The Lenovo 14e Chromebook Enterprise is a cheap laptop for clumsy employees

Chromebooks are getting better and better every time we turn around, and while most of Lenovo's MWC even was devoted to ThinkPads running Windows 10, they still found the room for an appetizing enterprise-and-education-geared Chromebook that's going to be making a lot of Office Procurement managers sit up and salivate next month.
Meet the Lenovo 14e Chromebook Enterprise, a 14-inch touchscreen Chromebook with 10-hour battery life, Lenovo durability, and a starting price of $279.
With a sophisticated but durable aluminum housing, thin bezels on its 14-inch FHD touchscreen, and a fold-flat hinge, the 14e is a new take on the workhorse of the enterprise world: the 14-inch, company-issued laptop. This new style may not look as butch as Lenovo's more school-focused models, but the 14e Chromebook Enterprise meets Lenovo's education durability requirements, meaning it should be able to take a beating from clumsy employees and the normal rigors of an active workplace, but the most lucrative spec on display here is really the price.
Category | Spec |
---|---|
Operating system | Chrome OS |
Display | 14-inch IPS Touchscreen 1080p or 720p |
Processor | 2.5 GHz A4 AMD® dual-core processor AMD Integrated Graphics |
Storage | Up to 64 eMMc |
Expandable | microSD |
RAM | Up to 8GB (DDR4) |
Connectivity | Two USB 3.1 USB-C Two USB 3.1 USB-A One Audio Combo |
Audio | Dolby Audio |
Battery | 57Wh (Up to 10 hours) |
Dimensions | 328.4 x 225 x 17.7 mm 3.26 lb |
Starting price | $279 |
The 14e starts under $300 for a brand-new Chromebook with 2 USB-C ports for fast recharging and newer all-in-one hubs, as well as 2 USB 3.1 USB-A ports to plugging in the trusty trackball mouse (opens in new tab) or quickly transferring project files to or from a client's portable hard drive and Dolby Audio for those ripper PowerPoint animations. This understated Chromebook is quite the price performer, whether you're buying one for your wife or one thousand for your western region branches.
The competitive price and flexibility, when combined with Chrome Enterprise's easy deployment and corporate management and the continued migration towards cloud-based systems will make the Lenovo 14e Chromebook Enterprise perfect for companies looking to replace an ancient fleet of Windows laptops — and desktops, as businesses continues to shift towards more flexible workspaces.
The Lenovo 14e Chromebook Enterprise will be available in the US starting in March, and you can be sure that once it is, we intend to give it a proper shakedown.
See at Lenovo (opens in new tab)
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Ara Wagoner was a staff writer at Android Central. She themes phones and pokes YouTube Music with a stick. When she's not writing about cases, Chromebooks, or customization, she's wandering around Walt Disney World. If you see her without headphones, RUN. You can follow her on Twitter at @arawagco.
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Buy an actual laptop that will have twice the amount of hard drive space and RAM. Plus a much faster processor.
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Not a chance. Windows laptops for web browsing is an absolute joke. Poor battery life, terrible thermal management, and the general problems that come along with windows make it a poor platform for a modern device. Chrome OS is the absolute correct choice for almost anyone who wants an experience as frictionless as our modern mobile devices. You don't need 8 gigs of RAM and a huge disk with a Chromebook. You don't deal with the frustration of windows updates or installing applications either. I have several windows laptops from mobile workstations to ultra books, and a MacBook air, yet the Samsung Chromebook my wife has is what I'm jealous of. If Microsoft wasn't scared silly of Chromebooks they wouldn't be on a campaign to turn Windows into a modern operating system that has the benifits of Chrome OS.
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I disagree partly to the point that I have a friend that runs a computer repair shop. Majority of these things can't even get their updates after a couple of months due to lack of storage space.
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Now I know you have never used a chromebook/chromebox because I have been running them in my office for over 2 years and they have replaced most of my windows machines without issues and are constantly updated. If your statement was accurate companies would have stopped making them as soon as consumers started returning them.
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I've been using two Asus CN60 Chromeboxes since 2014, one at work and one at home. Despite only having 16 GB hard drives, I've never once ran out of space and been unable to update. I've also had two other Chromebooks plus an Asus C302 that is my main laptop/device at home currently and the same is true of them as well. Though admittedly I don't store files on the internal drives of the Chromboxes - everything goes onto a mounted sd card, usb drive, or in the cloud. Primarily the latter so I have access to it at work and on my phone as well.
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Odd, I've been using the same chromebook for 4 years and never ran into that problem, neither have my family and friends. The people who run out of space don't know how to use a chromebook and neither does the friend who runs the computer repair shop;
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I have never seen a Chromebook last more than a couple of hours. Aside from that I agree that Chromebooks were made for ease of use, as it is just a laptop mainly used for playing casual games or watching media, not any kind of productivity
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Buy a much more expensive laptop to do the same thing?
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Does it have a backlit keyboard? I like the sound of this Chromebook but won't buy another computer without a backlit keyboard...