Lenovo IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook : OLED For Cheap

Chromebooks don’t often beat Windows to market when it comes to implementing new technologies, but Lenovo’s IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook did just that. It’s the first detachable tablet with an OLED display, hitting the market just before the Asus Vivobook 13 Slate that marks the first Windows 11 detachable tablet sporting OLED technology. The IdeaPad Duet 5 is built around Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 7c Gen 2, an ARM chip, giving it another first. It’s a larger tablet, but it’s nevertheless an alternative to other low-cost devices like the Apple iPad and Microsoft Surface Go 3.

I reviewed the midrange configuration of the IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebook, running $500 and including the Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 and a 13.3-inch 1080p OLED display. I found the tablet to punch well above its price, representing one of the best 2-in-1 tablets at this price.

Design

The first thing you’ll notice about the IdeaPad Duet 5, if you look closely enough, is that its display is in the old-school 16:9 aspect ratio. The laptop world is moving toward taller displays, 16:10 or 3:2, which is particularly useful in tablets that more closely mimic a standard sheet of paper in portrait mode. A 16:9 tablet, by comparison, is longer and skinnier, making it less comfortable for viewing documents and taking notes with a pen.

The IdeaPad Duet 5’s bezels are small on the sides and slightly thicker on the top and bottom. They’re not huge by tablet standards, and the IdeaPad Duet 5 is reasonably sized given the display. Compared to its closest Windows 11 competitor, the Microsoft Surface Pro 8 with its 13-inch 3:2 display, the IdeaPad Duet 5 is almost an inch wider, but the Surface Pro 8 is nearly an inch taller.

Microsoft’s tablet is thicker at 0.37 inches compared to the IdeaPad Duet 5’s 0.28 inches, but the Surface Pro 8 has its kickstand built in — more on that a moment. Of course, the IdeaPad Duet 5 is significantly larger than the Apple iPad and Microsoft Surface Go, which are built around 10.2-inch and 10.5-inch displays respectively. If you can stand the size, then the Lenovo is a viable competitor.

The Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Detachable is another competitive tablet with a 12.3-inch 3:2 display, and it’s roughly the same size as the Surface Pro 8, thanks to the latter’s smaller bezels. In terms of weight, the IdeaPad Duet 5 is 1.54 pounds for the tablet alone, compared to the Surface Pro 8 at 1.96 pounds and the ThinkPad X12 Detachable at 1.67 pounds. The IdeaPad Duet 5 isn’t a small tablet by any means, but it’s manageable. You’d save about half a pound going with Apple or Microsoft’s smallest tablets.

Now about that kickstand. Like the HP Chromebook x2 11, the IdeaPad Duet 5’s kickstand is an add-on that snaps onto the tablet’s back and is held in place by powerful magnets. That makes the tablet thicker and is inconvenient — it’s another thing to carry around. The Surface Pro 8 and ThinkPad X12 Detachable are much more pleasant to use with their built-in kickstand, although the IdeaPad Duet 5’s version works just as well. It, too, holds the tablet vertically without any wobble, and it extends just as far, to where the tablet is almost lying flat on a surface. If you don’t mind another piece to fiddle with, then you’ll be fine with the IdeaPad Duet 5’s version. And let’s not forget that this is a $500 tablet while the Lenovo and Microsoft versions are more than twice as expensive fully configured.

The IdeaPad Duet 5 is crafted of plastic, with the top portion of the back being a soft-coated version. It feels solid enough in hand, and your first hint that it’s not made of a metal alloy like the other laptops I’ve mentioned is that it’s not as cold to the touch after it’s been asleep for a while. Unless you have a thing against plastic devices, that’s not a real knock against the IdeaPad Duet 5 — especially given its price.

Aesthetically, the tablet is a dark grey (Storm Grey) or blue (Abyss Blue) slab with just the two-tone portion on the back giving it some panache. Minimalist designs are pretty much the standard for tablets, though, with the Lenovo ThinkPad X12 Detachable having the most exotic look.

Connectivity is limited to two USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 ports, one on either side of the tablet — either can be used for charging — and a pogo pin connector for the detachable keyboard. That’s it. And yes, Lenovo left off a 3.5mm audio jack. That’s a huge bummer in my book, and it’s the first tablet I know of that’s dropped the connection.

You’ll be limited to Bluetooth headphones, which I consider a liability. Speaking of wireless connectivity, the Snapdragon chipset limits the tablet to Wi-Fi 5 and Bluetooth 5.1. There’s no option for always-connected internet as there is with the HP Chromebook x2 11.

Performance

The IdeaPad Duet 5 Chromebooks uses the Qualcomm Snapdragon 7c Gen 2 system-on-chip (SoC), a slightly updated version of the same ARM processor used in the HP Chromebook x2 11. As far as I can tell, the only significant difference is a tiny speed bump from 2.4GHz to 2.55GHz. Unsurprisingly, I found the IdeaPad Duet 5 to perform a lot like the Chromebook x2 11. That is to say, the ARM CPU was able to keep up with Chrome OS as long as I didn’t have too many tabs open in Chrome or too many Android apps running in the background. I’m sure that the 8GB of RAM and 128GB of eMMC storage had something to do with that.

We don’t have our full suite of benchmarks available with Chromebooks, but in the Android Geekbench 5 app, the IdeaPad Duet 5 scored 599 in single-core mode and 1,718 in multi-core mode. That’s just the tiniest bit faster than the Chromebook x2 11’s 590 and 1,689. It’s well behind faster Chromebooks like the Asus Chromebook Flip C536 which runs a Core i5-1115G4 that scored 1,209 and 2,849 and the Asus Chromebook Flip CX5 with a Core i5-1135G7 that achieved 1,190 and 4,151. The IdeaPad Duet 5’s score on the Speedometer 2.0 web benchmark was 47, just ahead of the Chromebook x2 11’s 45. By comparison, the Chromebook Flip CX5 hit 163.

Overall, you’ll be fine with the IdeaPad Duet 5’s performance as long as your productivity workflow isn’t too demanding. As I said, with a reasonable number of tabs and Android apps open, the tablet performed just fine. Exceed that amount, though, and things did start to get noticeably slower. And limit yourself to casual Android games — Asphalt 9, the Android game I use to test Chromebooks, was choppy and demonstrated considerable lag when I tried to run it on the IdeaPad Duet 5. An Apple iPad will run iPad OS games more fluidly, making it a more viable gaming tablet.

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