You may not instantly think of Chromebooks when trying to come up with a versatile, portable, powerful, and productive alternative to the best iPads out there to buy on a tight budget, but this hot new Cyber Monday 2022 deal seems to (more or less) successfully tick all of those boxes at the same time.
That’s unlikely to be the case for long, mind you, given the absolutely incredible value currently delivered by the 11-inch Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 3 Chromebook configuration priced at $199 at Best Buy.
This ultra-affordable tablet (with a somewhat misleading name) doesn’t just offer plenty of screen real estate to keep your mobile content consumption addiction in check but also a nice little productivity-enhancing keyboard at no extra cost whatsoever.
That’s right, you can spend a measly two Benjamins before Christmas on a device fully capable of pulling double duty as both a Chrome OS-based slate (with native Android app support) and a mini-laptop of sorts you can do (light) work on when you’re not at your desk or in the office.
- Don’t know what to buy at a cool discount before Christmas? Check out our full list of top Cyber Monday tablet deals for inspiration!
Obviously, this is not a direct rival for Microsoft’s Windows-powered Surface Pro 9 (or Pro 8, or Pro 7), but it’s not an undercooked glorified toy either, packing a reasonably fast Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 processor and allowing you to store 128 gigs of your most precious content locally while settling for an admittedly not-great 4GB RAM count.
In spite of its glaring flaws, which also include the absence of a headphone jack and microSD card slot, the IdeaPad Duet 3 Chromebook (with a keyboard and a built-in kickstand) is an undeniable Cyber Monday bargain, impressing with its more than decent display resolution of 2000 x 1200 pixels as well while boasting a fairly satisfying 10-hour battery life rating.
Can you do better than this in terms of productivity, raw power, ports, connectivity, and memory? Absolutely… if you can afford to cough up hundreds of bucks more. If not, you might want to pull the trigger before Best Buy’s extensive Cyber Monday sale wraps up later today.
