ZDNET's key takeaways The Lenovo Chromebook Duet Gen 9 is on sale now for $269.
It's a versatile and highly-portable device that's as useful at home as in the office.
Some of the most buzzworthy features are tied to subscriptions, and the keyboard and trackpad are very small. $379 at Lenovo $269 at Best Buy more buying choices
The Lenovo Chromebook Duet Gen 9 is on sale at Best Buy for $269. That's $130 off the already-low regular price.
The ninth-generation Lenovo Chromebook Duet is an 11-inch 2-in-1 laptop/tablet that combines a nice display, a versatile form factor, and accessible hardware for an agreeable regular price of $359. It's essentially a tablet that comes with a keyboard and a magnetized backing with a foldable kickstand for either landscape or portrait mode (think a more affordable Microsoft Surface Pro).
We went hands-on with the previous version of the Duet back in 2022, and even though we praised it then for its versatility, this year's device is a little more sophisticated, in part due to upgraded hardware, but also due to improvements made to ChromeOS. More on that in a bit.
Also: 7 reasons why a Chromebook is the best laptop for most people
The tablet can stand on its own or connect to the keyboard and kickstand, which is a smart design that allows for a large range of angles (although it can't quite support a 90-degree angle). The keyboard is small and light and connects to the tablet/display with a (surprisingly strong) magnetized pin connector.
When I say this keyboard is small… that's not an overstatement. The keys might be hard to use for anyone with big hands, and the trackpad is so small it's almost toylike. I recently went hands-on with the Duet for about a week, and I have to say that navigating the web or ChromeOS with this trackpad is too small for me to use comfortably, but I'm a mouse and keyboard kind of guy, anyway.
Also: Google's Chromebook Plus upgrade and the people's AI voice assistant
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