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Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630 arrives: Pixelbook power for $300 less

If you’re heading into a Best Buy store to check out the new Dell Inspiron Chromebook 14 today, there’s another surprise waiting for you: The Lenovo Chromebook Yoga C630 is also debuting today in retail stores. Best Buy has two models available and one is an exclusive: $699 for the same internal configuration as the base $999 Google Pixelbook.

For that price, you get an 8th-gen Intel Core i5-8250U processor, 8GB of memory and 128GB of eMMC storage. This model doesn’t have the 4K display, however: You’re limited to 1080p on the 15.6-inch touchscreen display. Other specs include a pair of USB Type-C ports, a full USB Type-A port, and microSD card slot in the metal chassis. Expected battery life on the 4.2 pound Chromebook is around 10 hours.

If you do want that 4K display, you can get the exact same internals with it for $899. I expected about a $200 price premium for that higher resolution and Lenovo came through. 😉

As some newer devices have been announced over the past few months, I’ve heard some grumblings that Chromebook prices were getting too high. There’s merit to that since most of the upcoming Chromebooks and the Google Pixel Slate have traditional PC-like power inside. And that costs money.

But it was just a few years ago when the grumblings were about not having enough high-end Chromebooks on the market, save for Google devices. Essentially, I don’t see an issue. The Chromebook makers are filling in the gaps at the high end but not abandoning entry-level devices at the same time. There’s no way they will because Chromebooks have a large chunk of the education market and school districts can’t afford to offer every student a $1,000 or more device.

Additionally, the price of a high-end Chromebook is actually decreasing. A Core i5 device like this Lenovo can be had for $599 if you choose the base model, although I haven’t seen it on sale yet. The Dell Inspiron Chromebook 14 isn’t quite as powerful with its Core i3 but is still reasonably priced. And the Acer Chromebook Spin 13 is right there too with models ranging from $699 to $999. Just a year or two ago, there weren’t any high-end choices under $999.

Anyway, if I get a chance to hit Best Buy to check out the Dell, I’ll look at the Lenovo as well. I’m curious what kind of benchmarks* we’ll see on these 8th-generation Intel chips inside a Chromebook.

*Note: My stance on benchmarks is that they are a very general indicator of performance; real-world usage is far more important in my opinion.

author avatar
Kevin C. Tofel

12 thoughts on “Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630 arrives: Pixelbook power for $300 less

  1. It seems that there are two schools of thought on Chromebook pricing: those that feel it’s too high, and those that think it’s fine as long as you’re getting high-end hardware and specs. I can empathize with both groups.

    I’m a “PC guy”. Have been for years, but I also enjoy chromebooks and android phones/tablets. I’ve had 3 Chromebooks — currently using the ASUS Chromebook C302. Loved them all. The ASUS is my goto machine for couch surfing, YouTube biniging, and few other things. However, I work in a corporate world where everything is Microsoft centric, I have a Lenovo laptop that I use when I need “to get work done” outside of the office. There are a few things I simply currently can’t do on the Chromebook. And honestly, there’s a strange familiarity and comfort I get from using the PC over the Chromebook for certain tasks.

    I paid over $1200 for my Lenovo. I’m ok spending $200-400 on a Chromebook as a secondary machine. It’s an impulse buy at that price. Above $400, the thought process changes. It’s no longer an impules buy but an additional luxury, i.e. do I really want it. Sometimes that answer is “yes”, other times “no”. Above $800, it’s no longer whether or not I can justify both, but rather which one.

    I feel like there are a lot of people like me. Perhaps I’m not the target audience for the new line of high-end Chromebooks. I love what I’m seeing but don’t see myself dropping that kind of money on one.

    1. More than likely. Pretty much any new device that meets the chip and kernel requirements will as far as I know.

  2. All good but Google Pixelbooks can be found on Amazon for under $800. I just got one last week for $793. While it’s one year old, it’s an amazing product and I would guess a better experience than some of these newer premium models. At full price of $999, that much change the equation. Your thoughts?

    1. Pixelbook is still a great deal at discounted prices. Just remember as mention above in the comments that one year of long term support is already gone on them.

      1. For some reason, I can’t see any comments. Can’t even see the one I posted. At top of article it says “0” comments. This is odd??

        1. My mistake! For some reason I got confused on which comments were on which posts. 😉 There was a comment about long term Chrome OS support on the prior post about the Pixel Slate: https://45-56-100-85.ip.linodeusercontent.com/opinion/google-pixel-slate-vs-chromebook-should-i-buy-chromeos-tablet/#comment-5239

          Google sets the support date beginning when a device launches, not when you buy it was the gist, and it’s a valid point. Then again, saving a bunch of money up front may be worth buying a device that already has “used up” one of its support years. Sorry about the confusion!

          1. I have a Samsung Chromebook 3 series that came out in Dec 2012. It still gets software updates from Google almost 6 years later. So I am not too concerned about when software support will end on my Pixelbook.

  3. I’m pretty sure this is my next Chromebook. Is there a strong argument in favor of the 4K screen?

  4. Severe backlight screen bleed on Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630 (81JX0000US) :
    I recently purchased a Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630 (81JX0000US) from Best Buy’s online store and soon noted the 1080p display exhibits severe backlight bleeding (bright areas on a black background when viewed at night in a dark room). I first observed the issue during night-time movie viewing (bright areas within the upper and lower black bands), and then discovered the bleed to be more widespread by (1) closing all windows and tabs to return to the desktop (2) double tapping the desktop and selecting ‘Set wallpaper’ (3) selecting ‘Solid color’ and ‘Black’ to create a solid black desktop wallpaper. It then became evident the backlight bleeding was quite severe and extensive – multiple well-defined bright areas were visible along the edges of the display with larger cloud-like bright areas more centrally. I do not yet know if this is an isolated defect or if bleed occurs on all Lenovo C630 displays due to low quality component selection. I plan to return the unit and likely ask for a replacement to determine if the bleed issue occurs on that unit as well. It is important to emphasize that backlight bleed in LCD displays is visible only on a black background and in a dark (preferably night-time ) environment and is not ‘normaI’. It is not present on my Toshiba Chromebook 2 or Samsung Chromebook Plus. It is unfortunate the Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630 is exhibiting this issue because the device’s quality and performance are otherwise very good (with the exception of a low-quality video camera which produces low resolution and grainy Hangouts video calls).

  5. I returned the Lenovo Yoga Chromebook C630 to my local Best Buy (due to severe backlight screen bleeding) and exchanged it for another unit. The replacement also has a backlight screen bleed issue similar in severity and distrubution to the first, indicating this was not an isolated defect but a more pervasive issue with the product. Lenovo seems to have low standards for the quality of the 1080p displays it configures into this particular line of (Best Buy exclusive) Chromebook laptops. Neither of my two other less pricey Chromebooks (Toshiba Chromebook 2, Samsung Chromebook Plus) have an issue with backlight screen bleeding. I otherwise like the C630 (with the exception of its low quality 720p 1MB camera) and plan to exchange the second (defective) unit for a third which hopefully will not come with the same significant screen bleed issue.

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