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Since the day it launched, I have been checking daily for a deal on Lenovo’s latest Snapdragon-powered tablet. The Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3 is nearly the perfect device for those wanting the snappiness of the second generation Snapdragon 7c processor but aren’t keen on using the much larger 13.3″ Duet 5. While the latter lends itself much more to being a better overall device, the smaller Duet 3 wins out when we’re talking about real-world tablet use.
In my opinion, the 10.9″ Duet 3 has but two notable deficiencies. The first of which really isn’t a deficiency so much as bad timing. The Duet three debuted toting the new USI 2.0 protocol in its display and up until last week, you couldn’t purchase a USI pen that was compatible with the Duet 3. Lenovo is still the only company with a USI 2.0 pen on the market at the moment but more are on the way and this shouldn’t hold you back from considering this dynamic little 2-in-1.
My second gripe with the Duet 3 is the fact that it only sports 4GB of RAM. Now, I understand that a device like this isn’t designed to be a productivity monster but still. The larger Duet 5 has the same processor with 8GB of RAM and honestly, you could use it as a daily driver if you wanted to do so. It really feels like manufacturers look at a smaller tablet like this and just assume that it isn’t worthy of decent internals. Doubling the RAM on this little Chromebook would make it darn near perfect in every way. Anyway, that’s my beef but that doesn’t mean that I don’t like the Lenovo Duet 3. In fact, I absolutely love it. It is a great successor to Lenovo’s original Duet and as a tablet, there’s very little to dislike about this Chromebook.
Back to the matter at hand. I have no problem whatsoever recommending the Duet 3 at its retail price of $379 but it has been a tough sell considering the fact that the larger Duet 5 has dropped as low as $350 in the past few weeks. Thankfully, my diligence in tracking the prices of Chromebooks has paid off and today, you can finally score the Duet 3 at a discount. It’s not a deep discount but the $50 in savings brings the price tag down to a very savory $329. That’s only $30 more than the original Duet and it’s a very solid price for a versatile, lightweight ChromeOS tablet that’s simply a joy to use. If you’ve been considering the Duet 3, now is a great time to go ahead and get off the fence. Check it out over at Best Buy before this deal is gone.
