Disclaimer: I have never owned a tablet, so some of my comments may be over/under critical, or just general to tablets. Will probably update this review after more time with it, but these are my initial impressions.
First off, I bought the Duet because I have been wanting an alternative to my laptop that I could take on both fun trips to check/write emails and watch movies on flights, but also work trips to get light work done and give presentations. Going to list the pros and cons I’ve encountered so far, but you can skip to the end for my overall thoughts.
Pros
- Really nice and bright display
- Super light tablet without the keyboard and cover
I was hesitant about the forced style choices (Blue accent and cloth cover), but I actually really dig it in person. Really good looking device.
- The sound is not nearly as bad as I expected. I use bluetooth headphones nearly 99% of the time anyways, but it’s good to know the sound quality is decent without them; just don’t expect them to be loud.
- Quick responsiveness and no real lag with apps (although I’ll get more into that in the cons...)
- Love the auto unlock feature when your phone is nearby
The boot speed is very fast, makes me second guess whether I actually turned it off
- The keyboard is fantastic. Nothing will ever beat my Thinkpad X1 keyboard, but the quality here is great and it’s very easy to type on despite the size. Surprised to hear that people are facing issues with it.
- Battery life is solid. We’ll see how this changes when I actually use it for its intended purpose, but around the house it has barely drained.
Cons
- The cover: It is surprisingly heavy. Feels as if the weight doubles when you put it on, and you really need it on most of the time since it has the kickstand. Really wish the kickstand was just part of the device, but I guess it’s a nice protection.
- The weight in general: When everything is connected, this guy weighs 2 lbs ( just 1lb less than my laptop). It’s not terrible, but it’s surprising. I appreciate that the tablet is < 1lb, but after using it for a bit, I really feel like I’ll have the cover and keyboard on it more often than not.
- The camera: I’m not planning on really taking pictures with it, but I was hoping for a bit more from the front-facing camera since I might use it for video conferences.
- Apps: This is where we get into maybe general Android territory. Some apps behave very strangely in landscape mode. When the keyboard is connected, Instagram crops to portrait mode which... looks silly. If you take the keyboard off and enter tablet mode, the Duet refuses to rotate to landscape mode at all. With Facebook, the app does enter landscape mode, but you can’t scroll from the left side of the screen, only the right. Most apps work normally in either view, but this is a little annoying.
- Display resolution: This is issue has been better described here (https://chromeunboxed.com/lenovo-chromebook-duet-extended-display-broken-usb-c/), but long story short, the Duet limits the resolution when your try to mirror the display on a larger screen. When I tried to test showing a presentation, it was noticeably boxed (see pictures attached with comparison to my laptop) which makes me hesitant about using it for work presentations.
Overall: Let’s be honest, in the end the price is fantastic and makes many of the cons acceptable. The Duet is a solid little device that does exactly what I need it to do, albeit with some limitations (the most important of which can potentially be fixed with software updates?). Great display, portability, speed, and functionality for what I need out of a 2-in-1.