First Look: Lenovo's IdeaPad 5i Is the First 16-Inch, High-Refresh-Rate Chromebook
A few giant Chromebooks equipped with 17-inch screens do exist, yes. (We reviewed one of the two we know of, the Acer Chromebook 317. Asus has one too.) But it's time to welcome a new screen size to the Chromebook fold: Lenovo has announced the first 16-inch Chromebook, the IdeaPad 5i Chromebook, upping both the panel-size and feature-set options for ChromeOS users. We were able to go hands-on with the product at a Lenovo preview event in advance of the IFA trade show.
The video below includes our hands-on rundown of the device and an outline of its features. The big one, unique among Chromebooks so far: the 120Hz refresh rate for that oversize screen. Watch and read on for more details.
The prototypical Chromebook is a small and inexpensive laptop, and while the $399 starting price for the IdeaPad 5i Chromebook isn’t high, the machine can be equipped with more serious parts than the usual ChromeOS offerings.
But first, let’s start with the size: It measures 0.8 by 14.3 by 10 inches (HWD), larger than most Chromebooks but not too big for any machine with a 16-inch screen. It weighs 4.1 pounds, and though it may stay put at a desk for small-business deployments, it is pretty travel-friendly given the screen size.
The reverse side of the screen is a nice two-tone design, as you can see below. The panel, meanwhile, bears a 2.5K resolution, which is also higher than usual for a Chromebook, and makes for quite a nice, sharp display at this size. Also far out of the ordinary for this category is the screen’s 120Hz refresh rate.
Normally, a high-refresh panel is a benefit touted by Windows-based gaming machines, and you could indeed do some cloud gaming on the device. But high refresh has other benefits. Everyday actions like
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