Tech Talk

Bright, shiny, and new Lenovo Duet 5 Chromebook $430 at Amazon (4GB/64GB) Pros Brighter screen Detachable keyboard Long battery life Better speakers Cons Weaker processor Not as stable in your lap After fixing the small problems with the original Duet, the Duet 5 is a Chromebook tablet that you can legitimately use as a full-time computer. The Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 isn't super-powerful, but that 400-nit screen is amazing, the speakers are wonderful, and the 8GB RAM configurations handle casual browsing and light-to-normal work well. Traditional power Lenovo Flex 5i Chromebook $479 at Amazon (Intel Core i3, 8GB) Pros

After years of half-hearted attempts, we finally got a Chrome OS tablet that can go all the way. Chrome OS has had a tablet mode for a really, really long time, but dedicated Chrome OS tablets have been few and far between. There have been some ugly, low-spec Chromebook tablets for the classroom, and then we had the HP X2 and the Google Pixel Slate. The X2 was a detachable, not really a tablet, but it worked well, and while the Slate was powerful, it was expensive, even more so once you added the kickstand case and keyboard you need to actually get work done at a reasonable speed. This might be why when the Lenovo Chromebook Duet debuted at CES 2020 — I know, it feels like a century ago — it drew a lot of attention because it seemed like someone finally got it right and gave us the Chromebook tablet we