That’s obviously bad news for companies like Apple, Samsung, Amazon, Lenovo, Huawei, and Microsoft, but not necessarily so for folks who still need portable and (often) affordable computing devices for a variety of use cases.
We’re talking about three different models, mind you, with the latest to score a hefty discount also being the newest member of the Chromebook Duet family. Internationally unveiled at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona back in February, this versatile 11-inch slate barely went up for sale stateside a couple of weeks ago at a reasonable $369.99 with a detachable keyboard bundled in.
By no means an iPad Air or iPad Pro rival in terms of raw speed, this thing is probably powerful enough to hold its own against many of the best Android tablets out there thanks to a Qualcomm Snapdragon SC7180 processor.
The 11 (or rather 10.9-inch) “near-borderless” touchscreen is also no pushover, with a resolution of 2000 x 1200 pixels, while the battery is somehow large enough to promise “up to” 12 hours of life on a single 45W fast charge despite squeezing into a razor-thin 7.9mm body.
The annoyingly named Lenovo IdeaPad Chromebook Duet 3 (11) technically supports stylus input as well, but of course, the reduced $259.99 price doesn’t actually cover an optional pen. On the bright side, you do get a reasonably fast 30W charger and a folio case in the box in addition to the detachable water-resistant keyboard that can easily turn this into an ultra-low-cost laptop (with full access to Google’s Play Store).
