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We still see plenty of Chromebooks aimed at consumers and classrooms, but sophisticated models for business are increasingly popular. Lenovo’s ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook (starts at $584; $859 as tested) could be the fanciest yet. This 13.3-inch convertible lives up to the ThinkPad name with a TrackPoint pointing stick in the keyboard and MIL-STD 810G certification against road hazards like shock, vibration, and temperature and humidity extremes. It is even available with a 4K OLED display. It’s not cheap, but it’s also not plagued by the fatal sticker shock that its rival the HP Elite c1030 Chromebook Enterprise is, and it’s overall impressive enough to claim an Editors’ Choice award for business Chromebooks. Think of it as a premium office 2-in-1 that happens to run Chrome OS instead of Windows.
Abyss Blue, Not Matte Black
The ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook also happens to have an AMD instead of Intel CPU. (Last fall, AMD introduced a series of five Ryzen and Athlon “C-series” processors, specially designed for use in Chromebooks.) A $584 lowball system sports a dual-core Athlon Gold 3150C chip, a skimpy 4GB of RAM, and a worse (even double-size would be skimpy) 32GB of eMMC flash storage. Our $859 review unit steps up to a quad-core, 2.1GHz Ryzen 5 3500C processor with Radeon Vega integrated graphics, 8GB of memory, and a generous 256GB PCI Express-based solid-state drive. The two models share a full HD (1,920-by-1,080-pixel) IPS touch screen with 300 nits of brightness.
Our test machine also has a fingerprint reader, a Universal Stylus Initiative pen that stashes in a slot on the front edge, and two cameras. The first cam is a webcam with a privacy shutter, centered above the display; the second is a 5-megapixel world-facing camera above the keyboard, suitable for taking snapshots while holding the Yoga in tablet mode. A step up from our test model, the 4K OLED version is a better value at $968; it has not only a more brilliant, higher-resolution screen, but also a faster (Ryzen 7 3700C) processor and 16GB of RAM.
Finished in a very deep-navy metallic blue instead of the usual ThinkPad black, the Lenovo’s aluminum chassis measures 0.61 by 12.1 by 8.4 inches and weighs 3.3 pounds, more or less matching its 13.3-inch convertible rival the Dell Latitude 5300 2-in-1 Chromebook Enterprise (0.76 by 12 by 8.2 inches, 3.2 pounds). The HP Elite c1030 has a 13.5-inch display with a squarer 3:2 rather than 16:9 aspect ratio; it’s a bit lighter at 2.9 pounds. The 14-inch Asus Chromebook Flip C436 is lighter yet at 2.6 pounds.
The usual Chrome logo is joined by the familiar diagonal ThinkPad insignia (with light-up dot over the i) on the lid. Medium-slim bezels surround the 1080p display, which two hinges allow to flip and fold into the tablet, easel, and tent modes familiar from other Yogas and other vendors’ 2-in-1s. The screen barely wobbles when tapped in laptop mode; there’s almost no flex if you grasp its corners or press the keyboard deck.
We give big bonus points to the few Chromebooks that have an HDMI video output instead of making you fuss with a USB-C DisplayPort dongle to plug in an external monitor. The C13 has one on its right side, along with a USB 3.2 Type-C port, a volume rocker, the power button, and a security-cable locking notch. The left edge holds another USB-C port, two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, and an audio jack and microSD card slot. Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth take care of wireless communications.
A Pleasure to Use
Like other panels rated at 300 nits of brightness, the touch screen is sufficiently sunny—I wouldn’t mind being able to turn it up just one more notch or two, but white backgrounds are decently crisp instead of dingy. Colors are rich and well saturated if not exactly vivid; contrast is good and viewing angles are wide.
Fine details are sharp, but using the native 1080p resolution makes screen elements appear small. So, as with most Chromebooks, you can choose from a variety of “looks like” resolution settings to suit your taste. (The default is 1,536 by 864.)
Lenovo says the supplied pen gets sufficient charge in its slot in 15 seconds to work for 100 minutes and provides 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity. It tracked accurately and showed good palm rejection when I tried sketching in Chrome Canvas, but it wasn’t fast enough to keep up with rapid scribbles without skipping.
The backlit keyboard has a snappy typing feel and the usual Chromebook layout, with a search/menu key in place of Caps Lock and browser and system control keys along the top row. The TrackPoint cursor controller has three buttons south of the space bar, giving users who don’t care for the usual two-finger tap in Chrome OS a real right-click button to play with. Both the TrackPoint and touchpad work smoothly and responsively.
The 720p webcam and 2,592-by-1,944-pixel keyboard cam capture fairly sharp, colorful, and well-lit images, though it’s awkward holding up the system in tablet mode to snap a picture. Side-mounted speakers produce tinny, muffled sound; bass is weak and overlapping tracks are flattened. Lenovo backs the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook with a one-year warranty.
Performance Testing: Chrome OS Convertibles Compared
For our benchmark charts, I pitted the C13 against four mid- to high-priced 2-in-1s with a variety of Intel processors. The Asus Chromebook Flip C436 has a Core i3. The Dell Latitude 5300 2-in-1 Chromebook Enterprise has a Core i5. So does the Editors’ Choice award-winning Acer Chromebook Spin 713, which, like the Core i7-powered HP Elite c1030 Chromebook Enterprise, has a 13.5-inch screen with a 3:2 aspect ratio. (See more about how we test laptops.)
The first objective benchmarks we use are Principled Technologies’ venerable CrXPRT (a suite of simulated Chrome OS productivity apps) and more recent WebXPRT 3 (a browser-based test of HTML and JavaScript throughput).
It trailed the Core i7 Elite, but the ThinkPad’s Ryzen 5 CPU pretty much kept pace with its Core i5 rivals. Opening a dozen browser tabs or streaming 1080p videos is no challenge.
JetStream 2 is another performance test that combines 64 JavaScript and WebAssembly benchmarks to measure a browser’s (in this case, the default Chrome’s) suitability for advanced web applications.
The HP and Dell pulled into the lead, but the Yoga delivered solid middle-of-the-pack performance. These are all relatively fast, ritzy Chromebooks, a cut above most consumer models.
We’ve added UL’s PCMark for Android Work 2.0 test to our Chromebook regimen. This test suite runs in a small smartphone-style window and mimics productivity operations ranging from text and image editing to data charting and video playback.
Not much separated the five contenders in this benchmark. The Lenovo nearly caught the Core i7 HP, showing high aptitude for Android apps and games.
Finally, to test a laptop’s battery life, we loop a 720p video file with screen brightness set at 50%, audio volume at 100%, and Wi-Fi and the keyboard backlight disabled until the system quits. Sometimes we have to play the video from an external SSD plugged into a USB-C port, but the growing number of Chromebooks with solid-state instead of eMMC flash drives have room to store it locally.
Lasting a little less than nine hours, the C13 showed unexceptional stamina by today’s ultraportable standards, but it should have no trouble getting through a full day of work.
A Worthy Addition to the ThinkPad Line
At $859 as tested, the ThinkPad C13 Yoga Chromebook is a bit pricey compared to, say, the $629 Acer Spin 713, though it’s a bargain next to the $1,529 HP Elite c1030. Still, we could see consumers and entrepreneurs seeking a first-class Chrome OS convertible being very happy with it, and companies adopting Google Workspace (formerly G Suite) will find it a perfect fit. It’s a deserving Editors’ Choice winner for businesses willing to think outside the Windows box.
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