They support Dolby Atmos as well. I/O: The keyboard is the usual Lenovo high-quality feel. The only complaint I have about the keyboard is the board has a lot of flex if you push on it, but you wouldn’t notice just typing The mouse is glass and feels very accurate. Unfortunately it is a diving board style with no haptics. The fingerprint reader works every time for me and allows for up to three fingers to be paired. There are two USB-C ports, one on each side. Both can be used to charge the device via USB-PD 3.0. The left side also has a USB-A while the right side has a 3.5mm headphone jack. All USB ports are USB 3.2 Gen 1 supporting up to 5 Gbps. Camera: The camera is average at best and I found it to be a little overexposed at most times. I would not use it for photos but works just fine for video calls. There is a privacy cover that turns the camera red when switched on so you can easily see at a glance that it is off. Repairability: The battery appears to be replaceable and the bottom is easily removable. There are only 6 Phillips head screws on the bottom with no hidden ones. I was able to remove them all with a PH0 sized screwdriver and it easily pried off. There is a small hook in the middle which you will need to wiggle loose from the chassis to remove the cover. All the other modules with the exception of the Wi-Fi 7 module are soldered on so replacement would require the replacement of an entire board.

I’ve been using Chromebooks on and off for a few years now. I am an educator so I started using them in my classes a while back, especially during COVID. My first personal Chromebook was Google's Pixelbook, and I loved it. After that, I also used an ASUS Chromebook Plus that I really loved, but always seemed a little heavy for what it was. When I started hearing about Lenovo’s new Chromebook Plus 14” I knew I needed to give it a shot, and boy am I happy that I did. First off lets get over that assumption that Chromebooks are unable to do things that a ‘regular’ laptop can. Yes, there might be some niche programs that are only available on PC/Mac, but for 99% of what folks do on their laptops a Chromebook can do just as smoothly if not more. ChromeOS has come a long way since its early days, and now most of the time I prefer using this Lenovo Chromebook over my other computers. Just to give you a little background I have a couple of gaming laptops and a new Surface Pro as well. This Lenovo is still the one I pick up to use about 80% of the time. Let’s begin with the setup process. If you are an Android user the setup could not be easier. You scan the QR code on the Lenovo’s screen with your Android phone, and it pretty much links all of your WiFi and Google settings to the Chromebook. Setup was very fast and easy, and that’s with the Lenovo needing to do an update when I was setting it up. Also, as a plus for those using an Android phone, you can also get your phone’s notifications, recent photos, etc. right on the Chromebook. Hardware is one of the things that really makes the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14” shine. The overall build feels premium and lightweight. The keyboard is Lenovo legendary, and the track pad is nice and large. I have been using this Chromebook for the last week or so to get all of my work done, and the keyboard has been a treat to use. You get two USB-C ports, one on each side, a USB-A port, and a headphone jack. The fingerprint reader is fast and accurate. The screen is a pleasure to use. The 2k OLED screen is so clear; the colors are vibrant, and the blacks are inky. It is a touchscreen panel which is nice, but I don’t see myself using it too much. The speakers really do this beautiful screen justice. You get 4 speakers, 2 on the bottom, and 2 along the sides of the keyboard. The Lenovo Chromebook is tagged as Dolby Atoms and I believe it. I have watched some of my shows here and they sound phenomenal. The 14” size is a perfect size for me. The MediaTek Kompanio Ultra chip has everything running buttery smooth. I have multiple apps, tabs, and windows open and I have yet to see this thing hiccup at all. Since the Kompanio chip is built with AI in mind you get all of the Google Gemini benefits running without any issues. That being said, it is great that Google is also giving you 12 months of Gemini Pro free when you get this laptop. I was paying monthly for that service so it is definitely a nice perk of getting this Chromebook. So you are getting premium hardware, and great software performance, all that would be great, but the cherry on top for me is given all of this performance you still get amazing battery life. I charged up this Chromebook when I first received it and I went almost a complete work week without needing to charge it up. Initially, I was a little worried since it said at 100% I had 4 hours of use, but the system is still getting used to you. Right now I am at 60% battery and it is saying I have just under 7 hours left. Again, this is with multiple tabs and Android apps running. This might be the closest thing to a perfect laptop for me. If I had to nit-pick, the one thing I would change is, I would like to be able to open the laptop with one hand. Right now if I try to do a one-handed opening the entire laptop comes up. Again, nit-picking here. This Chromebook has everything; great performance, amazing hardware, beautiful screen, and dynamic/loud sound, as well as unbelievable battery life.

The Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 is my first premium Chromebook Plus laptop. It is also the first Chromebook Plus laptop to use an ARM-based processor – the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910. All prior Chromebook Plus laptops were using x86/x64 based processors. I’ve heard many great things about the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 and I was really curious to test it out. The Kompanio Ultra 910 is considered to be a high end CPU that offers impressive performance along with great power efficiency. The Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 came bundled with a compact 65W USB-C power adapter and a couple of pamphlets. The laptop itself is very attractive and feels solid and well built. It seems to be using an aluminum shell and a plastic ridged bottom that feels comfortable to the touch. First Impressions The OLED screen is very bright and offers deep rich colors that are typical of an OLED screen. The up-firing speakers are very good and probably better than most laptops I’ve used. Vocals and mid-range are clear with a nice wide soundstage. The sound system supports Dolby Atmos and there were times where I was impressed by the directionality of certain sounds when I was watching a video. As typical with all laptops, the bass isn’t powerful or deep but the overall sound is more than adequate for casual media consumption. One thing that stood out was the passive cooling. There is no fan and it’s completely silent and never seems to get hot. For this review, I mainly used an external USB mouse and keyboard along with an external 27-inch 2K monitor. Having said this, the built-in keyboard has a nice layout and the trackpad feels very good, responsive and accurate. Specifications The main specifications are MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 with ARM Immortalis G925 graphics and NPU with 50 TOPS. ChromeOS operating system 14-inch OLED 1920x1200 60Hz display with 400 nits of brightness 16GB LPDDR5X memory 256GB UFS storage Fingerprint reader 2x USB-C 3.2 ports with DisplayPort support and power delivery 1x USB-A 3.2 port Headphone jack Wifi 7 and Bluetooth Front-facing 5 MP camera with physical shutter and microphone Overall, the hardware is extremely impressive. The 16 GB of memory is very generous and something that I have wanted to have in a Chromebook. The use of UFS instead of an NVMe SSD for storage seems a bit odd as this is something that is usually used in a phone instead of a laptop. UFS storage is typically faster than eMMC storage which is used in many budget Chromebooks. Overall performance has been very fast and zippy. I haven’t experienced any slowness while using the laptop despite having multiple tabs and apps running at the same time. The fingerprint reader was accurate and fast. The 5 MP front facing camera was decent but might be a little disappointing compared to some of the better cameras I have used in other laptops or tablets. The Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 comes bundled with 12 months of the Google AI Pro Plan. Local AI Features With a NPU capable of providing 50 TOPs, the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 has the ability to have some AI processing done locally on the machine without needing access to the cloud. The following is my impressions of some of the local AI features (at least, I think these are done locally) Upgraded Recorder App The audio recorder app now has upgraded AI features. One feature allows you to make audio recordings using the built-in microphone or Chromebook audio while transcribing speech in real-time. It also has the ability to detect different speakers and label the transcription with the different speakers. I was impressed with the speed and accuracy of the real-time transcriptions. It was able to transcribe my personal voice recordings really well but had a little trouble with voices that had an accent. To test the speaker labeling feature, I recorded a podcast with different speakers and the results indicated that this is still a work in progress as it frequently had trouble identifying and labeling the correct speaker. In some podcasts with only one speaker, the AI feature sometimes thinks there were multiple speakers. Another feature is to use AI to create a summary of the transcribed audio. This AI feature is labelled as experimental and I used it to create a summary of a short audio describing the SOLID design principles for designing software. The summary was correct but it wasn’t elaborate enough to be a useful summary for me. Perhaps it would have done a better job if I had used another audio recording that was a bit longer and provided more information. Overall, I see a lot of promise in these features. I can see these new features being very useful in school where you make an audio recording of a class lecture and have it provide a transcript and summary of the lecture. Smart Grouping For my typical usage, this AI feature doesn’t seem that useful to me. If you typically have a lot of tabs open at the same time, by pressing F4 on the built-in keyboard (it doesn’t seem to work using an external USB connected keyboard), it will use AI to group similar tabs and allow you to place them in a separate virtual desktop to help organize your desktops. In my testing, the results were hit or miss. For example, I had tabs opened for programming tutorials on C#, Rust, Python, Java, Golang, React Native, and ASP.NET Core, along with tabs related to AMD, Intel, and nVidia graphics cards and some tabs related to reviews and discussion on current movies. After pressing F4, the AI Smart Grouping feature suggested to group the tabs for C#, Rust, ASP.NET Core, React Native, and Golang into a new virtual desktop but left out the tabs for Python and Java. I was hoping it would group all the programming related tabs into one virtual desktop but it left out 2 of them. On-Device Image Generation In the Gallery app, you can now harness the built-in NPU to perform AI assisted tasks such as removing background, expanding background, making stickers, or erase an object from a picture. For example, there is a feature to use AI assisted background removal. You use a pen to highlight or draw a rectangle around the object you want to keep and then have the AI automatically remove the background. You can also do the opposite. You can use a pen to highlight or draw a rectangle around an object you want to remove from a picture. I tested the above with a picture of my car in a parking lot. The AI provides multiple outputs and you can select the best one. The results were pretty good but they weren’t perfect. You might have to manually clean up some visual artifacts. In my car’s case, it left a shadow from the car on the parking space after the car was removed. It also placed some kind of weird object on the sidewalk. I used AI to remove the shadow and the weird object on the sidewalk and the end result was really good. Overall, I thought it did a good job. There is also another AI feature where you can expand the background of a picture. For example, if you have a picture of a car on a street, you can expand the picture to show more of the street or background. This additional image of the street is imaginary and generated by the AI but it actually looks realistic. Enhanced Video Calls On video calls, you can use AI to blur the background, use a fake background, auto-framing (keeps you at the center of the frame), or to apply filter effects (change you into an animated character or have you wear a beard etc.). Most of these features work well and they are similar to what I have seen with other AI enhanced tablets and laptops. Cloud Based AI Of course, you are not limited to local AI processing. You have access to more sophisticated cloud based AI processing such as the ability to insert AI generated images into your documents by pressing the left CAPS key as well as apps like NotebookLM where you can upload documents and use AI to process them. Afterwards, you can ask the AI questions about the contents of the documents. It’s like having a personal research assistant. This has a lot of potential to be very useful. Summary The Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 is the best Chromebook that I have ever owned. The hardware is fantastic. With the excellent display and good built-in speakers, the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 is an excellent media consumption device that can easily handle productivity tasks with ease. With 16 GB of memory and the ability to run linux apps like VS Code, it can also make for an interesting software development machine. The AI features are constantly improving. In the early days, I felt that many AI features were gimmicky and weren’t that useful but now some features have improved to the point where I think they have a lot of potential. Chromebooks are getting better and better to the point where I am beginning to see that it might be possible in the near future to use a Chromebook as my main computer instead of being a companion computer. I can easily recommend the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 to anyone looking for a premium Chromebook.

This Lenovo M9610 Chromebook Plus is my fourth Chromebook since 2014, and it is by far the best I've used. With 16Gb of RAM, users can at last take full advantage of all that Chromebooks have offered since 2016: the ability to run both Android apps and Linux apps in separate, secure, containers for fast entertainment and research (Android) , and productivity (local computing, software dev, ) with Linux. The Mediatek 9610 SOC that powers this Chromebook is a delight in high-performance thru 8-cores (vs 2 cores in a typical Intel Core i3 Chromebook), and low power consumption that delivers long battery life and quiet, fan-less operation in a delightfully light, cool chassis. The 1920 x 1200 OLED touch-screen is a perfect companion to the power of the chassis, but this unit's GPU can power up to two more 4K external screens. There is a 50TOPS NPU in this Chromebook also, for use in speeding AI functions (more of a future-proofing thing at the moment ...) This Chromebook is a delight to use. Much friendlier than a Macbook Air, Faster than a Windows PC (without all of the Windows crapware popping up everywhere), and with genuine 14 hour battery life even under heavy use. I love dev work on it. It's fast, containerized so if a new program fails miserably, it trashes the container, not the entire system. Load a new container and move on. If you've saved your dev environment ahead of time, you can get back to work without time spent for setup. The backlit keyboard, clear screen, fan-less operation, lightweight form, and high-performance make this Chromebook fun to use. A good value at $750.

Wow!! I have owned literally dozens of Chromebooks since 2014. Other than the Pixel book and the Pixel book Go, I was never really that amazed. I stuck with Chromebook because I am 100% invested in the Google Ecosystem. Now I can finally say that I have the BEST Chromebook ever made!! The device is light, thin and has a wonderfully bright 400 nit display. The speakers are very good. The glass track pad is the best I have ever used. The Keyboard is wonderful in typical Lenovo fashion. I enjoy the battery life. Even with the brightness at 75-80% and with the backlit keyboard always on, and with many windows open, I get 12+ hours of usage with no problem at all!! I love the Mediatek Kompanio Ultra. it is super fast and thank goodness there is no fan to make disturbing sounds. The AI is very helpful when it comes to doing tasks that I had no idea my Chromebook could do. I paid full price at launch week and I do not have one single complaint or regret at all. Kudos to Lenovo and Google as well. You can see Google's signature with the texture on the bottom reminding me of the Pixel book Go. And a nice touch with the fingerprint reader and camera privacy shutter. I can't recommend any device over the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 2025. This is a keeper!!

When you're considering the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14, you really need to compare it with the standard MacBook Air M4, as they fall into a similar price range and have similar build quality. My personal preference for the ChromeOS computing style over macOS ultimately led me to choose the Chromebook. I'm particularly drawn to ChromeOS for a few key reasons: the update process is incredibly unintrusive, and its default security posture is remarkably robust. I'm also deeply integrated into the Chrome and Android Google ecosystem, which I prefer to Apple's equivalent. My typical workload involves media consumption, light development, network analysis (using tools like Wireshark to process pre-captured files), and various internet browser-based applications. The combination of the Linux Development Environment and the available tools within it allows me to be productive across the vast majority of my professional and personal activities. While I do some light video capture and editing (mostly cropping), I have to switch to another platform for anything more complex. Regarding the hardware and software of this specific system, I agree with other reviews that praise the screen, speakers, performance, and battery life. While the official battery life is rated at 17 hours, my real-world use cases yield about 12-14 hours with the screen at 50% brightness. I would have liked the speakers to be just a bit louder, but they are otherwise quite good. The keyboard, trackpad, and fingerprint scanner all function as expected and are a pleasure to use. The system runs cool and quiet, which, combined with the solid battery life and power, is why I consider this the best ChromeOS platform available right now. If you are not a ChromeOS/Android-oriented user like I am or if you need to do more complicated tasks such as professional video editing, the MacBook Air M4 would be a better fit. However, for a dedicated ChromeOS user, this is a delightful laptop and, in my opinion, the best choice in its class.

It's difficult to describe how excellent this laptop is. I have the opportunity to use several different laptops per year of all flavors (MacBook, Windows, Chromebook) and this one really stands out. Lenovo and Google really nailed it on this one, it's outstanding in every aspect. The build quality is high end, lightweight, and well designed. No awkward hinges or cost-cutting shapes or textures. The keyboard is a joy to type on, with clear tactile feedback and the right key depth. (It is also backlit). The trackpad is accurate, smooth, and doesn't have a tinny or hollow feeling that some laptops under $1k can have. The speakers are rich and deep and clear, with good volume and no distortion - not quite at the level of a MacBook Pro, but very good. The display is also a highlight. It's OLED so you get bright colors, deep blacks, and clear contrast. It also goes bright enough to use in sunlight, though visibility will be best indoors or some shade outdoors. The screen could be slightly higher resolution - it's 2K but to really match a higher end laptop it could be 2.5K or even 3K. This is a very small gripe though, and again at this price point (or even a higher price point) this is a great screen. OLED is a game changer. Despite all this praise, I saved the best for last. The performance and battery life of this laptop is insane. It has 16 GB of RAM and the incredibly zippy MediaTek ARM chip which means performance is simply not an issue. I regularly have dozens of tabs open, plus video conferencing, documents, and more and it literally doesn't ever sweat. I can get 12 or more hours of battery life even with all this productivity work. It's all the result of an excellent ARM chip that, like Apple's M-series ARM chips, gives outstanding performance and power management. The icing on the cake is ChromeOS. It is clean and uncluttered, making it easy to be as productive as possible. The setup is quick and over in 5 minutes, with very minimal prompting or upsells. The user experience is so great, with no popups, upsell attempts, or bloatware. It's very much akin to the MacOS experience, and worlds better than the annoying (borderline insulting) experience with setting up and using a Windows laptop and all of its promotions, bloatware, and unnecessary apps. I cannot stress enough: with the excellent ChromeOS, high-end ARM processor, 16 GB of RAM, and super high quality hardware on this laptop, it is an exceptionally appealing laptop. It is absolutely up there as an alternative to (and in several ways better than) a MacBook Air.

Living with this for a week I am beginning to see the bright spots with a Chromebook, specifically a Plus model. For the majority of my workflow I can get by with browser only applications, but there are still a few, like video editing, that just do better in a dedicated app on a traditional OS. I’m sure if you are doing sub-5 minute videos, a browser based video editing software isn’t bad, but it's hard to find that not behind a large paywall. For the longest time my only experience with a ChomeOS device has either been on a standard Chromebook on the cheaper end of the spectrum or using ChromeOS Flex on really good hardware which is fantastic, but severely limited without Play Store access. I recently was using an older Lenovo Chromebook Duet 5 13.1” OLED with the Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 and 8GB RAM released in 2021 and I was amazed at how fast and fluid that device was. It doesn’t carry the ‘Plus’ moniker, but it definitely ran better than any of the previous Chromebooks I had used before, albeit the 8GB RAM probably helped a lot too; compared to the typical 4GB of most Chromebooks. All of this to say this Chromebook Plus Lenovo 14 edition with 16GB RAM and MediaTek Kompanio Ultra processor has set the bar really high! So high, if you are considering a Chromebook Plus, I would only look at the competition to see where they are falling short. I’ve mostly been working off of a Galaxy Book5 Pro 14, which at launch was about twice the price of this Lenovo 14 CBP and while both of these devices have OLED screens, Samsung’s edges out the Lenovo. But the fact that it is an OLED is great. I honestly can't and won't do a non-OLED for laptops anymore. The depth of color is just great and OLED is great on battery life. Battery Life is the top selling point I think with this particular Chromebook Plus. ARM vs x86 processors are just killing it when it comes to ChromeOS battery life and also horsepower under the hood. I compared the Geekbench scores to a few of my devices I use and/or have around the house and the scores were really good in comparison. I’m currently sitting at 64% with web-browsing, YouTube watching , gaming, and article writing, including the Geekbench tests all on battery. This also includes too many hours to count of standby, but just closing the lid. Out-of-the-box, there were updates and I stayed plugged-in until all of those were complete. This could easily power you through a full work-day untethered and maybe even two. Keyboard The feedback is alright, no issues typing, but the key press sound can be hollow and “clicky” at times. A lot quieter than a mechanical keyboard…which I despise, but still gives me that vibe every now and again. Mostly the ‘Enter’, ‘Backspace’, and ‘Shift’ keys. So pretty much the largest keys on the board outside of the space bar which doesn’t give me those sounds. I do like that they are a concaved. They are a little slick, but with use I’m sure that will go away. There are some new keys in the layout as there is not longer just a circle for the “Search” key, but a + in a diamond with caps. So it has essentially become another Fn Key as you use Fn + Caps to turn on ALL CAPS. Which the Fn key and top-row is also an addition to this Chromebook from more the more traditional Chromebook keyboard layouts. It did take a little muscle memory retraining with the different keyboard layout from the other Chromebooks I had been using, but it doesn’t take long to get used to it. Touchpad It also carries that hollow sound if fully pressing to select. If just tapping to select then no issues and gliding works as well as you would expect and hope for. Screen Hinge is solid, but there will be no one-handed opening. You can get maybe a half-inch open then it just wants to lift the whole device off the table. Sound Quality is goodish. If you haven’t had an earbud in or listening through a traditional sound system, then just turning on YoutTube video or listening to music, it sounds pretty good. But if you did have earbuds in or where just listening through a sound system, then its sounds pretty bad. It is a laptop, so I wasn’t expecting something stellar…the Dolby Atmos certification is just a joke anymore and clearly just an extra sticker that can be bought and added to the “feature list” of the laptop. This is an industry wide pet-peeve. Build Quality This is really nice for a plastic setup, it keeps the device very light. The underside has a wavy texture. Not sure if that is supposed to be a radiator effect to help with cooling? This is a fanless design which for a laptop is nice since it feels like most laptops I have used over the recent years, put the intake/outake in spots that are not really conducive to the title of ‘Laptop’. One aspect I really like of the Lenovo 14 is some light gaming can be done. Playing Call Of Duty: Mobile with HD resources and Super Resolution turned on in Game Settings showed no stutter or delay and ran really smooth. Previously I played on a Galaxy Tab S9 Ultra and gameplay was the same. I didn't try any cloud gaming, so can only speak to local online games. One item that I like that Lenovo seems to be consistent with on their devices is the mechanical Camera Slide. I feel like its the laptop equivalent of a physical Alert Slider, I don’t worry too much about spying, but it’s also a great option for meetings if accidentally turning on video when you don’t mean too. As stated previously, I still need a traditional OS for a few areas of my workflow, but I would venture a guess for most people that Browser and Android Apps cover their needs. My biggest gripe against Chromebooks in general is the limited storage and soldered parts. However, this seems to be the future of all Laptops and its always been the case for smartphones and tablets, so I guess its time to get with the program. Thankfully, Lenovo choose to cut costs in areas besides the processor, RAM and Storage. And at least on a Chromebook, storage is not typically a high priority when considering the usage needs and what they are really designed for. Popping off the backcover, you can see everything tucked away and the massive battery that adds to the long-run time of this device and there is no upgradeability outside of the battery and the wireless card. I can definitely recommend the Lenovo 14 Chromebook Plus if you are looking at the Chromebook lineup for your computing needs and honestly even for most people besides, Elementary and High School students, I wouldn’t recommend a traditional Chromebook unless for the most basic of needs. Looking at the competition in this lineup, the processor is going to give the best battery life, same computing power, and Lenovo is sneakily coming in well under price of the others. The 16GB DDR5 RAM is going to keep this setup running for quite a few years…especially when the ChromeOS transitions to running full Android under the hood!

I finally upgraded from my Pixelbook Go for this one. I had been waiting for a Chromebook with a good ARM chip, high ram, a nice bright display and good speakers. That was the main reason I waited so long to upgrade from my Pixelbook Go because it had nice loud speakers that didn't sound like garbage. The Dolby speakers on this didn't disappoint. Mind you, it is still a laptop but for a laptop it sounds pretty excellent. You even get a bit of the surround sound vibe. The battery life is a crazy good 15 plus hours if you don't keep the screen at Max brightness. If you have it on Max brightness, you still get pretty good battery life, a solid 8 to 10 hours. The screen is great looking and the processor with the ram keeps everything running really snappy. I even took it with me camping and watched a movie on it one night and I couldn't have asked for anything better.

This laptop has been getting a lot of praise, so let me start with the negatives: * Only 1 monitor per USB-C port. This means a single-cable docking station is out of the question if you like dual external monitors. * Only 2 external monitors. Same concern as above, but it's worth calling out that, unlike my other Chromebooks, 3 monitors (4 screens total) is out of the question. * Some stuttering in the UI, even when the CPUs aren't fully loaded. It's not always bad, but it shouldn't happen at this price point. * Keyboard light bleed is bad. (I don't use the backlight, but I know it bothers some people.) * Keyboard layout is totally different from other Chromebooks. If you are coming from another device, you're going to have to re-learn half your shortcuts. (Re-mapping Delete was just mean...) If you can overlook that, there's a lot to love, though. * Nice big, bright display. In theory it supports color adaption, although it's either subtle or I haven't triggered it. * Fingerprint sensor! * 16GiB of RAM ... almost impossible to find. * Top-firing speakers that are better-than-average * Battery life is genuinely great (although it was already quite good enough on most Chromebook Plus devices). * Easy to hold and light. Because it's ARM, Linux support isn't _quite_ as good but almost everything is available and it's getting better every day. Overall, an impressive device that'll serve most people just great.

I've owned 4 other Chromebooks and this is best one yet. It's fast, well built with a great screen, touchpad, keyboard, AND amazing battery life. I use linux crostini a lot so I only got it because of the 16 gb ram. I also appreciate the fingerprint reader. The one caveat I have is it doesn't have USB4 (thunderbolt) ports. But on the other hand when plugged into my OWC thunderbolt dock using the port on the right side, I do get 4k 60hz resolution on my external monitor.

Good points: Lightning fast processor ideal for deep research tasks with Gemini; vibrant screen; solid construction; excellent volume on speakers (though "Atmos" on a laptop is a silly gimmick - you'll wanna turn off spatial audio); shockingly great battery life. Features that aren't flaws but might take getting used to: keyboard has a slippery feel; functions assignments are great once they're second nature, but took me a couple days to get there; fingerprint scanner didn't work well for me at first but I "retrained" it and now it works fine.