Unboxing the new Lenovo Chromebook Duet 11″ [VIDEO]

It’s been a wild week for Chromebooks and ChromeOS. We have the introduction of two popular new devices in the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus and the new Lenovo Chromebook Duet 11″, the announcement of a bunch of new features on the way, and a new OS update that is already rolling out and delivering quite a few of those promised perks.

We already have early hands-on videos up of both new Chromebooks, but now that we’ve come back home, settled in a bit, and returned to the studio, it’s time for a proper unboxing.

While our time with the Duet 11″ was pretty surface level at the event, our unboxing gets to dive a bit deeper on this device to check out the performance, screen, speakers, camera, and more. A review is in the works, of course, but we wanted to do a proper unboxing in the meantime to show off a bit more about this impressive, compact Chromebook tablet.

The hardware is great as expected

As we’ve seen over the past few years, Lenovo can make a great looking, great feeling tablet on a reasonable budget. The original Duet, the Duet 3, and the Duet 5 all showed this off, and this latest Duet 11″ is no different. With an all aluminum and glass frame, this thing looks and feels high-end all around.

The diagonal kickstand feels like a genuine stroke of genius as well, allowing for the tablet to be propped up in both landscape or portrait orientations; and they’ve even put the USB Type-C ports in two spots to fully take advantage of that flexibility. So, whether you are in landscape or portrait, there’s a USB Type-C port down low near the surface for you to hook up accessories or a docking solution.

The keyboard is also quite good this time around and it comes with a new, spill-proof construction that could save you some headache if you manage to spill coffee on it while at the cafe. The key travel is fantastic and the trackpad – though clearly plastic/mylar – is smooth and solidly placed in the keyboard cover’s chassis.

The pen is included for some, and quite nice

While details around the pen being in the box or not have been fuzzy at best, the review unit we have came with the new USI 2.0 pen from Lenovo and it is very good. From what we can tell, both models on Lenovo’s site come with the pen and the one currently listed at Best Buy does not. We hope those details are accurate, but we’re not getting a ton of clarification on that front at the moment.

All that being said, however, the pen is quite lovely. It holds firmly onto the back of the tablet by built-in magnets, and so far I’ve not had it dislodge once while carrying the Duet around with me quite a bit, in and out of a backpack. In the hand, it is well-weighted and looks good, too.

Most importantly, however, the input latency feels really good, and you can see in the video that Cursive – a PWA that isn’t always the best with pen input – looks fantastic and feels amazing on this device with this pen. While I’m still not the type to hand-write notes in any scenario, digital or analog, I can definitely see myself jotting a few things down with this setup from time to time and using the pen to mark up PDFs and screenshots for work-related things.

The cameras are impressive

We said in an earlier post that a ton of development work clearly went into the cameras on this device. Why there were so many commits about the camera for the Duet in the Chromium Repositories is unclear to me, but it does feel like the work paid off.

Both the 5MP front and 8MP rear cameras look really good, and for the first time that I can remember, you can pick up this Chromebook tablet and actually snag some decent photos and usable video. Is it better than your phone? Likely not, but for a Chromebook, it’s the best we’ve seen. I need more time to really stretch it out a bit, but I’m very impressed thus far.

Speakers are an improvement

With the primary use of those cameras being video calls, there’s also good news in the speaker department to go along with those above-average optics. The stereo speakers on this tablet are very, very loud. While not the fullest overall audio profile I’ve heard on a laptop or tablet, I can definitely attest to them being capable of delivering on the volume side of things.

They are most definitely tuned for vocal frequencies, so that will make video calls very pleasing for sure. Music and cinematic audio aren’t going to be things you seek out this tablet for, but there are always headphones for that sort of thing, right? Overall, I’m just glad to get some solid volume out of a tablet this small, and on that front, the Duet definitely delivers.

Performance feels very good

Finally, all of this would be moot if this tablet was slow, right? Thankfully, at least thus far, I’m pretty impressed with the overall speed of the new Duet and the MediaTek Kompanio 838 inside. You’ll feel it working hard from time to time, but overall I’m impressed by how easily this thing gets around.

Since making the video, I’ve had time to actually plug it into my QHD monitor at the desk, and I’m happy to tell you it pushes the full resolution at 120Hz with no issues. I actually worked from it for a couple of hours, and largely forgot I was using a tiny, 11-inch tablet most of that time. That’s pretty impressive!

I obviously need to live with this thing for a bit before the review, but I can tell you that early impressions are very good so far. I’m curious to see how it runs some of the Android games I play, interested in seeing how far I can push the cameras, and wondering if I can finally put a tablet in play as my desktop driver and my carry around companion.

All that will be covered in the review soon, so stay tuned for it. If you are trying to decide if this would be a good fit for you and you’ve been waiting for a smaller Duet that has enough power under the hood to not be frustrating, this one could most definitely be for you. I’m sure there will be a few hiccups here and there, but I like what Lenovo has put together with this one, and I think many of you will as well.