Hands On With Lenovo's New Chromebooks

BARCELONA—Lenovo's 3 new Chromebooks can take a beating. They should, as they're for kids. Chromebooks are tremendously successful in schools, and the new semi-ruggedized Lenovo 100e, 300e, and 500e look similar they're up to the predations of cranky ten-year-olds. Nosotros got some time with them at Mobile World Congress.

Built Tough

MWC Bug Art The new Chromebooks' build is the about impressive thing about them. All three laptops accept rubber bumpers and a shock-resistant, liquid-resistant, united nations-pryable keyboard. I pounded on them joyfully with both fists, like an aroused chimp or disruptive second-grader, and didn't cause any damage at all. They're drib-resistant upwards to 29.five inches, and not dunkable, but definitely splashable.

The 100e (pictured above) and 500e have Intel Celeron processors, with the 100 running a Celeron N3350 and the 500 an N3450. We were not impressed by the functioning of the 100e and 300e.

The 100e, at $219, is definitely a cheap Chromebook. It has an 11.half dozen-inch, ane,366-past-768 TN LCD screen, which has truly unfortunate viewing angles. There'due south 4GB of RAM and 32GB of storage, plus a microSD carte du jour slot. On the sides, at that place are two USB-C ports, two USB-A ports, and a mic/headphone jack. It weighs a light ii.75 pounds.

The screens become better on the 300e and 500e, both of which have 11.6-inch, 1,366-by-768 IPS LCDs with much ameliorate viewing angles.

The $279 300e (pictured above) has Lenovo's AnyPen engineering science, which lets you write on the screen with a pencil. (No, you can't use the eraser.) A sharp pencil didn't marker up the tempered glass screen, but in that location was significant lag as the ink rendered. Its storage and ports are the aforementioned equally on the 100e, but it weighs a lilliputian more, at 3 pounds.

The $349 500e, on the other hand, comes with its own EMR (electro-magnetic resonance) pen that fits into a slot on the bottom. The pen allows for lagless inking, although you tin't use a standard pencil any more. Inking on the 500e was much, much quicker. This laptop can have either 4GB or 8GB of RAM, and 32 or 64 GB of storage, and it weighs 3 pounds.

The 500e (pictured below) also has a camera above the keyboard, which seems super weird until you fold the laptop back into table-tent style. The idea is to be able to use the screen as a viewfinder for the camera when the laptop is folded back.

The lagless inking technology on the 500e, designed past Google, makes up for the processor'southward deadening speed past predicting where the ink should go in advance of y'all really touching the adjacent pixel, according to Lenovo. The stylus is pressure simply not tilt sensitive, and information technology was easy enough to create lines of different width and depth.

All three Chromebooks support Google Play for Android apps, Lenovo told united states of america.

Can They Make the Course?

With American schools, by and large, starving for money, these Lenovo Chromebooks might exist a skillful solution considering they're cheap and durable. Schools or families tin can buy them, they tin accept a beating, and their predominantly deject-based software will stay relatively current and secure for years. Are they fast? Well, except for the 500e, no, and that'due south being generous to the 500e. But they'll assistance close the digital carve up.

The 100e is coming in March; the 300e and 500e are available now. We hope to have reviews soon.