Motorola Edge+

On paper, Moto’s return to the flagship phone world with the $1,000 Edge+ seems like it’s got all the right stuff. For $200 less than a Galaxy S20+, you’re practically getting the same assortment of specs including a 6.7-inch OLED screen, Snapdragon 865 chip, 12GB of RAM (which is 4GB more than what you get from Samsung), and full 5G support. You also get handy bonuses like a headphone jack, a higher res 108-MP main camera, and a massive 5,000 mAh battery.

However, after stepping away from the high-end phone market for the last couple years, it seems like Motorola has forgotten how to properly refine and polish a premium device. And when you consider that the Edge+ is a Verizon exclusive, I fear Moto has created a good phone with limited appeal.

Let’s start with the good stuff first. When it comes to performance, the Edge+ is a beast. It’s 12GB of RAM is more than anyone really needs, even when multitasking between a bunch of apps and games, the Edge+ never seems strained. And on benchmark tests, the Edge+ routinely performed 5 to 10 percent better than the OnePlus 8 Pro, which is no small feat considering fast and fluid performance has been one of OnePlus’ calling cards for years. The Edge+ also comes with 256GB of storage standard, so there’s plenty of room to squirrel photos, videos, or anything else you might want away. Though the tradeoff there is that unlike the S20+, the Edge+ doesn’t have a microSD card slot.

Meanwhile, the Edge+’s 90Hz display offers a good middle ground between standard 60Hz panels and the 120Hz screens used by Samsung, OnePlus, and others. That 90Hz refresh means everything you do looks just a little bit smoother, letting you appreciate little details like the animation of an app opening or the way text glides down the screen while browsing the web. Moto’s 6.7-inch OLED screen also produces colorful images under normal conditions, though its peak brightness of 495 nits could be better.

On top of that, the Edge+’s 90Hz display is less power-hungry than its 120Hz brethren, which when combined with its huge 5,000 mAh battery resulted in it lasting 17 hours and 18 minutes in our battery test, which makes the Edge+ the longest-lasting phone we’ve ever tested. This thing’s got some serious runtime.

The Edge+ is also somewhat forward-thinking with support for both Verizon’s existing mmWave 5G network and Verizon’s upcoming sub-6GHz rollout. I was even able to find a pocket of Verizon’s mmWave 5G network a few blocks from my home, letting me hit download speeds of over 500 Mbps, which is 10 times faster than traditional 4G LTE speeds. It’s kind of nice seeing new bubbles of 5G pop up recently, but mmWave 5G still has a hard time penetrating walls, so even if you have Verizon 5G in your area, it only really works outside. Those speeds aren’t quite as useful as they might seem.

Motorola also says the Edge+’s dual speakers are the loudest of any phone ever, and while I can’t confirm if that’s true or not as I don’t have every phone ever sitting in front of me, they do certainly pack a punch. Unfortunately, what the Edge+ brings in volume is sort of canceled out by just decent audio quality, which tends to sound a bit hollow or shallow for my tastes. The Edge+ might be a touch louder, but Moto still isn’t really dunking on Samsung’s Galaxy S20+. That said, the Edge+ does have a headphone jack, which is something almost no other high-end phones have anymore (aside from the LG V60). And with the quarantine keeping me largely confined indoors, I’ve found quite that 3.5mm jack quite useful when paired with the wired closed-back headphones I usually wear at home, allowing me drown out distracting sounds in the background.

So why am I not in love with this phone? The big issue with the Moto Edge+ is how it feels and functions during everyday use. If you swipe up from the bottom of the phone on the home screen, you’re more likely to open up the recent apps screen than the phone’s app drawer—something that feels especially strange as the Edge+ features a mostly stock Android UI. To avoid this, you have to make sure you don’t actually touch the very bottom of the screen, and instead start your swipe around the bottom row of app icons.

But what makes the phone feel even more awkward is its design. Thanks to its large camera module in back, anytime you tap the phone while it’s resting on a flat surface, it tends to rock back and forth like an annoying table with uneven legs. If you shake the Edge+, you’ll also notice that the phone produces a rattle, which is a side effect caused by ball bearings in the phone’s optical image stabilization system. Moto claims the rattle won’t harm or damage the phone, which is nice I guess, but like a loose door handle on a new car, that noise doesn’t make you feel great about your shiny new purchase.

Furthermore, the metal band that runs around the outside of the phone that joins the front and back glass sticks out like a ridge, which when combined with the bigger battery inside, leaves the Edge+ feeling significantly more clunky to hold and use than the Galaxy S20+. And while I didn’t have a ton of issues using Moto’s curvy “Endless Edge” screen which wraps halfway down the side of the phone, the extreme bends causes some issues when using a number of apps or simply browsing the web.

On Gizmodo’s mobile site, parts of our top navigation bar flow down into the curve, which means if you want to browse over to Earther (which you should), you have to tap the very side of the screen. And even when there aren’t UI elements hanging over each side, the extra curvy display can cause some serious visual distortion. I also noticed some situations where the Edge+ would get stuck in landscape mode and refuse to switch back without excessive swiping and pawing at its screen. I’m still not sure why this happens, but it’s behavior when switching between landscape and portrait orientation is unlike almost any other Android phone I’ve used recently.

Moto tries to utilize its Endless Edge screen by lighting up the sides of the phone when you get certain notifications (like a text message) or charge the phone, which is nice. But this is something Samsung has been doing for years, and aside from letting you use the edge of the phone as virtual buttons while gaming, Moto doesn’t seem to have brought a lot of other innovation to the party.

Now I would be remiss not to mention that you can disable the Endless Edge effect via a simple toggle in the phone’s display settings. In fact, the Edge+ will even turn off the Endless Edge automatically when it’s low on juice, to help extend its battery life. The problem is that if you’re buying a phone only to disable one of its highlight features, what’s the point?

Another frustrating screen issue is that when you look at the phone in the dark room with the brightness turned down, the phone suffers from black crush and a green tint that makes the entire display look somewhat grainy. And if you turn the phone’s built-in dark mode on, when you look at the settings menu, you can easily see how the phone has trouble maintaining a consistent background color across its screen. These are all things you really shouldn’t have to deal with on something that’s supposed to be a high-end device.

But what might frustrate some folks even more is that Moto won’t commit to supporting the Edge+ with major software updates beyond Android 11. Moto says “We will support with software updates as frequently and for as long as we feel it benefits our consumers. While we don’t have an absolute commitment to numbers of upgrades, edge consumers can expect security updates every other month and an upgrade to Android 11 OS this year. Additionally, we’re looking to the Play Store updates to bring new features and address consumer concerns faster.” That’s not a bad commitment for a cheaper phone, but for any flagship phone, two major software updates should be the bare minimum. No excuses.

As for its cameras, the Edge+ delivers some of the most up and down performance I’ve seen on a phone in a while. In bright light, the Edge+ largely delivers, boasting sharp, high-res photos that don’t leave much room for complaining. And if you’re someone who really enjoys pixel peeping, you can enable the Edge+’s full 108-MP sensor to capture pics with massive resolution. Otherwise, the Edge+ uses pixel binning to increase quality, leaving you with 25-MP photos by default, which is still twice the resolution of most of its competitors.

If you look close though, you will notice that the Edge+’s colors aren’t as saturated and don’t pop like what you’d get from a Galaxy S20+. I also prefer daytime photos taken by the Pixel 4, as Google tends to do a better job nailing white balance and contrast. Even so, it’s clear Moto has made a lot of progress when it comes to camera quality.

Unfortunately, in low light situations, the Edge+ gets weird. Without its dedicated Night Vision mode turned on, the Edge+ shot some very lackluster pics. In a head-to-head against the OnePlus 8 Pro, both phones were blurry and lacked a lot of detail to the point where it became a contest to decide which pic looked worse. Basically, if it’s dark out and you don’t turn the phone’s Night Vision mode on, you’re at risk of capturing a disappointing photo.

When you do get around to enabling Night Vision, which not coincidentally the phone will routinely prompt you to do, image quality significantly improves. In a shot of a nearby mural, the Edge+ easily kept pace with the S20+, with the two phones only capturing minor differences in white balance. And when I pitted the Edge+ against the Pixel 4 XL in a candlelight only photo, while the Pixel 4 XL still came out on top, the Edge+ wasn’t that far behind. Motorola says it put a lot of work into the Edge+’s HDR processing, and it shows, with a number of its phones showing strong dynamic range while capturing more detail in the shadows.

The Edge+ is a maddening device because underneath all these minor issues, there is a solid phone waiting for some tweaks. However, the bigger problem for Moto is that if you just want a fast, powerful phone with decent cameras and a 90Hz screen, the OnePlus 8 is also available on Verizon for $300 less. The main things you lose on out are a headphone jack and a 3x telephoto zoom. And if you aren’t thirsty for performance, the Pixel 4 can be had for even less than that. That makes the Edge+ a hard sell.

On the flip side, when it comes to high-end phones, the Galaxy S20+ remains without a doubt the best premium Android phone. Its screen is better and it supports a 120Hz refresh rate. Its cameras are also better, particularly in low light. Most importantly, it has the kind of refinement you expect on a high-end handset. You can touch and feel where that extra $200 went.

All this leaves the Edge+ in an awkward spot. In some respects, it’s hard to blame Motorola for releasing a $1,000 device when spending time outside or on-the-go is something people can’t really do. There’s no way Moto could have predicted covid-19 a year or two ago when it probably started designing this phone. But at the same time, if you’re going to make a lot of noise about getting back in the premium phone game, you have to go hard, and make sure it can hang with the best. And even with a price tag that’s $200 less than its biggest rival, the Edge+ lack of polish makes it hard to get excited about.

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Source: https://gizmodo.com/motorola-edge-review-the-best-battery-life-ever-but-1843166616

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Walmart's $64 Tablet

There’s affordable, and then there’s cheap. At $64, Walmart’s exclusive 8-inch Onn Android Tablet is cheap with a capital C. That’s not necessarily a bad thing—the Amazon Fire tablet is similarly inexpensive and there’s something to be said for comfortably disposable tech. What it really comes down to is what sort of cheap you’re looking for, and which corporate retailer you feel most comfortable with throwing ads in your face.

I assume if you’re interested in a $64 tablet, you’re well aware it’s not going to be able to do any heavy-duty processing or run graphics-intense applications. For that, you’d need something beefier like an iPad Pro, which starts at $800 for the 11-inch model. (For the same price, you could get 12.5 of these Onn tablets) So what does $64 buy you? An 8-inch IPS touchscreen with an 800 by 1,280 resolution, a 1.3GHz processor, 2GB of RAM, and an Android 9 operating system.

That might sound like spec soup, but what you get is a tablet that can best be described as “incredibly fine.” It’s the sort of thing where you stick it on a nightstand or a coffee table and it functions perfectly well as a budget e-reader or secondary video player. However, ask it to do more and you’ll run into some issues.

I carried the Onn tablet around for three weeks to get a feel for it. When it came to web browsing, it did what it was supposed to. The only problem I encountered was that it’s slow and lags while scrolling through menus, websites, or ebooks. Likewise, it was fine for watching a short 2-3 minute YouTube video, but anything longer, the tablet would get disturbingly warm. I tried streaming this 4.5-minute video of the Hadestown cast performance at the Tonys and I noticed my fingers started getting hot about three-quarters of the way through the video. A 30-minute episode of Brooklyn 99 on Hulu left my lap quite toasty, and I decided not to push my luck any further than that.

Some latency is to be expected when you’re dealing with electronics this cheap, and that’s fine for things like reading or web browsing. It’s less fine for things like video calling. A Skype call with a friend was laggy, choppy, and thanks to the 0.3-megapixel selfie camera, I looked like a grainy monster. Sound quality was also meh—though, again you’d be silly for expecting booming bass or super clear mids on a tablet at this price range.

The Onn tablet is also not something you’d want to take photos with. It has a measly 2-megapixel rear camera, so unless you have an ancient flip phone, chances are your smartphone has a much better camera. The only time I could see the Onn tablet coming in handy for photos is if your phone died.

None of these things would necessarily be dealbreakers—of course, Walmart was going to cut corners somewhere for this price. My main issue was with the Onn tablet’s build. From the moment you unbox the tablet, it’s clear it’s made from some cheap materials. The tablet feels plasticky, and the screen is prone to scuffs. I carried it in my bag’s padded laptop and tablet sleeve and even then I’d pull it out to find odd marks that were clearly visible. Then, after about a week, the headphone jack started sputtering—half the time the tablet couldn’t recognize I had headphones plugged in, the other half I was subjected to lots of crackling. I plugged the same headphones into my work and personal computers but had zero issues. Battery life was also middling. I got maybe about two days of moderate use on a single charge—longer if all I was doing was reading or light browsing.

The Onn tablet does have a few things in its favor, however. Unlike the Fire tablet, the design is curiously devoid of Walmart branding. There’s an Onn logo on the back bottom left corner, but that’s easily covered by your hands. It’s also more subtle than the Fire tablet when it comes to pushing Walmart’s services. Whereas the Fire tablet runs an Amazon-focused OS that’s based on Android, you actually just get Android 9.0 with the Onn tablet. You also get the Google Play Store—a big advantage over the Fire tablet, which forces users to go through Amazon’s app store.

That’s not to say the tablet is free of bloatware. Oh no. It’s just less in-your-face. At the bottom of the screen, right next to the back button, you’ll find a special little Walmart icon in the navigation menu. Hitting it will take you to all the Walmart-specific apps preloaded onto your tablet. That includes the Walmart app, Walmart Grocery app, Sam’s Club, Vudu, and Walmart’s very own eBook Store. As far as I can tell, that icon is hard-coded into the tablet, and you don’t have the option to get easily get rid of it.

The tablet box also comes with a coupon for you to get $20 off in Walmart’s ebook store. I, a fool, decided to give it a whirl because like everyone, I love free stuff. While title selection was altogether fine, to get the $20 off, I had to spend at least $21 and there was no combination of available books that I wanted for a perfect $21. That’s fine since I could just switch over to the Kindle app, except to take part in the deal I had to create Walmart account and now my inbox is a tragic repository of Walmart spam that I have unsubscribed from at least three times to no avail. (They. Keep. Coming.)

For under $100, the only other real competitor the Onn Tablet has is the Amazon Fire. Spec-wise, it’s almost exactly the same as the 8-inch Amazon Fire HD 8, which retails for $80 but is often on sale for less. The main differences is you get slightly more RAM with the Onn tablet and a better selfie camera with the Fire tablet. That and more blatant Amazon marketing—which may or may not irk you depending on how frequently you use Amazon services. Walmart might have baked its services into the Onn tablet, but for the most part, you can ignore it since the Walmart apps are bunched into one folder, the tablet operates off a full version of Android, and you get access to the Google Play Store.

As long as you’re not expecting a powerhouse machine, the Onn Tablet is alright. It gets the job done when it comes to answering emails, reading articles, or watching short videos. Then again, your phone can do all that too—faster, too, with a better camera, and probably zero heating issues. If all you’re looking for is a slightly larger screen, albeit one that probably isn’t as nice as your laptop or phone, or something cheap for the kiddos to wreck, the Onn Tablet is wallet-friendly choice. But it’s not much more than that.

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Source: https://gizmodo.com/seriously-walmarts-64-tablet-is-kinda-good-1835523432

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MSI's GS66 Stealth Gaming Laptop

There’s always something I’ve appreciated about powerful gadgets that are able to hide their power levels. I’m talking about stuff like the Volkswagen Phaeton W12 that had essentially the same engine you got in a flashy Bentley Continental (minus a couple turbos), but in a car that looked like, well, a VW. In short, gadgets that appear normal, but can go toe-to-toe with any rogue Saiyans that just dropped in from outer space and want to take over the world. And that sort of exemplifies what you get with the MSI’s new GS66 Stealth.

Instead of the more stylish black-and-gold color scheme MSI used on the GS65 from 2018, for 2020 MSI gave its flagship 15-inch gaming laptop a black-on-black paint job more befitting its stealthy name. Even the MSI logo on the laptop’s lid is little more than a subtle shadow, and with nary an indicator light or pulsing RGB lighting on the outside of the system, it’s much easier to take the GS66 out in public without instantly signaling to everyone in the room that yes, you do enjoy playing games from time to time.

However, when you lift the lid, that covert appearance sort of goes out the window as you’re greeted by an incredibly colorful keyboard with customizable per key RGB lighting. The keyboard was built in partnership with SteelSeries, and works with the pre-installed SteelSeries Engine 3 app so you can tweak the keyboard’s color profile, create macros, and a whole lot more.

The keyboard also features a cushy 1.5mm of key travel and a nice bounce at the bottom, and even after several hours of typing and gaming, my fingers never felt fatigued like they do on systems with shallower keyboards (like almost every MacBook made between 2016 and 2020). And if you really care about keeping your system’s power level hidden, you can simply disable the keyboard’s backlighting entirely.

Another few changes MSI made on the GS66 compared to its predecessor is a redesigned hinge that feels much stronger than before, along with a slightly stiffer, reinforced chassis, which lends the entire notebook an added level of durability. That said, weighing in at 4.6 pounds, the GS66 is half a pound heavier than outgoing GS65. But perhaps the most impactful upgrade is that MSI also increased the size of the Stealth’s touchpad. While most people will probably connect an external mouse for gaming, the extra-wide glass touchpad is a very welcome addition for everything else. In fact, the touchpad is so wide it takes a little time to adjust to reaching all the way to each corner when you want to left or right-click. Although I noticed a few times where my cursor seemed to randomly jump across the screen, mousing and gestures generally felt quite accurate.

Even the GS66's audio has been improved thanks to the addition of new upward-firing speakers located towards the bottom of the laptop’s deck, leading to much richer and direct sounding speakers. And along the sides, the GS66 offers a healthy assortment of ports including two USB-C ports (one of which supports Thunderbolt 3), two USB-A ports, HDMI, gigabit ethernet, and a 3.5mm audio jack.

But more importantly are all the new components the GS66 is packing inside, with MSI offering configs with up to a 300Hz display, an eight-core Intel i9-10980HK CPU, and an Nvidia 2080 Super GPU. Admittedly, with a price tag of at least $2,500 if you want a config with top-of-line components, a kitted out GS66 ain’t cheap. However, as our $2,250 review unit shows (which features an i7 CPU, 32GB of RAM, 2070 Super GPU, and a 300 Hz 1080p display), you don’t need a fully-loaded machine to pump out solid performance.

In Far Cry 5 at 1080p and ultra graphics, the GS66 averaged 96 fps, which was easily boosted to well over 120 by turning graphics down to high. But for those who really want to take advantage of the GS66's 240Hz or 300Hz displays, games like Overwatch are a much better choice with the Stealth hitting 270 fps on at 1080p on high settings. That’s getting into pro esports territory where every extra frame could mean the difference between getting a shot off or dying. And as an added feather in the cap, the GS66 consistently outperformed a similarly specced Gigabyte Aorus 17G across a number of games by around five to 10 percent, despite the Aorus 17 being a larger 17-inch laptop with more room for better cooling.

One final nice bonus is that with the GS66's new 99.9 Whr battery (which is the FAA’s limit for what you can carry on a plane), despite being a relatively power-hungry gaming laptop, the GS66 lasted 5 hours and 53 minutes on our video rundown test. That’s almost an hour and a half improvement over the GS65 (4:23), and more than two hours longer than Gigabyte’s Aorus 17G (3:49). So while the GS66's battery life is still a far cry from a typical ultraportable’s battery life of over eight hours, it’s nice to know that the Stealth won’t be constantly gasping for juice during times when you might not have access to an outlet.

The GS66's main shortcomings boil down to a few things. First, topping out at 317 nits, the GS66's screen brightness is just average. Most notebooks in this price range—particularly gaming laptops—are typically closer to 400 nits, and without any 4K or OLED screen options, the Stealth isn’t quite as attractive for folks might want a machine for gaming and content creation.

The other is that while I never ran into any issues with heat causing the system to throttle or overheat, the GS66's chassis can get pretty toasty under load. Anytime I was doing anything more intense than browsing the web or watching a video, the Stealth fans were usually pumping out hot air from its side and rear vents. It never got the point where it was painful or dangerous, but it did lead to some sweaty palms while gaming.

But what might be more annoying is how loud the GS66's fans can get. When I first received our review unit, the Stealth once got so loud when I was running benchmarks on the GS66, my wife—even though she was in another room—stopped working to ask me what was making that high-pitched whirring noise.

MSI has since pushed out a patch for its Dragon Center app that had significantly reduced overall fan noise. Yet even when set to MSI’s Balanced performance profile, I noticed that when sitting idle, the GS66 fans would sometimes spin up seemingly without reason.

In the end, the GS66's fan noise isn’t a real deal breaker, though it is a weird quirk for something called the Stealth. That said, you may need to pay attention to your performance settings if you’re working in a quiet place like a library (thankfully there is a user profile for Silent), or else you risk someone coming over and asking why you’re hiding a tiny hairdryer on your person.

There’s a lot to like about the GS66 Stealth. Its understated design should help its owners avoid any unwanted questions about if they caught that Travis Scott concert in Fornite, while MSI continues to make important strides when it comes its systems’ build quality. And with 240Hz and 300Hz display options, and a range of Intel and Nvidia’s latest chips, the GS66 has excellent performance and surprisingly good battery life. In a lot of ways, the GS66 is like a really good episode of DBZ. There’s a lot of power and action, a bit of yelling and hot air, but with a lot of filler and unnecessary extras hidden taken out.

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Source: https://gizmodo.com/msis-gs66-stealth-gaming-laptop-packs-big-specs-and-tha-1843349911

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Lenovo Chromebook Duet

The Lenovo Chromebook Duet

Lenovo’s Chromebook Duet is far from flawless. But when you’re evaluating a device that starts at $279, the question isn’t “Is this a perfect device?” The question is: “Is this better than other stuff you can get for that price?”

Chromebooks in that price range tend to be clunky and cheap, like HP’s Chromebook 14 or Chromebook x360 12b. If you want a Windows alternative, you’re looking at the lowest end of the Acer Aspire or Acer Swift lines or other extremely bare-bones options like the Motile 14. And, of course, there are entry-level iPads and other basic Android tablets, but those don’t come with a keyboard.

Lenovo has certainly cut some corners to shave the Chromebook Duet down to that price point. And since I’m employed as a professional griper, gripe I shall. But at the end of the day, they feel like cut corners — not like major missteps that significantly hamper the device. And after several days using the Duet as my primary driver, I feel comfortable saying it feels much more like a Surface Go with some concessions than it does an ultra-budget PC.

NextNext to the latest iPads or higher-end Chromebooks like the Pixelbook Go, the Duet Chromebook has significant drawbacks. But those devices are a step up in price (especially when you include the keyboard covers). If you’re looking for a convertible in the sub-$300 range that kind of has a foot in both doors, the Duet is the best you will find.

The Chromebook Duet’s base model has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of storage. The price includes the keyboard and kickstand, which isn’t the case with the Surface Go or any iPad model. I tested the $299 version, which has the same processor and RAM but 128GB of storage. Twenty dollars isn’t a huge difference, so I recommend that you go for the extra storage if you can afford it — 64G will fill up quickly if you plan on downloading lots of apps, videos, or other media.

 

 

 

It’s easy to change the screen’s angle.

Aside from its head-turning price, the big thing to know about this Chromebook is that it’s small. At 10.1 inches, it’s a typical size for a tablet, but if you’re trying to use it the way you’d use a work laptop (with dozens of tabs and Windows side by side, for example) things get cramped. I was able to write this entire review on the Duet, but going back to the 13-inch 3:2 screen on my personal computer felt like a whole new world.

The display does have a 16:10 aspect ratio, which I appreciate — and if you’re used to using 16:9 panels, you’ll notice the extra vertical space. I still feel slightly less constricted on a 13-inch 16:9 screen, but it’s close.

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As a consequence, the detachable keyboard is also tiny. Most of the keys aren’t terrible to press; they’re actually a bit larger than the Surface Go’s keys, with about 1.3mm travel. The cramped setup took some getting used to, but after a day or so of using the device I was able to hit my typical typing speed (around 130 words per minute).

Where Lenovo has had to compromise, however, is on the keys on the outskirts of the deck (tab, backspace, enter, colon, apostrophe, dash, etc.). These are minuscule (just over half the size of the letter keys) and hitting them was a chore. Even after using the device for several days, I was still only correctly tapping backspace about 75 percent of the time — I can’t tell you how many times I ended up slamming the equals sign instead. Similarly, I very often hit enter when I meant to hit the adjacent apostrophe key. Hitting dash, which is squeezed to the left of the equals key, felt like a needle-in-haystack scenario, and I found myself instinctively avoiding using dashes in my writing. I imagine you’ll get used to all this if you buy the Duet, but expect a steep learning curve.

LENOVO CHROMEBOOK DUET SPECS (AS REVIEWED)

• MediaTek Helio P60T
• 4GB RAM
• 128GB storage
• 10.1-inch display (1920 x 1200)
• 7,000mAh (27Wh) battery
• 10W adapter
• Two speakers
• Two digital microphones
• One USB-C port  

You won’t be shocked to learn that the touchpad is also small, at 3.4 x 1.9 inches. It feels fine and scrolls competently (though I have small hands). I did have some trouble clicking and dragging (I often resorted to doing that on the touchscreen), and two-finger clicks occasionally registered as regular clicks. Additionally, when the keyboard was uneven in my lap, it sometimes twisted into a position where the clicker stopped working (an ailment you’ll be familiar with if you’ve used cheap keyboard covers before). If you prefer to use the screen, the Duet is also compatible with USI styluses.

If you were hoping to connect a bunch of peripherals in lieu of the included keyboard, make sure you have splitters and dongles in tow. The Duet has all of one USB-C port, which will be occupied whenever the device is charging. It would be nice to have at least an audio jack, though Lenovo does include a headphone dongle. (While we’re making wish lists, another USB-C port, so we could plug in a mouse while charging the thing, would be welcome).

The Duet includes a kickstand and keyboard.

The screen had substantial glare outside.

At this price point, though, I don’t see the cramped peripherals as missteps on Lenovo’s part; they’re trade-offs you’re making. In exchange, you get a device that’s quite compact and portable. The tablet alone is .99 pounds (449g), and with the keyboard and kickstand attached it’s only 2.03 pounds (921g).

And despite the corners that have been cut with the keyboard and touchpad, no part of the Duet looks or feels cheap. The tablet itself is made of an aluminum alloy, which is sturdy and nice to hold. The cover is made of a chic gray fabric — it looks like a classy notebook when closed. Both the keyboard and the kickstand reliably stayed in place while I was using the device. The Duet does lack the two-part magnetic mechanism that the Surface Go uses to keep both covers in place, meaning the keyboard tends to slide around when the laptop is closed. Again, corners.

Another area where the Duet is punching above its weight class: battery life. Lenovo claims 10 hours; I got close to 11 and a half, running the device through my typical workload of Chrome tabs and apps including Gmail, Twitter, Slack, Asana, Facebook, Docs, and Sheets, as well as the occasional Zoom call and Spotify streaming, with the screen at medium brightness. On a day where I only used Chrome, I got just over 12. (Lenovo has, however, skimped on the charger; the included 10W USB-C brick only juiced the device up 24 percent in an hour.)

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There’s a clear (at least, partial) explanation for that result: the low-end processor. Lenovo is using an octa-core, 2.0GHz MediaTek Helio P60T. Power-wise, it’s closer to a budget Snapdragon smartphone processor than the Intel chips you’ll find in nice Chromebooks.

With that understood, the Duet’s performance was surprisingly decent. If you’re browsing in a couple tabs, streaming Netflix, or running an app or two, you shouldn’t have a problem. I was even able to run a daily dose of eight to 12 Chrome tabs and six to eight Android apps without much trouble. Docs and Spotify each crashed once or twice, but it wasn’t a rampant problem. It was near impossible to get anything else done while a Zoom call was running (though that might be a blessing in disguise for my co-workers). I also ran the Duet through a day of just Chrome use, and things started to slow down at around 15 tabs. But again, heavy multitasking isn’t what this device is for (and the 4GB of RAM is likely as much of a limiting factor as the processor).

Speaking of Zoom, the Duet has two cameras, including a 2MP front shooter and an 8MP rear shooter. Both were actually better than the webcams I tend to see on laptops. My face on video calls was clear and not particularly washed out, and the rear camera doesn’t take incredible photos but will do just fine if you need to snap a picture of your notes or a PowerPoint slide. The dual speakers (located in the top bezel) delivered surprisingly well-balanced audio that was clear at higher volumes. They don’t get as loud as many full-sized laptops do — that’s understandable given their size, but that’s another reason there really should be a headphone jack on this thing.

Gaming was also a good experience. Flipping Legend and Monster Legends occasionally stuttered but were generally pretty smooth. They also looked sharp on the 1920 x 1200 screen.

The Duet even did a good job with photo work in Lightroom. Editing, both of singular photos and batches, wasn’t instantaneous, but it also wasn’t agonizingly slow; the experience was about on par with midrange Intel-powered Chromebooks I’ve tested in the past. (The panel is a bit dim for anyone doing serious creative work; the glare was substantial enough that the screen was hard to see outdoors).

The letter keys are fine, but the outer ones are a struggle.

Moving on to the software: the things Chrome OS people like about Chrome OS are all here. The Duet boots quickly, the interface is simple, you get automatic background updates every six weeks, you have access to your favorite Android apps (including Microsoft Office) through the Google Play Store, and Google Assistant can answer your queries and keep you company.

The OS is well-integrated with the rest of Google’s ecosystem, and there’s a slew of cute ways you can use it with your Android phone. The Duet supports instant tethering, meaning you can automatically hitch it to your phone’s data connection without having to dink around with hotspots. You also use Android to sign in and out of the Chromebook remotely, as long as it’s nearby. And you can use Click-to-Call to send contact numbers from the Duet to your phone.

The usual Chrome OS caveats also apply; Android apps are hit-or-miss, with some being well-optimized for Chromebook, some being okay but worse than their browser equivalents, and some (hello, Facebook Messenger) being absolute disasters. It’s still much harder to sideload apps than it is on Android. Once you’ve gotten the hang of what apps you can safely use and what you should keep in Chrome, you should be able to navigate the operating system just fine. But if you’re new to Chromebooks, there’s a learning curve.

The exciting thing here is that Google has also made a few tweaks to Chrome OS to optimize it for the convertible form factor. Google says the Duet is the first device ever to launch with a version of Chrome that’s actually optimized for tablet use. (RIP Pixel Slate). There are three “modes”: Type Mode (when the keyboard is attached), Watch Mode (when the kickstand is open and the keyboard is detached), and Browse Mode (when it’s just a tablet). (Watch Mode and Browse Mode are essentially the same, as far as I can tell).

Browse Mode’s headline feature is a new gesture-navigation system. A long swipe up sends you to the home screen, a short swipe up summons the app shelf, swiping up and holding shows all of your open app windows. Swipe up, hold, and drag a window to one side to split the display; swipe right to return to a previous screen. I wouldn’t say these gestures were necessarily fluid — at least, not compared to what you’ll see on an iPad. But they’re the start of a system I can see becoming quite polished in the future, and they did make browsing in tablet mode a bit easier.

Nothing about the Chromebook Duet is perfect; I could nitpick all day about various suboptimal qualities of the keyboard, touchpad, performance, or screen. But the Duet isn’t trying to be perfect. It’s not for power users, and it’s not meant to accommodate heavy multitasking.

With that in mind, this is the closest to perfection that I’ve ever seen from a $300 laptop-slash-tablet. If you’re looking for a fun device for kids that can also handle homeschooling work, or a portable 2-in-1 for watching Netflix and sending emails on the go, the Duet should do just fine. It’s a solid midrange 2-in-1 Chromebook that has no business being as cheap as it is.


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Source: https://www.theverge.com/21262694/lenovo-chromebook-duet-review-tablet-chromebook-chrome-os-price

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