

It looks nice, and the tablet itself feels sturdy and decent. The build quality of the device is great, kind of. You’ll want to know if it’s any good now, won’t you? The hardware So, when the Lenovo Chromebook Duet was on its third special offer in two months, and having looked at the device twice in the store beforehand, I bit the bullet and bought one, for AUD$479 (US$335, £265). But the lack of a proper browser with an ability to view-source, or see the Javascript console, or run plugins, etc, frustrated me, and the Apple-ecosystem lockdown is annoying. The iPad has certainly improved since 2014 or so, when I bought my last one. I tried an iPad, a purchase partly out of necessity (I needed a backup machine to record a podcast onto) and partly out of curiosity. I’d like something that I can use as a tablet rather more than a little laptop these days. It’s brilliant, but as a tablet it’s really heavy and a little too large. I have a Samsung Chromebook Plus, a beautiful piece of hardware with a lovely screen, a pen, and it folds back to be a tablet. I knew what I was hopefully letting myself in for. (This is an updated review from April 2021. And if you don’t know all that, there are plenty of pages that are product descriptions disguised as reviews for you.) I’m assuming you already know all of that but are more interested in how it actually works. Don’t forget to grab some extra cashback by using Rakuten when you shop Lenovo.(First off: this isn’t one of those reviews which lethargically go through the features of a product. This is a great price on a USI pen that you can use on any compatible Chromebook and future stylus-compatible Chrome OS devices. (Educators and students can score an extra discount when you verify your institution’s credentials on Lenovo’s site.) The pen lacks any barrel buttons as you’ll find on the iPlume USI stylus but I’ll be honest, I don’t use that feature with the pen that I have. That brings the price down to $37.99 before tax and shipping is free. The MSRP on Lenovo’s site is a mere $39.99 and you can knock off another 5% when you use the promo code “ extrafive” at checkout. The Lenovo USI stylus is powered by a AAAA battery and boasts up to 150 hours of life with an average use of two hours a day.

Second and equally as exciting, Lenovo’s USI pen comes out of the gate with a price tag lower than any model we’ve seen to date. However, it’s nice to have a pen that matches the device you’re using. Yes, the universal stylus initiative is intended to create a standard that means you can use whichever stylus you like. First, it means that you can finally have the stylus that was designed specifically with your Lenovo Chromebook Duet, Flex 5, or 10e in mind. This is awesome news for a number of reasons. This comes just days after the pen popped up on Lenovo’s Australia site. As we anticipated, Lenovo has officially released its own USI stylus here in the United States.
