is a reviewer covering laptops and the occasional gadget. He spent over 15 years in the photography industry before joining The Verge as a deals writer in 2021.
The world of Chromebooks has its MacBook Air.
Lenovo’s latest Chromebook Plus 14 is an Arm-based thin-and-light with good specs, excellent battery life, a great keyboard, all-around solid build, and a fantastic OLED screen. But the best part is that its bright and punchy 14-inch panel comes standard on the base $649 configuration or as a touchscreen for $749.
That’s cheaper than both the OLED-equipped Samsung Galaxy Chromebook Plus and Acer Chromebook Plus Spin with an IPS screen. It’s also faster than either with more RAM.
The new Chromebook Plus 14 could be a go-to laptop for just about anyone — if you’re okay living with ChromeOS in the first place, of course.
The Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 starts at $649 with a MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 processor, 128GB of storage, 12GB of RAM, and that excellent OLED. Our review config costs $100 more, but it seems worthwhile for double the storage, 16GB of RAM, a touchscreen, and a fingerprint reader. It just weighs slightly more, at 2.78 pounds instead of the base model’s 2.58 pounds. It’s fairly thin at 0.62 inches, and for ports it’s got two USB-C, one USB-A, and a 3.5mm audio jack. The USB-C ports allow you to use up to two external 4K monitors in tandem with the built-in display, though they’re a slow 5Gbps.
Component report card: Screen: A
Webcam: C
Mic: C
Keyboard: A
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