CHROMEBOOK TABLETS GET SECOND LIFE STARTING WITH THE LENOVO IDEAPAD DUET

It wouldn’t be CES without a few pre-show surprises, and this year is no different. Google has gone and unvelied 3 new Chrome OS devices this year before the show even gets underway. All three have been on our radar, but now we have official names, some official pics, and a handful of official specs for the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook, the ASUS Chromebook Flip C436, and the Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook.

We’ve talked about the new ASUS Chromebook Flip C436 and the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook, but this affordable tablet from Lenovo is perhaps just as big of a deal. The other two announcements from Google are high-end, powerful laptops while this new device from Lenovo keeps the price incredibly low for a very compelling package.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Duet Chromebook will be a tablet with a Lenovo-made keyboard attachment that will come in at 10.1 inches and include the keyboard in the box. At a $279 starting price, this could be a fantastic secondary tablet for getting things done on the go. The announcement was a bit short on details that we’ll be getting more of this week, but we know a few things this device will be capable of as we know this one will likely be ‘Kodama’ that we’ve been tracking for months at this point.

A few things that make this tablet interesting are its screen (the same great display we saw in the Acer Chromebook Tab 10) and the MediaTek 8183 processor inside. If the display does end up being the same as the Acer Tab 10 (we feel pretty certain it will be) and the MediaTek performs as well as benchmarks show it will (it benchmarks about the same as the Pixel 3a), this little Chromebook could be stellar overall package as the keyboard is included in the box. We’re not seeing anything about pen support or fingerprint scanners, but the baseboard for this tablet has support for both and we could end up seeing a model that does end up shipping with those two features.

All in all, this is part of a great and exciting start to this year’s CES if you are a Chrome OS fan. While some tech companies have moved away from the January Vegas show, it seems Google and Chromebooks makers are more than happy to step into the gap and use this as a centralized platform to launch important Chrome OS devices, and we’re very excited to be here in the middle of it all. Stay tuned and follow along on our social channels (Twitter, Facebook, Instagram), over on YouTube, and by subscribing to the newsletter (just below this post) so you can get an alert the moment we post new articles this week. It’s going to be a blast!