So... I got a Chromebook

On Thursday my wife handed me a brand new Lenovo Chromebook Duet 3 as a surprise gift. I have to say I’m floored by this device and I can see how I have been wrong about chromeOS as a real get-work-done device.

I started learning about the Duet line of Chromebooks and it immediately sounded like a good replacement based on my wishlist, which I mentioned at the end of my EDC laptop post. My wife heard me talking about the Duet, as well as my bedtime tablet battery dying and my thoughts on not using my phone any longer as my laptop. Peeking at the Lenovo website, the Duet 3 with 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage was on sale for under $300. So, she went for it.

Why the Duet

I was researching small laptops and just happened to stumble on a Reddit post of people talking about their favorite devices. In that list was the Lenovo Chromebook Duet and at first I skipped over it. Many years ago I had a Toshiba Chromebook and loved it. But, that was at a time when I was all-in on the Google ecosystem. It is much different now that I self-host most of the services I use. I thought I needed a “real laptop”.

However, I decided to go back to the list and not completely rule out Chromebooks because of price. Chromebooks are much cheaper with similar specs to mid and high end Android tablets. I had never heard of the Duet line, so I spent some time researching it.

What stood out to me was:

• There are dual full service USB-C ports, both of which are DisplayPort Alt mode enabled. This blew my mind because only $1,000 Android tablets have video-out, but this $300 Chromebook has it in two ports!
• It is a detachable like a Microsoft Surface, so it can be a laptop or a tablet.
• It can run both Android and Linux apps.
• Its low power and can charge on as little as 15 watts.

Experience so far

I’ve only had it for a few days and I have to say it is one of the devices I’ve had the most fun using. It is an 11-inch display and it came with a kickstand, keyboard with trackpad, and a stylus (plus shipping) all for the $300 price. The screen is nice and I like the form factor. Keyboard and trackpad are more than functional. The battery life is great and I haven’t had to do any midday charging. It can easily last a full day of my use.

The ability to run Android and Linux apps is phenomenal. The way it is situated is it feels like I am using three devices on one screen. Both Android and Linux run in virtual machines, with chromeOS the inbetween. If all I’m doing is browser stuff, then I never enter either of the Android or Linux environments. But, chromeOS makes it easy to get those going, install apps, and share data between the VMs. I can have Android data shared to the Linux VM with just a couple clicks. Installing Android apps feels like using Samsung Dex, which I am extremely comfortable with. Linux GUI apps appear in the chromeOS menu like they are native apps. I was also able to install flatpaks, distrobox, plus Docker and Podman containers.

Not everything is perfect. I still wish it had a proper hinge. I also want to add more local storage, but there is no way to do that without having an external drive hanging off the side. I think I can overcome both of those over time. To be honest, for the price I am not going to complain. I never thought I could find something in this price range that would work for me, so I will figure out these two pain points.

I’m going to be writing a lot more posts about how I setup this Chromebook to be my EDC and couch laptop. Plus, I am thinking about configuring it as my power outage, bug-out tech setup. I also want to see how far I can push the Android section based on what I’ve done with Dex over the last couple years. I also want to see how far I can push the Linux side using it with my homelab. Last, I want to see what I can do in an offline or offgrid situation.

Lots more to come.

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