Lenovo Chromebook 3 (11-Inch) – Review 2020

The 11-inch-class Lenovo Chromebook 3 ($169.99) is proof that you can buy a well-built laptop with a long-lasting battery for less than $200. But should you? If you really are stuck with that spending ceiling for a laptop, you could do worse than this Chromebook. On the other hand, the cramped 11.6-inch display, with a less-than-full-HD resolution, should prompt you to take stock of your priorities. Cash-cramped students who can get by with Chrome OS, and shoppers seeking a secondary, nightstand-side laptop, might put it on the shortlist. But for less than twice the Chromebook 3’s price, you could buy an Apple iPad, which is more than twice as good in nearly every respect. 

A Spiffy-Enough Look for the Money

From the outside, this Walmart-exclusive Chromebook 3 is actually quite stylish. The colorful Google Chrome logo is set into the upper right corner of the display lid, and a striped pattern fills the space below it and contrasts nicely with the solid Onyx Black color that makes up the rest of the lid. This two-tone color scheme would look tacky on an expensive laptop, but here I think it works quite well. 

Touching the outside of the Chromebook 3 brings its budget roots to light, though. The material feels rather cheap, and it attracts oodles of fingerprints after just a few minutes of handling. But the chassis feels solid and remarkably light. The Chromebook 3 weighs just 2.42 pounds, less than many premium ultraportable Chromebooks. 

Of course, most premium Chromebooks have screens that are 13 inches or larger. For an 11-incher, the Chromebook 3 is actually bulky, measuring 0.71 by 11.3 by 8.1 inches (HWD). Compare that with the opposite end of the Chromebook spectrum, the Google Pixelbook Go, a premium ultraportable with a much larger 13.3-inch display but not much more footprint, measuring 0.5 by 12.2 by 8.1 inches.

That’s a Lackluster Screen, Though

The Chromebook 3’s 11.6-inch screen is by far its weakest feature. It feels cramped, partly due to its small size and partly because of the large plastic borders surrounding it, which make the panel appear even smaller. The screen is also dim and slightly fuzzy, with a backlight rated for just 250 nits of peak brightness and a native resolution of 1,366 by 768 pixels. Using it reminded me of how mobile computing used to be five or 10 years ago, before the advent of slim display bezels and screens with full HD or 4K resolutions. 

There’s also a 720p webcam mounted above the display, which offers decent video quality, albeit with slightly washed-out colors.

The Chromebook 3’s lackluster screen quality is the best argument for why you should roughly double your budget and get an iPad or a more capable laptop instead. If all you need is a machine to browse the internet, which is what Chromebooks are intended to do, the screen is the most important part of the device. And the iPad’s 10.2-inch Retina display is far more than twice as good, with a much higher 2,160-by-1,620-pixel resolution and only slightly less surface area than the Chromebook 3’s screen. 

Plus, the iPad has touch support. You’re unlikely to find a touch screen comparable with the iPad’s resolution on a Chromebook that costs $300 or even $500. You’ll need to step up to the level of the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook (starting at a grand) or the Google Pixelbook Go (starting at $649) for this level of quality. While the excellent Lenovo Chromebook Duet is a detachable Chromebook with a touch screen, it tops out at an approximately full HD resolution (1,920 by 1,200). Not bad, but not iPad.

A Decent Typing Experience

If you’re doing typical Chromebook activities like watching videos or browsing the web, things for which the screen is the most important component, the Chromebook 3 is clearly deficient. But even though an iPad offers more bang for your buck, there are still a few reasons why you might want to buy the Chromebook instead.

The most obvious is typing. The Chromebook 3 actually offers a decent typing experience, with sturdy key switches and satisfying click feedback. Its only real shortfall is the lack of key backlighting, though that’s not a realistic feature to expect at this price. And the iPad lacks a physical keyboard entirely (though you can buy one to supplement the tablet, of course).

If you plan to use your laptop like a 21st-century typewriter, with a single Google Docs window displayed on the screen all day long as you write the next great American novel, the Chromebook 3 is actually an appropriate tool for the job. The touchpad, however, is unforgivably clumsy, requiring significant pressure from a fingertip just to get the cursor moving. Audio output is also marginal, with the Chromebook 3’s downward-firing speakers offering a decent top level of volume but megaphone-like quality. 

Luckily, the Chromebook 3 is equipped with plenty of ports for you to connect a wired external mouse and headphones. You get two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports and two USB Type-C ports, one each on either side of the laptop. A headphone/microphone combination jack is on the left side, as well as a microSD card reader. The latter will come in handy for adding some extra local storage capacity if you need more than what the Chromebook 3’s cramped flash-memory-based boot drive can give. (It’s just 32GB.) 

The onboard Wi-Fi connectivity is limited to 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.2. Both of these standards are a generation behind the cutting edge (802.11ax and Bluetooth 5), but they’re entirely acceptable for an extreme budget laptop like this one.

Testing the Chromebook 3: With Celeron, Just a Bit of Performance Pep

Performance from the Chromebook 3’s Intel Celeron N4020 processor and 4GB of memory is adequate by Chromebook standards. It performs significantly better on synthetic benchmark tests than ARM-based processors like the one in the Chromebook Duet, which make up a sizable portion of the processors in extreme budget Chromebooks. 

That said, that Celeron is not nearly as powerful as an Intel Core i3 or Core i5 processor, the classes of chip found in many Chromebooks that cost $500 and up. During my testing, I occasionally experienced slowdowns and sluggishness when navigating resource-intensive websites like YouTube, but overall the machine was perfectly usable. The Chromebook 3 takes about 10 seconds to boot up. 

Comparing the Chromebook 3 with other Chromebooks on browser-based benchmarks like WebXPRT and JetStream helps illustrate performance differences. In the charts below, the Pixelbook Go and the Lenovo Flex 5 Chromebook both have more capable Intel Core processors, while the IdeaPad 3 Chromebook shares the same processor as the Chromebook 3. 

The performance differences look similar on the CrXPRT test, which tests everyday muscle in a standalone app installed via the Chrome app store instead of in a browser window. It simulates a host of work and play activities of the kind you might do on a Chromebook (editing pictures, doing homework, watching movies).

Thanks to its modest processing needs and a dim display backlight that doesn’t consume much power, the Chromebook 3’s relatively skimpy three-cell, 42Whr battery can last for an extraordinarily long time when the laptop is unplugged. In our test, which involves playing a locally stored video with Wi-Fi turned off and the screen at 50 percent brightness, the laptop managed to stay powered up for nearly 19 hours.

While the iPad lasts for only about 7 hours, we used a significantly more demanding test for it (streaming high-resolution video at full screen brightness), so the results aren’t comparable. 

Chromebook versus iPad

It’s a bit unorthodox to compare the Lenovo Chromebook 3 with an iPad, which costs almost twice as much and has a tablet form factor, a different operating system, and no keyboard in the box. But neither of them is expensive by absolute standards relative to most laptops, and the two devices set out to accomplish similar goals. They’re platforms for consuming content on the modern internet, from video conferencing to playing games to taking advantage of the extensive Google and Apple app ecosystems. 

It’s more straightforward to compare the Chromebook 3 to another budget Chromebook that has a higher-quality screen. But doing so risks losing sight of why people seek an inexpensive point of access to the web in the first place. Unless you are on the strictest of budgets or need the modern equivalent of a portable typewriter, the Chromebook 3’s main selling points—a bargain price, a comfortable keyboard, minimal weight, and long battery life—don’t quite make up for a screen that’s well behind the times. 

If you are looking specifically for the Chrome operating system and willing to spend a bit more, the Editors’ Choice-winning Lenovo Chromebook Duet is a good option in the under-$300 category. As a tablet, it’s similar in functionality and price to the iPad. It suffers from ho-hum performance, but it does include a complementing keyboard in the box. 

Otherwise, the iPad is a better fit for the types of tasks for which people usually use bargain-basement Chromebooks. Unless you’re stuck strictly under $200 for your device, it’s hard to recommend the Chromebook 3 when two such capable devices are waiting just one rung up the budget ladder.

Lenovo Chromebook 3 (11-Inch) Specs

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