The Lenovo Chromebook Plus

A few months ago, around the time Googlebooks were announced, I became really interested in Chromebooks again, partly because I’d completely lost touch and partly because I heard good things about the new ARM chipsets, namely the MediaTek Kompanio Ultra. But Chromebooks are not a common thing in my neck of the woods.

And, even then, there aren’t a lot of manufacturers that ship interesting hardware in this field. I’ve been seeing ARM laptops slowly take over the lower tiers of the Windows laptop market, but I was very curious about the current value proposition of either Googlebooks or vanilla Chromebooks.

Disclaimer: Lenovo sent me this review unit free of charge, and this article follows my review policy.

For years now, the elephant in the room has been that both Googlebooks and Chromebooks are Google creatures first and foremost as far as user experience and software are concerned–and despite OEMs trying to figure out how to sell laptops that shipped palatable alternatives to Windows, it’s never been very clear if ChromeOS is a viable alternative outside of education.

I think that overshadows what the actual hardware can do, especially now that the ARM variants are becoming really good.

Another question is what the Chromebook experience is like from a software perspective–not technically, but in terms of actual usability and productivity in a world where the web has pretty much “won” (even if you don’t like that idea).

And yes, both flavours of “-books” share Google’s lack of consumer product focus and inability to coherently segment their offerings. Googlebooks are meant to be a premium tier when compared to today’s Chromebooks, yet both platforms run Android apps in a desktop context–which is actually one of the things I wanted to experience properly after years of various hacks.

The machine I was sent is the Lenovo Chrome 14M9610, which in typical Lenovo fashion is not a single model but a platform reference they unfold into multiple retail configurations. Having recently bought a brand-new Lenovo Yoga for my eldest’s college work, I can tell you it is very hard to pin down exact specs from PSREFs… But I digress.

The PSREF covers several regional combinations, but I got Lenovo’s UK 12GB/128GB configuration:

• MediaTek Kompanio Ultra 910 (eight cores: one Cortex-X925 at 3.63GHz, three Cortex-X4 at 2.8GHz and four Cortex-A720 at 2.1GHz), with an Arm Immortalis-G925 MC11 GPU
• MediaTek NPU 890, rated at up to 50 TOPS
• 12GB of soldered LPDDR5X-8533 RAM and 128GB of soldered UFS 3.1 storage (the upper tier has 16GB and 256GB UFS 4.0)
• 14-inch 1920x1200 60Hz OLED display (non-touch), rated at 400 nits and 100% DCI-P3
• 5-megapixel webcam (with the classic Lenovo privacy shutter)
• 60Wh battery (charging via USB-C, of course, and I got the 45W power adapter)
• Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4
• UK keyboard without fingerprint reader

On unpacking the machine, I immediately noticed how light it feels compared to its size and metallic finish (I suppose Apple and Microsoft have conditioned me to expect meaty, weighty slabs of aluminium). Lenovo build quality for low- and mid-range machines has always been one of the reasons I favoured them (I have an IdeaPad Flex 5, which was a great investment), and the fit and finish do not disappoint.

The overall feeling is somewhat like a MacBook Air, although at 314.2 x 219.1 x 15.79mm this non-touch configuration is roughly one centimetre wider and deeper than the 2022 13-inch Air, even as it is a little lighter–one of the reasons for that is that the lid is aluminium but the bottom is ridged PC-ABS, which also gives it a good grip:

One thing I liked immediately (especially considering my recent experience with the Surface Laptop) is that the small lip above the webcam makes the lid easy to open by feel alone (and yes, it passes the one-finger opening test). This serves the same purpose as the MacBook’s classic under-trackpad bevel, although it is a little annoying considering it sticks out just enough to cause friction when sliding the laptop into a bag.

Connectivity is basic but sensibly laid out:

• A 5Gbps USB-C port on either side (both supporting charging and DisplayPort 1.4)
• An additional 5Gbps USB-A port on the left (next to a charging LED) and a 3.5mm audio jack on the right

There is no HDMI socket or card reader, but being able to charge from either side is definitely useful, and the Chrome reminded me of how plain nice it is to have a charging LED. Seems like a feature Apple would value, right?

I got a machine with a UK keyboard layout, which has been amusing because I had forgotten how awkward it is to use some common symbols on it (which I mostly fixed by switching to a US international layout).

The keyboard itself is simultaneously classic Lenovo (slight bottom-edge rounding, tactile and bouncy) and classic Chromebook (with a Google logo “G” key and the Caps Lock key optionally doubling as an “action” key for emojis, search, etc.). It is also backlit, although at a single (dim) brightness level.

Sadly, this model (being the lowest in the range, as far as I can tell) does not have a fingerprint reader or any other biometrics, which meant some awkward moments when I kept reaching for the power button to log in.

The trackpad is a generously sized 120 x 75mm glass-like Mylar surface. It is smooth and accurate enough that I did not reach for a mouse during normal use, although the mechanical click is more conspicuous than the rest of the machine (I’m a tap-to-click person, so I never really pressed it).

Curiously, I initially thought pinch-to-zoom was not supported, but after a ChromeOS update it suddenly started working.

The same update also made three-finger overview and four-finger desktop switching more responsive, which is why I remember it distinctly.

The display is, in a word, gorgeous, and I didn’t expect it to be this good. It’s a very crisp, 14-inch 1920x1200 OLED panel, with the slightly taller 16:10 aspect ratio I prefer and thin bezels, at the top of which is mounted the 5 MP webcam:

Lenovo rates the display at 400 nits and 100% of DCI-P3, and the combination of deep blacks and vivid colour is immediately obvious without looking at a specification sheet. The great contrast and legibility are something I’ve taken for granted on MacBooks, and it’s been one of the main reasons I kept picking up this machine for writing.

The only drawback I can see is that the lack of touch support makes it somewhat awkward to interact with Android applications, but I’m perfectly fine with that (the higher-specced models do seem to have touchscreens, though).

As to external monitors, Lenovo claims support for the built-in panel plus two external displays, but in practice I could only try one, and that would “only” go up to 3840x2160 on the Kuycon P20–which is pretty good for an ARM device (although my Surface can achieve more, this is likely enough for most people).

The speakers were one of the most enjoyable (and unexpected) parts of using the machine. There is a Dolby Atmos logo right under the left Ctrl key, and the speakers sounded unusually full for a Chromebook–music has enough warmth and stereo separation that it was a pleasure to listen to, and the bass was, if not MacBook-grade, at least serviceable for the eclectic mix of jazz and baroque that I favour these days while writing.

The speakers fire upwards through the grilles beside the keyboard, but there are two discreet bottom slots as well, which helps explain why they sound larger (and weightier) than the machine would lead you to believe. And since the Chrome is completely fanless (one of the nice perks of modern ARM machines), there was no fan noise to spoil the effect.

The Chrome worked seamlessly with my Wi-Fi 6 network, reporting nearly 1Gbps on the 5GHz band, confirmed both by my internal OpenSpeedTest instance and the OpenWrt stats:

Steam Link, which is particularly finicky with network bandwidth on Android, worked perfectly–and the game streaming experience was excellent, with very low latency and good video quality. In fact, I ended up playing Control and Hades 2 over Xbox Cloud Gaming a couple of evenings as well, which was a delight on this screen.

The Kompanio Ultra 910 is the interesting part of this machine, and was the reason I sought out this particular model. It is marketed as a very power-efficient eight-core ARM SoC with an Immortalis-G925 MC11 GPU and a 50 TOPS NPU. In ordinary use it feels very snappy even with multiple tabs, Android applications and several virtual desktops open. And given my hatred of fan noise, I was quite pleased to see that the whole package is passively cooled–there is no fan whatsoever, even if the underside gets a bit warm when running Linux.

The 60Wh battery turned out to be another benefit of pairing ChromeOS with ARM. Curiously, the diagnostics page initially showed that my unit had already accumulated 21 charge cycles and was at 97% battery health:

I thought that was due to it being in storage, but after a few weeks of my using it, the figures are consistent with this sample having been in use for a while. In practice, though, the battery has been excellent.

The first time I used the machine, straight out of the packaging and after minimal charging (reporting 100% full, but really just a top-up), the Lenovo Chrome lasted me easily two days of partial use (roughly 3-4h a day) before I started using developer features.

Over one weekend I charged it late on Sunday evening; over another I charged it on Monday–and both times it took under an hour to top up. And then I realised I could turn on battery optimisation (i.e., “low power mode”), which nearly doubled the machine’s runtime for writing and research.

This means that I was able to get nearly two full working days from this (3/4 of that if I used any Linux apps, and around a day of intense local development).

This is where Lenovo hands over to Google, and where things were a little stranger.

It’s been a while since I set up a Chromebook, but I noticed that you are now asked during setup whether you need Microsoft 365 support, which effectively enables OneDrive access.

However, I decided not to cross the streams and connect OneDrive directly. The consent screen grants the ChromeOS “Connect OneDrive” extension full access to read, create, update and delete my files, as well as ongoing access when I am not using it, and… I just don’t want that to happen:

It’s not clear how the connection is handled, who owns the keys or whether anything running in Google’s cloud can access OneDrive, so I skipped it.

This kind of integration is, sadly, something nobody seems able to get right–or make understandable enough for regular people to use, let alone people like me…

I was, however, able to use Windows App (the new name for the Android Remote Desktop app) to connect to my workplace resources just as I do on the Mac–including passkey support, via a QR code that I could scan with my iPhone. This, and the fact that Teams was able to use the onboard camera even when running from Azure Virtual Desktop, instantly promoted the Lenovo to the category of something I can reliably take with me on trips.

Even though I am not a big fan of the relatively plain look of ChromeOS window decorations (it feels like Openbox), I can’t argue against their utilitarian usability, or complain that there aren’t up-to-date creature comforts like multiple desktops and split window management:

In fact, I found the desktop experience (such as it is) very much in line with what I use daily on Windows, even down to the little layout helpers when you hover your mouse over the maximise button:

Yes, Gemini is bundled in. Yes, I am entitled to a year’s worth of Pro usage if I put in my credit card information. No, I did not do anything with the offer–as you’d expect, given I roll my own AI assistant, I did not feel like committing to it. But I did use the built-in Gemini Notebook application (which is a web view into NotebookLM) for quite a few things, and I did try all the Chrome-baked assistance for searching, editing, etc., even though it could get pretty intrusive–I would get one of these every time I clicked in an input field, for instance:

Then there were the things I expected to work but just didn’t, like translations:

But what I found most useful, given my penchant for testing accessibility features, were camera-based head tracking to move the mouse cursor (which worked very well indeed) and dictation support, which was instantly available everywhere by hitting Google+D or the dedicated key right next to the power button. That placement led to some finger fumbling, and I occasionally suspended the laptop by mistake…

Dictation worked consistently better than what I get on my iPad–it doesn’t have the new Rambler AI-powered post-dictation clean-up, but the speed of recognition itself and tolerance for pauses and changes in inflection were impressive.

From what little I tried in the various bundled apps, I’d say that if you’re committed to Google, you’ll find the Gemini experience useful, even if I ended up installing the Android versions of both Copilot and ChatGPT for my personal workflows.

One of the first things I did was to install Syncthing, Obsidian and Tailscale, as well as a few other staples:

Tailscale was immediately recognised as a valid VPN app and seamlessly integrated into the system (something I didn’t know Chromebooks could do):

However, after a while, I realised I needed to sideload apps to take full advantage of Android–ChromeOS Developer Mode requires you to completely wipe the device, but enabling ADB debugging is a separate option that doesn’t require Developer Mode. What I eventually did was to enable ADB debugging and use the Linux environment to install apps locally–that works perfectly, but still plasters a red warning under the login screen that reads This device may contain apps that haven't been verified by Google.

So yes, it may contain nuts.

Things have improved tremendously since the days of my Acer C720, when I first installed crouton and eventually replaced ChromeOS entirely, dealing with assorted hardware tweaks along the way.

Enabling Linux development support is now trivial, and it creates a Debian-based Crostini VM that is, for all intents and purposes, a “normal” Linux environment–the Terminal application is integrated with ChromeOS (you can mount any folder on the system into it) and has its own appearance, keyboard, mouse and SSH settings, while the VM exposes the usual command-line tools and package management, as well as an interesting assortment of virtualised devices:

Sadly, that does not include Vulkan graphics acceleration. It is still perfectly usable, although I did not push it to the limit–my goal was to try the regular Chromebook experience rather than turn this into another Linux laptop, but all of the basics worked, including setting up and running VS Code:

In fact, I ended up doing a fair amount of development on this, mostly to prove to myself that I could take it on a trip and have all the essentials:

• pi and codex as standalone coding assistants
• VS Code for full-stack development (and a full copy of this site, including all the Go back-end and rendering code)
• Enough of the Android SDK to build, deploy and debug an Android app completely locally, even on this relatively low-powered machine–something that is still impossible on an iPad.

I am currently developing gi (my new TUI harness) on it, because it’s more than fast enough for it–again, something that was most definitely not on my bingo card.

I should mention that despite some of the bundled apps being games, the MediaTek chipset does have one drawback: there is native graphics acceleration for Android games, but most emulators and off-label gaming hacks currently swear by Qualcomm’s Adreno GPUs, and most of the “alternative” GPU drivers you’d normally rely on for Vulkan graphics acceleration are not compatible. This meant that currently trendy hacks like GameNative and DroidDeck would simply not work, although to be honest that is a very niche thing indeed.

However, like I pointed out above, Steam Link and Xbox Cloud Gaming work perfectly fine, allowing you to play more demanding games via streaming rather than relying on the local GPU–and considering that you can probably do that for a long time with this combination of battery life and lightweight hardware, that’s a perfectly viable way to enjoy gaming on this device.

But that only makes me quite curious about how Googlebooks will fare in this regard, since there is a pretty big market for mobile gaming on Android devices right now, largely driven by emulation and the availability of decent performance GPUs in relatively affordable devices (plus FEX and Proton on ARM are evolving very quickly).

Android apps update automatically via the Play Store, but ChromeOS is also frequently updated (I’ve gone through at least three updates in roughly two months), and even though things like trackpad responsiveness were definitely a part of the experience, the last few release notes were almost exclusively about new AI features:

Surprisingly, I have very few, and they’re mostly related to the somewhat visible gaps in this combination of ChromeOS, Android and a desktop system. Some Android apps didn’t like being used in a desktop environment (not really news for anyone playing with Samsung DeX routinely). There are two Settings apps (one for the embedded Android, which will pop up when you are doing vaguely off-label things like developing on it), and there is a clear lack of unified visuals–Android was never the most consistent thing visually, but throw in a “normal” desktop Chrome and you have yet another UX flavour adding to the dissonance.

And yet, all the slightly weird basics I tried worked: Japanese input, mouse scrolling, dragging, etc. It’s arguably better than a GNOME desktop simply because I could seamlessly copy/paste text, rich text and even images across Chrome and Android.

File management is still a pain, though, so even though I could sync my Obsidian drafts using Syncthing and resort to VS Code, I had to struggle with the somewhat awkward Android-ish-but-not-quite filesystem arrangement.

But by far the biggest annoyance for me has been the somewhat arbitrary choice of things that the built-in Chrome browser refuses to download by default–SVG images, ZIP files from my LAN machines, the occasional (seemingly random) plaintext source file, etc. It seems to be fixable via security settings, and when I find out exactly how I’ll update this post.

Even considering it’s designed to a cost and unapologetically plastic, I think this is a great machine, and Lenovo has executed it very well. Although I prefer the 3:2 display ratio of the Surface Laptop I have been using for a couple of months now in parallel, I invariably reached for the Lenovo at the end of the day instead of my iPad because of the larger OLED display, full keyboard and overall lightness.

In fact, I think the best thing I can say about this laptop is that I literally had to force myself not to reach for it.

Although it is true that I am in a fairly unique position these days since the vast majority of my tooling only requires a browser or a terminal and (thanks to my preference for using an iPad) I moved all the specialist apps like Blender, OrcaSlicer, etc. to remote VMs over the years, this is a great writing machine–to the point where I ended up creating a web-based writing workshop to get around the need to sync my drafts to it.

Yes, Writing Workshop was created because I wanted to have a proper WYSIWYG experience inside Chrome that was as close as possible to what the device was intended to do (and use AI to improve my writing, not generate it wholesale). I might have gone a bit overboard here, but I regret nothing.

As to committing to Google… No, I did not move my personal e-mail onto the device (well, I do have one Google account I regularly use, but it’s not my primary), and no, I could not quite commit to Gemini, but being productive on this machine was far less hassle than I expected: everything Android that I really needed worked. Even if the UX polish wasn’t there, the basics worked: I could sync my files to it, use Android equivalents of a few iOS apps, run VS Code, and even connect to corporate resources with… zero hassle really.

And it must be said that I was able to do some of those uniquely because Google, unlike Apple, lets me develop and install my own apps locally and gives me a perfectly usable Linux sandbox. What a novel concept, to be able to develop applications for your hardware… on your hardware.

As an Apple (and primarily iPad) user, the overall experience was… sobering. Yes, Apple has (temporarily, at least) gone “down-market” with the MacBook Neo to address the low-end laptop market, and I know that Googlebooks have a lot of challenges to overcome (with Google itself probably the biggest one), but I now find the prospect of them tantalising, as long as I am still able to install and run what I want.

I definitely want to try a Googlebook as soon as possible. There’s a there there for sure, and no matter how people feel about it (and Google), I think it has the potential to be a genuinely compelling device for my workflow.