Debuting back in October of 2020, the new Lenovo ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook (ugh, Chromebook names) brings a lot of great features to the table for a starting price of $579. When announced, there was no indication of how high the price could actually go and what processor would be in that entry-level $579 machine. We’ve known this would be one of the first AMD Ryzen Chromebooks on the market, but we didn’t know exactly what the lowest-end processor in this line would be at the time. Now we do.
Thanks to a bit of deep digging by one of our readers, we have been made aware that Lenovo’s PSREF (product specification reference) listings are live for this new Chromebook and you can see the breakdown of all the models sorted by region and country. It will be available in 25 countries and comes in a relatively wide variety of configurations. A bit surprisingly, the lowest-end versions of this new Yoga Chromebook will come with the AMD Athlon Gold 3150C, not a Ryzen chip. As an example of what’s on offer, here are the configurations for the US market:
- AMD Athlon Gold 3150C, 4GB RAM, 32GB eMMC
- AMD Athlon Gold 3150C, 4GB RAM, 64GB eMMC
- AMD Ryzen 3 3250C, 4GB RAM, 128GB NVMe SSD
- AMD Ryzen 5 3500C, 8GB RAM, 128GB NVMe SSD
- AMD Ryzen 5 3500C, 8GB RAM, 128GB NVMe SSD
- AMD Ryzen 7 3700C, 16GB RAM, 256GB NVMe SSD
- AMD Ryzen 7 3700C, 16GB RAM, 256GB NVMe SSD, 4K display @ 400 nits
Across all models, we’re looking at IPS displays that are anti-glare, so they should all look great. Apart from the Athlon-powered devices, we’re also seeing NVMe across the board and fingerprint scanners in a handful of models with both the Ryzen 5 and Ryzen 7 processors. Apart from those variations, it looks like the rest of the hardware will be the same regardless of the internal specs, and that’s a good thing. The ThinkPad reputation is what it is because of quality builds and sturdy chassis, so the all-aluminum frame, excellent keyboard, built-in stylus, and overall feel of all of these devices should be top-notch regardless of price point.
As far as pricing goes, we can get a pretty good idea of what to expect by looking at resellers already listing these devices online. Lenovo claimed this device would start at $579 and the lowest price we could find on the entry-level Athlon Gold version online was $595. There are listings that place this device at over $700, so pricing looks to be a bit inflated at the moment. For what it’s worth, it seems relatively consistent at the top range with the maxed-out Ryzen 7 models with 16GB of RAM and 256GB of storage capping out between $1100 and $1200. That’s a hefty price tag, sure, but you’re getting a ton of Chromebook for the money, too.
Hopefully Lenovo will officially start listing these Chromebooks in all their configurations on their website soon so we don’t have to speculate any longer. While I don’t know that this particular device is aimed at the consumer market, there’s no reason that anyone wanting one of these Chromebooks couldn’t get one ordered. As we learn more, we’ll keep you updated.
