Lenovo 500e Chromebook - Review 2022

Call it "Junior's First ThinkPad." Apart from a textured-plastic instead of apparently matte-blackness lid, the Lenovo 500e Chromebook ($309 as tested) is jump to remind you of the company's legendary business laptops. Aimed at Thou-12 classrooms, the 500e Chromebook carries the same MIL-STD-810G certification against shock, vibration, farthermost temperatures, and other rough handling every bit developed ThinkPads. Its keyboard, though not equally stellar as a ThinkPad'southward, is every bit expert as whatsoever in its class. And this motorcar pivots from laptop to tablet way like one of Lenovo's Yoga 2-in-ane convertibles. It has its flaws, but overall it'southward good plenty for a long wait from grown-up chromebook shoppers and school administrators akin.

How This Chromebook Shapes Up

Actually, at commencement glance, the 500e Chromebook seems to say, "Anything yous tin can do, we can exercise better" to the Acer Chromebook Spin xi, awarded an Editors' Choice in December 2022 as our favorite student Chromebook. Both are convertibles with 11.6-inch screens that tin fold into presentation-friendly stand up modes and A-frame tent modes, likewise as laptop and tablet configurations. Both are MIL-STD-tested machines, too, with keyboards that tin shrug off xi-ounce water spills.

But while both have Intel Celeron processors, the Lenovo has a quad-core Celeron N3450 to the Acer's dual-core N3350. While both come with passive (that is, bombardment-free) stylus pens for sketching or scribbling on their one,366-past-768-pixel IPS bear upon screens, the 500e Chromebook provides a hole or niche to store the pen, and so information technology's less probable to become lost. And with schoolhouse districts not exactly rolling in dough, the Lenovo model costs $91 less.

It's non quite that uncomplicated, however. Acer rates the Chromebook Spin 11 equally able to survive a longer fall when knocked off a desk-bound—from a height of 48 inches, versus 29.5 inches—as well as the weight of a 132-pound student standing on the chapeau. (That last spec, in plow, is surpassed by the CTL NL61TX Education Chromebook, whose whiteboard chapeau boasts a whopping 365 pounds of resistance to screen breakage.)

To exam the 29.5-inch claim, I pushed the Lenovo 500e Chromebook from my lap onto a carpeted floor half a dozen times (thrice closed, and thrice open). It sailed through the test, as it did my own version of a keyboard h2o spill. You wouldn't want to do either on purpose, but information technology's adept to know that the 500e can survive adventitious abuse, if these anecdotal tests are whatsoever indication.

A Basic Black Slab

Prone to alluring fingerprints, the 500e Chromebook's lid features Lenovo and Chrome logos in opposite corners. At 2.97 pounds, the 500e Chromebook is a chip heavy for comfortable use in tablet mode, but the 0.eight-past-11.4-by-viii-inch (HWD) hybrid is fractionally lighter and smaller than the Acer Chromebook Spin 11. (That model comes in at 3.09 pounds, and 0.82 past 11.7 by 8.one inches.)

Opening the lid reveals a broad black bezel around the screen, which leaves plenty of room for thumbs when holding the device in tablet style...

The isle-way keyboard follows standard chromebook conventions, with a search/app carte du jour instead of a Caps Lock key and a superlative row of browser back, forward, reload, and arrangement volume and brightness buttons. On both this and the brandish halves, the 500e Chromebook feels brick-rigid, with no flex when grasping the screen corners or pressing the middle of the keyboard.

You lot'll find a USB three.0 Type-A port and a USB Type-C port on the 500e Chromebook'south left side, along with a microSD card slot and a headphone jack. The right border hosts a book rocker for use in tablet manner, as well as the power button, another pair of USB 3.0 and USB Type-C ports, and a Kensington-style cable-lockdown slot.

Either USB-C port works with the supplied AC adapter as a charging port. (The adapter is an former-school blueprint with cords on both ends of a power brick, rather than a simple plug.) We were disappointed to see no HDMI output for connecting a monitor, though Lenovo sells a USB-C-to-HDMI dongle for $44.99. Bottom-mounted speakers emit somewhat muffled audio.

Eyeing and Tapping the 500e

The 500e Chromebook has 2 cameras: a 1,280-past-720-pixel webcam in the usual identify (that is, centered higher up the display), and a higher-res 2,592-past-1,944-pixel snapshot cam centered higher up the keyboard...

This second camera is for use in tablet way, using the screen as a viewfinder. (You'll accept to try and residuum the Chromebook in ane paw, while tapping the shutter button with the other.) Unfortunately, resolution differences still, both suffer from grainy and poor image quality. The webcam is better than nothing for Google Hangouts video chats, just that's about it.

The 11.6-inch screen offers better image quality, with sufficient if not dazzling brightness and lively colors and contrast. The console is topped by Corning Gorilla Glass for ruggedness, and to defend against overzealous stylus pokes. Two gripes with the screen, however: Its 1,366-by-768-pixel native resolution is awfully depression for this day and age (full Hard disk drive, or 1080p, would exist better), and its glossy surface means that reflections of lights and objects in the room spoil its wide viewing angles. That said, chromebooks in this screen-size class tend to favor a resolution of i,366 by 768, so the 500e Chromebook isn't lonely in this way, non by a long shot.

At least bear upon operations are precise and polish, equally are writing and drawing with the no-bombardment stylus. The feel is more slick than paper-like, but accuracy and palm rejection are good.

Speaking of feel, the keyboard has a shallow merely snappy typing feel; I was cruising at only shy of my usual ninety words per infinitesimal pace within minutes of opening the lid. Every bit mentioned, it'south not ThinkPad-quality, but it's as good equally any in this price range I've tried.

The touchpad is comfy, though it extends to the very edge of the front of the laptop. Information technology takes a firm rather than gentle tap to register a click.

A Capable Celeron, and a Long Runner

Chromebooks don't run our usual suite of Windows performance tests, but the 500e Chromebook acquitted itself capably in casual utilise. It took a leisurely fourteen seconds to kick to the Chrome OS sign-in screen (which is, like the power button, rarely used, as Chromebook owners commonly close the lid to append operations). After that, it felt perky enough even with 10 browser tabs, a couple of Android apps, and a YouTube video open up.

I used Principled Technologies' CrXPRT Chrome OS app and WebXPRT 2022 browser-based tests to formally test this chromebook's functioning, along with the Jetstream 1.1 browser JavaScript benchmark...

On these tests, the 500e Chromebook slightly outpaces the other Intel "Apollo Lake"-generation Celeron here, the 2022 version of the Acer Chromebook 11. The Acer uses a one-step-down, two-core Celeron N3350, versus the quad-core N3450 in the 500e. You tin come across, however, the pregnant comeback that both of these Apollo Lake fries return versus their "Braswell" (previous-generation) equivalents, in the two Celeron N3060- and N3160-based Acer and Dell chromebooks hither. Above them all, the ii machines based on the now-deprecated Intel Core Chiliad chips are in a college performance tier. (Those two machines are also nontrivially more expensive, notably the HP Chromebook thirteen G1.)

In the one benchmark that chromebooks exercise share with Windows laptops in our testing regimen, PCMag's video-playback battery rundown test, the Lenovo lasted for a whopping xv hours and 42 minutes of playback, tops among chromebooks tested to date. Getting through a workday plus an evening of entertainment should exist no problem.

Is the Lenovo 500e Chromebook right for you? It easily earns the same four-star rating as the Acer Chromebook Spin xi, and is worth attention from anyone considering that convertible. Replacing it equally our pupil Editors' Choice, nevertheless, would require a win rather than a tie in some fundamental area—perchance the improver of an HDMI port or a 1080p screen, for instance? Nonetheless, don't be surprised to see the 500e in our next roundup of meridian-choice Chromebooks.

Source: https://sea.pcmag.com/laptops/28287/lenovo-500e-chromebook

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