Lenovo is really excited about the Chromebook Plus 14, as is its partner Google. In fact it was the only Chromebook Google showed me at its latest ChromeOS presentation in NYC, and Lenovo also sent a review unit to both PCWorld’s laptop expert Ashley Biancuzzo and our video team leader Adam Patrick Murray.
Now if you watch PCWorld’s YouTube channel or our weekly podcast The Full Nerd, you know that Adam is a diehard Windows user. But like a lot of us, he’s looking at some alternatives, and decided to use this opportunity to check out Chromebooks for the first time in years. The Chromebook Plus 14 is “premium,” in the admittedly lower scale of Chromebooks versus Windows laptops, with a brand new Mediatek processor packing an NPU for AI-powered features. It also has 16GB of RAM (very generous for a Chromebook) and a 14-inch OLED display, all for $650.
Adam says that his assumptions of ChromeOS have been shattered by this laptop, and that he can use it as a daily driver in the office. And that’s coming from a professional video producer! While it’s not perfect for everyone, with the lack of availability for some frequent Windows tools like Photoshop, it’s shockingly capable. Especially if you also use an Android phone, which it can integrate with seamlessly over Google services. It probably helps that so many of the tools most people are using are now web-based, and often available as Android apps, too — Chromebooks can install apps from the Google Play Store with ease.
For a deeper dive into the Chromebook Plus 14, including a breakdown of its AI features, be sure to check out PCWorld’s full comprehensive text review. And for more insights into the latest computer tech, subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube.