Tech Advisor - UK (2021-05)

46 TECH ADVISOR • MAY 2021

REVIEWS

you’reatthemercyofyourthighswhen

determiningthelapabilityofthedevice.

I foundthatanglingtheDuetso

thatit wascomfortableenoughtoread

clearly,meantthatthekick-standwas

rightontheedgeofmykneecaps,so

anyforwardmotionwouldknockit

offandsendthedeviceplummeting

towardsthe floor. If you’re the

supermodeltype,withlegsthatgo

onforever,thenyoushouldhaveno

problems,butforhobbit-folklikeme,

youmaywanttomovetoa tableordesk.

PROCESSOR

It shouldcomeasnogreatsurprise

thattheDuetisn’tsportingthelatest

in high-endsiliconfromQualcomm

orIntel.Whatit doescomewithis

theMediaTekHelioP60Tocta-core

processor,whichis thesameonewe’ve

seenin cheaperAndroidphonessince

itwas introduced back in 2018.

In the speed stakes, it’s not going

to outshine processors from premium

machines, but then the Duet isn’t trying

to. Lenovo seems to have a firm idea of

who this 2-in-1 is aimed at, and blazing

benchmarks isn’t too high on its agenda.

In everyday use, the Duet handles

tasks in a prompt manner with only the

occasional delay as it thinks about the

job at hand. Apps open and close swiftly,

and even my catastrophic use of Chrome

with about 30 tabs open didn’t seem to

cause too much of a problem.

This is a casual device though, so if

you intend to push it to the limits with

graphically demanding games and

software, you’ll need to accept that

things are likely to get bogged down

rather quickly.

To give you an indication of the

performance limits, I ran the standard

barrage of benchmarks, with Geekbench

5 returning 263 for single-core and 931

for multi-core, Basemark 3 was 240.94

and JetStream 2 scored 35.45.

Compare these scores to those

I recorded in my review of the Acer

Chromebook 713 Spin and the Duet

is completely trounced, but if you only

want a device for lightweight use, plus

one that doubles up as a usable Android

tablet, then I know which one I’d prefer.

MEMORY AND STORAGE

Chromebooks are rarely overburdened

with storage or RAM and the Duet sticks

firmly to this pattern. My review model

has 4GB of RAM and 64GB of drive

space, which is fine as most ChromeOS

apps live in the cloud.

Of course, if you’re planning on

taking advantage of Android apps and

games, then you may need to manage

your storage on a regular basis, as the

Duet doesn’t have a microSD card slot.