(Credit: John Burek)
It's not often that I see new "firsts" where Chromebooks are concerned. But Google and Lenovo have jointly announced the first Chromebook equipped with a neural processing unit (NPU), the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14, which enables an exclusive tier of software features for the device.
I attended a press event last week at one of Google’s New York City offices, where the Google hosts and representatives from Lenovo showed off this new, envelope-pushing Chromebook. Not only is this machine the first with an NPU, but it's the first Chromebook Plus model based on Arm, running on a new SoC from MediaTek, the Kompanio Ultra 910.
(Credit: Matthew Buzzi)Chromebook Plus devices are higher-end than budget-focused Chromebooks; Google has outlined minimum specs for Plus models to guarantee a certain level of experience. But this Lenovo sample is an especially advanced Chromebook. Its starting price is $649, and another model at $749 amplifies the configuration with 16GB of memory (versus the base model’s 12GB), a touch screen, and a fingerprint scanner.
At the event last week, Google showed off a variety of ChromeOS features that will roll out across Chromebook Plus models and even some for non-Plus ones—see our separate dive into the ChromeOS changes—but it was the new Lenovo device that captured my attention. It’s launching later this month; check out all of the details and photos below.
Lenovo's Chromebook Plus 14: A Portable, Premium Option
Putting aside the software and processor for a moment, the Chromebook Plus 14 is a nicely built machine in its own right. It’s not merely a Chromebook in a Windows laptop shell, or based on any existing Lenovo chassis. Lenovo built this machine from the ground up to accept this new chip and new architecture.
(Credit: John Burek)The chassis and the new MediaTek chip enable this machine to be completely fanless. It's designed so its processor/NPU combination runs efficiently in the slim chassis without the need for bursts of fan cooling. I didn’t have an opportunity to press the issue of thermals with benchmark testing, or really stress the system, but the Chromebook Plus 14 shouldn’t get too hot, and it lacks any moving parts to make noise under load.
(Credit: John Burek)Impressively, the Chromebook Plus 14 isn't made overly thick to enable this passive-cooling design, measuring 0.62 by 12.4 by 8.6 inches (HWD) and weighing 2.8 pounds. The top is made of aluminum, which feels higher-end than many Chromebook devices (though the price warrants it), while the bottom panel is ABS plastic. It’s a nicely made, compact system; I found it satisfying to grab and move around with, and the underside has a scalloped, grippable texture that adds a bit of style and practicality.
(Credit: John Burek)Lenovo leaned into the premium feel elsewhere, too, and embraced the upscale. (As part of the Chromebook Plus program, this model is not going to be one of the bargain-priced Chromebooks; Chromebook Plus models meeting Google's minimum spec start at $399.) The 14-inch display is an OLED panel with a 1,920-by-1,200-pixel native resolution, non-touch in the $649 base model and with touch capability in the $749 model. This screen is a treat to use, plenty bright and extra-vibrant, as we have come to expect from OLED. The screen was a bit reflective in the brightly lit conference room we demoed it in, near a wall of large windows. That glare was in part due to the touch-capable finish, but it was not a deal-breaker. Angling the screen a bit solved most of the visibility issues.
(Credit: John Burek)The touchpad and keyboard felt standard-issue but comfortable. Neither stood out, but crucially, neither felt like an afterthought nor came off cheap. As noted, the upgraded model also comes with a fingerprint reader. And the port loadout around the edges is on point for a 14-incher, comprising two USB Type-C ports, one USB Type-A port, and a headphone jack.
(Credit: John Burek)I noted some worthwhile, but less visibly obvious, features built into this machine. It supports Dolby Atmos for superior audio, a first among Chromebook Plus devices. (Alas, a busy press room with overhead pop music roaring was not the place I could test this effectively.) Also, in part due to the efficient processor, the laptop is rated by Lenovo for up to 17 hours of battery life. That's well above the typical dozen or so hours most midrange Chromebook models are rated for. We’ll naturally measure the practical running time ourselves, when we can test our review unit, but Google claims this is the longest rated battery life among Chromebook Plus machines.
(Credit: John Burek)The Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 also comes with a year of Google’s AI Pro plan included with the purchase. This grants access to Gemini across Google’s suite, as well as to AI note-taking app NotebookLM and Google's Veo 3 (its AI-based video generator). It also includes 2TB of cloud storage. At a combined $240 value for a year (AI Pro is $19.99 a month), that's no small throw-in.
NPU, Meet Chromebook: Local Neural Processing, Now on ChromeOS
That covers the physical design and features, but the processor and software capabilities are just as core to this system. MediaTek is powering this laptop with its Kompanio Ultra 910 processor, a new chip based on Arm 9.2 architecture and 3nm process technology.
(Credit: John Burek)The chip includes an eight-core CPU, an 11-core Immortalis-G925 GPU, and the headlining NPU, which is capable of up to 50 TOPS. (TOPS, for trillions of operations per second, is a rough measure of performance capability on AI workloads, though it’s far from a perfect science.) In addition to performing some more active tasks on pro-grade content-creation systems, NPUs generally handle AI background jobs to improve your experience, which should be a nice fit for the internet- and services-based ChromeOS. They allow these tasks to be processed locally (which is quicker and more secure) rather than calling out to the cloud for help.
Smart Grouping: Organize My Windows!
The Kompanio Ultra and its NPU, exclusive to this Chromebook, enable two features that, for now, are unique to the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14. The first of these is a feature called Smart Grouping. It's an automated task-grouping feature carried out by the NPU.
Let’s say you’re planning a vacation, and, as a result, you have various browser windows, notes, and apps open related to the trip—alongside your other everyday windows and applications. Machine learning, powered by the NPU, will collate all of the trip-related windows (whether apps, tabs, you name it) into one group, like a virtual desktop, which you can pull up or hide separately.
That’s not a complete game-changer, but it is the type of low-key passive efficiency that both AI and local NPUs should be aiming for. I couldn’t test this beyond Google's guided demo, because you have to actually be in the middle of this process with multiple windows to prompt the PC to offer a Smart Group. But in practice, I could see myself spending a lot less time manually sorting through and pulling up windows, or (in this example) trying to bury all of my trip-related windows when it’s time to get back to "real" work.
Image Editing: Photoshop, But Make It Bone-Simple
The other exclusive feature is on-device image editing within the gallery app. Not everyone needs to edit images, but at the same time, this feature looks to make editing more accessible to all.
It makes, say, removing a background from an illustration very straightforward: Choose your tool, select the area to isolate with a finger on the touch screen, and execute. It wasn’t perfect, in my experience (I had to try a few times to remove a background from an image), but making an attempt and undoing the edit if it doesn’t come out right the first time is quick and easy.
(Credit: John Burek)Once you learn what the software is looking for (in terms of which parts to highlight), you can edit pretty quickly. And this process is all on-device powered, thanks to the NPU. You can use the feature to throw together some images for an event invite or a presentation, or even just generate quick gag pics.
It’s hardly going to replace professional editing software, but it's nice to have a no-frills, smart editing tool on hand for the uninitiated. In addition, the NPU now handles some lesser features, like enhanced audio recording and video-call effects.
Building a ChromeOS for the Future
Now, these AI additions are not revolutionary, by any means. But they do join a handful of other useful features that are coming to more ChromeOS devices beyond this Lenovo Chromebook.
Of these, the most interesting new offering to me is what Google described as "contextual text capture." If you highlight or screen-capture text, or an image with text in it (for example, an event-invite graphic), a pop-up box will interpret its content, and, say, offer to add the data straight to your calendar, saving you from manually making an entry. You can use this for searching, too. It can even offer to place tabular data from an image you capture into a spreadsheet of your own.
(Credit: Matthew Buzzi)Beyond contextual capture, the Quick Insert key on the keyboard now has tools for generating and inserting AI images, while the Chromebook “help me read” feature has been improved with a “simplify” tool. (Again, you can read more about all of the software features highlighted in our separate coverage.)
Combined with the existing AI and Gemini offerings, plus the included one-year subscription, this Chromebook Plus model foreshadows much more robust and capable Chromebooks. With the dawn of the Chromebook NPU, it’s only the top of the first inning for machine-learning integration into your ChromeOS workflow.
And Google is uniquely positioned to leverage its software and many services for new AI features. ChromeOS is a natural fit for this, and features like these promise to boost its appeal for the workplace with more powerful devices like this Lenovo model. Check back with us soon for a full review of this laptop; we've got one in hand and are itching to let it loose.