Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook Review

Lenovo's IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook (starts at $529.99) is the second gaming Chromebook we've reviewed, and part of the first wave of ChromeOS devices we've seen sold as gaming systems. Though not a gaming laptop in the traditional sense—it lacks a discrete Nvidia or AMD graphics chip—the 16-inch Lenovo Gaming Chromebook provides an affordable way to enjoy your Steam library or other game stores without the expense or bulk of traditional gaming hardware. And, with an Intel Core i3 processor, a better-than-average display, and an RGB keyboard, it's tailor-made for gaming services such as Nvidia GeForce Now. However, it's also an excellent Chromebook in its own right, delivering a surprisingly premium experience for the price—just not quite the showing put up by the Editors' Choice-award-winning Acer Chromebook 516 GE.

Gaming Chromebooks: A Hot New Way to Game

For all the oddness of saying the term “gaming Chromebook” with a straight face, the concept is pretty simple and surprisingly sound. Chromebooks have already had a rich gaming aspect to them for several years, thanks to Android app support and the Google Play store coming to Chrome devices a few years ago.

However, the real driver of this category is the rise of cloud gaming services, starting with Google Stadia (RIP) and continuing on with Nvidia GeForce Now and Amazon Luna. By putting the graphics hardware into a remote server, cloud gaming services can give you a remote gaming machine that can stream anywhere (even to other devices, such as smart TVs and phones), delivering the high-end graphics of a AAA game using the same bandwidth as streaming video. You get to enjoy the games in your Steam library, while Nvidia gets to make money with a paid subscription service.

All of it adds up to make gaming on a Chromebook a surprisingly pleasant experience. This form of gaming does add some uncertainty—what if your chosen cloud gaming service shuts down, as Google's own Stadia did at the end of 2022? However, as cloud gaming services and gaming Chromebooks gain ground, they will help support each other in the greater gaming ecosystem.

IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook Configurations

Lenovo's 16-inch IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook comes in two versions: the $529 six-core 12th Gen Intel Core i3-1215U model with Intel UHD Graphics, which we tested, or a more powerful 10-core Core i5-1235U model with Intel Iris Xe Graphics, which sells for $699.

The model we're reviewing here also has one throwback to older Chromebook designs: 128GB of eMMC. This is a NAND flash alternative to SSD storage that is cheaper but is also slightly less capable. If you want a full SSD, you'll need to bump up to the more expensive model.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

With a big 16-inch screen, the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook provides a suitable screen size for gaming in a design that's not too large or unwieldy for everyday use, even if you're taking it to and from classes every day.

Weighing in at 4 pounds, this Chromebook is too hefty to be considered an ultraportable, but that's not to say it isn't easy to tote. This 16-inch machine will fit easily into most laptop bags, measuring just 14 inches across and 0.78 inches thick. And, with more than 12 hours of battery life, this Chrome laptop will take you through a full day of classes or work before you ever have to grab the charger.

Lenovo's look is also fairly sedate, with plastic and aluminum construction and a two-tone anodized finish the company calls Storm Gray. Simply put, this doesn't look like a gaming machine, but rather like a well-appointed Chromebook that you would see in any lecture hall or meeting room.

The only overtly gaming-influenced feature that others will be able to see is the RGB backlit keyboard. With multiple colors and a rainbow option through non-addressable zones, the backlighting ranges from mild to wild. All of the RGB options are found in the Chrome Settings menu, under the Wallpaper & Style personalization options.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Due to its 16-inch size, this Chromebook also gets a numeric pad, but the result feels a little cramped to use. Regardless, if you're regularly working with spreadsheets or entering numbers—or playing massively multiplayer RPGs that often use it—this is a handy feature.

What you don't see, which is equally important to gamers, is an anti-ghosting feature that's in the keyboard. Anti-ghosting lets you hammer out commands as quickly as possible without worrying that the keyboard will miss keystrokes in the middle of an intense gaming session.

IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook Display, Speakers, and Webcam

Lenovo's only other included gaming-oriented feature is the display. This 16-inch IPS panel pumps out a 2,560-by-1,600 resolution, along with decent brightness and low blue light emissions to reduce eye strain. All that aside, the real treat is the screen's 120Hz refresh rate, which lets the display keep up with the fastest refresh times provided by cloud gaming services.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

What you won't get is a touch screen. With no touch or pen support, you're limited to the keyboard and touchpad for navigation (though the system does support mice and gamepads). That lack of touch support means that Android apps may not be as navigable as you'd like on this machine. Considering how many excellent games are in the Google Play store that would be perfect for the new gaming Chromebooks, this is an especially odd omission.

Beyond the display, this IdeaPad also features a quartet of 2-watt speakers that provide better sound than the average Chromebook, though most gamers will still want to use a headset for the best audio experience.

As it should, this Chromebook also has a 1080p webcam, producing sharp picture clarity and detail, though the color looked a tad washed out when I tested it. One unexpected bonus is the inclusion of a privacy shutter, so you can physically block the camera lens when it's not in use, for added peace of mind. The webcam is flanked by a pair of microphones, which are capable of clear voice capture during video calls.

A Gaming Chromebook With Plentiful Ports

Lenovo's IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook is equipped with a variety of ports, but nothing out of the ordinary for a Chromebook—it's the sheer port count that's worth pointing out. This IdeaPad has two USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 ports that support data transfer, Power Delivery 3.0, and DisplayPort 1.4. These ports can be used to connect a variety of devices, such as smartphones or tablets, and can also be used to charge these devices or connect to a display. A pair of USB Type-A ports is also included, which will work with older flash drives and other peripherals that use the older USB style.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

A microSD card reader is also included, which can be used to expand the storage capacity of the device or transfer files from a camera or Android phone. Finally, this Chromebook has a headphone/microphone combo jack for connecting a headset, headphones, or a microphone.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Unlike the other gaming Chromebook we've reviewed, this Lenovo model does not have an onboard Ethernet jack. This won't likely be a deal breaker, since most Chromebooks are Wi-Fi-only devices, but if wireless isn't cutting it for cloud gaming, you'll need an adapter to plug into a wired connection. That may not be necessary, though, since the IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook has Wi-Fi 6E, along with Bluetooth 5.1 for wirelessly connecting audio and other devices.

Testing the IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook: A Highly Competitive ChromeOS Laptop

With cloud gaming being such an emphasis on the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook, we obviously first need to test its gaming capabilities. Also, since the Lenovo isn't the first gaming Chromebook we've tested, it's only natural that we would compare it with the previous model we reviewed, the Acer Chromebook 516 GE.

Online Cloud Gaming Tests

As with the Acer, we're testing the Lenovo Chromebook's gaming chops using Nvidia GeForce Now, the current leader in the cloud gaming space. GeForce Now uses Nvidia's gaming graphics hardware, but as remote servers that can be logged into from anywhere. So long as you have an adequate internet connection and your Chromebook (or any laptop, for that matter) meets the minimum requirements, you can use it to game with up to 4K resolution and 120 frames per second (fps).

Nvidia's subscription service isn't free for more than an hour (free one-hour sessions are available, with Nvidia's most basic hardware). Meanwhile, the company's normal-tier Premium plans are $9.99 per month or $49.99 for six months, allowing for six-hour session lengths, 1080p resolution, and up to 60fps frame rates. The more luxurious Ultimate plan steps up to 4K resolution, 120fps gameplay, and eight-hour sessions, along with access to faster servers and better hardware with ray-tracing support. The Ultimate plan currently sells for $19.99 per month or $99.99 for six months.

(Credit: Nvidia)

Using this service to play free demos and games from our Steam library, I was able to enjoy actual PC games on a Chromebook, without any of the blatant lag or finicky inputs that have plagued cloud gaming in the past. In the case of the Lenovo laptop, I was pleased to see that gaming with GeForce Now is just as high-quality as it is on the Acer Chromebook 516 GE. Throughout my testing, the relatively smooth action and detailed graphics are still surprisingly enjoyable on a Chromebook.

While playing Chorus, I was able to dodge space debris and apparently evade enemy fire with very little lag. In Rainbow Six: Siege, I could stealthily work my way through the map, fighting terrorists and disarming bombs. And, in Cyberpunk 2077, I wandered the gritty streets of Night City, admiring the detailed environments and picking up odd jobs from shady fixers.

All in all, cloud gaming runs flawlessly on the Lenovo, despite its Core i3 processor compared with the Acer Chromebook's Core i5. Both provide enough processing oomph to enjoy Nvidia's cloud gaming service with few compromises. My only complaints have to do with GeForce Now, rather than these Chromebooks.

Joining a game of Rainbow Six: Siege requires joining a queue with 368 people in front of me—that's a long time before I can actually join the game. A similar queue comes up when I go to play Cyberpunk 2077. Sometimes the wait is just a few minutes, but in one instance it was nearly an hour.

It does serve to drive home the biggest weakness of gaming Chromebooks writ large: Namely, cloud gaming requires using a service, leaving you at the mercy of those providers to cultivate a quality experience. Nvidia is doing well so far, but as the number of users grows, it might be a problem for more people.

Productivity Tests

Gaming on a Chromebook does require more powerful processing than usual for the budget-friendly category, but as cloud gaming requirements have scaled back, Lenovo has adjusted to thread the needle between capability and premium pricing. The Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook is accordingly outfitted with an Intel Core i3-1215U (with two Performance cores and four Efficient cores), 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB eMMC for storage. 

On paper, that looks like less processing muscle than is inside the competing Acer Chromebook 516 GE, which uses an Intel Core i5-1240P processor with twice as many cores (four Performance, eight Efficient). The P-series is generally more powerful than Intel's U-series, which is optimized more for power efficiency. It also looks like a step down from Acer's SSD to Lenovo's eMMC storage, but we'll see how it stands up in performance testing.

Other competing systems in this same price and performance range include the Editors' Choice Acer Chromebook Spin 714 (2022), the business-focused HP Elite Dragonfly Chromebook, and the older (but still highly recommended) Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 Chromebook (2021). All three live up to a blend of premium build quality, reliable performance, and better-than-average features for Chromebooks. You can see the stats in the comparison chart below.

We test Chromebooks with three overall performance benchmark suites: one ChromeOS, one Android, and one online. The first, Principled Technologies' CrXPRT 2, measures how quickly a system performs everyday tasks in six workloads such as applying photo effects, graphing a stock portfolio, analyzing DNA sequences, and generating 3D shapes using WebGL.

Our second test, UL's PCMark for Android Work 3.0, performs assorted productivity operations in a smartphone-style window. Finally, Basemark Web 3.0 runs in a browser tab to combine low-level JavaScript calculations with CSS and WebGL content. All three yield numeric scores; higher numbers are better.

Though we went into our initial testing with some idea of how well the Core i3-powered Lenovo would do against the Core i5-equipped Acer Chromebook 516 GE, we were pleasantly surprised to see that Lenovo ekes out a bit more power from the IdeaPad's hardware. The margins are small, but the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook edged ahead of the Acer in both CrXPRT 2 and Basemark—the Acer takes a small lead in PCMark. Neither of these systems leads the pack for pure processing power, but the overall performance is in good company, holding steady in the middle of these fairly premium peers.

Component and Battery Tests

Two other Android benchmarks focus on the CPU and GPU, respectively. The first, Primate Labs' Geekbench processor test, wouldn't actually work for us on the Lenovo, so our focus turns to the graphics-oriented GFXBench 5.0, which stress-tests both low-level routines, like texturing, and high-level, game-like image rendering that exercises graphics and compute shaders. GFXBench counts frames per second (fps), so a higher number is better.

Finally, to test a Chromebook's battery, we loop a 720p video file with screen brightness set at 50%, volume at 100%, and Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting disabled until the system quits. Sometimes we must play the video from an external SSD plugged into a USB port, but the Acer has more than enough internal storage to hold the video file.

Again, I am surprised by how well the Core i3 U-Series processor compares with the Core i5 P-Series CPU, especially in GFXBench, where Intel's Intel UHD Graphics is pitted against its Iris Xe Graphics used in most competitors. Lenovo's Chromebook falls behind in the more demanding 1440p Aztec Ruins test but posts one of the best scores we've seen in the GFXBench 1080p Car Chase test for a Chromebook. It suffices to say this Chromebook is among the most powerful we've tested, and so it should be able to handle just about everything you'd expect a Chrome laptop to without a sweat.

Naturally, the real treat is battery life, with the Lenovo lasting an impressive 12 hours and 37 minutes. That easily beats the Acer Chromebook 516 GE (9:41), the HP Elite Dragonfly (10:32), and the Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 Chromebook (9:15). The only system to last longer in our cohort is the 2022 Acer Chromebook Spin 714. All of that means that you'll get more mileage on the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook when using it on the go, with nearly three hours more game time than the Acer delivers.

Verdict: Lenovo Says ‘Game On' With Chromebooks

Lenovo's IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook is an excellent option for gaming without splurging on an expensive gaming laptop, but it's also a superb Chromebook for everything else, with impressive general performance and long battery life. Speedy Wi-Fi 6E connectivity and wide port selection make it a better-than-average Chromebook, and the inclusion of a high-refresh-rate display and anti-ghosting keyboard are icing on the cake for gamers.

(Credit: Kyle Cobian)

Cloud-gaming Chromebooks contain some of the best hardware and features you'll find on any Chrome laptop, as they should, but the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook delivers all of that without that much of a premium over, say, a midrange consumer Chromebook. It's not quite as impressive as the Editors' Choice-winning Acer Chromebook 516 GE, but that laptop leads by a slim margin, keeping the top spot due to small touches like a proper SSD for storage and embellished WASD keys for easier gaming. In the most important metrics, the two are neck in neck, making the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming Chromebook a smart buy if you're interested in cloud gaming but want to pay a little less.