Lenovo Googlebook 15 review: I’m glad that’s over
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Summary
At a glance Expert's Rating Pros Audio sounds very good The bundled AI Mouse is weirdly designed, but still neat Decent performance among other Chromebooks and Googlebooks Cons I hate the keyboard Webcam biometrics work sporadically Battery life isn’t great Noticeable sags in the keyboard tray Does it work with your phone? Who knows? Twice the price of a Chromebook Our Verdict Right now, the Lenovo Googlebook 15 and the Googlebook platform delivers only slightly more than what the Chromebook Plus or Windows PCs do. It doesn’t justify the additional price. Price When Reviewed This value will show the geolocated pricing text for product undefined Best Pricing Today Best Prices Today: Lenovo Googlebook 15 Retailer Price $1099 View Deal Lenovo $1149.99 View Deal Price comparison from over 24,000 stores worldwide My first experience with a Googlebook is complete, and I’m happy it is. I’ve tested the Lenovo Googlebook 15 as thoroughly as I need to, and I’d simply prefer moving back to a more familiar, better-designed device. In some ways, this is the Chromebook 2.0, intended to be an evolution of the platform. Still, I found that both the software and hardware frustrated me in their own separate ways. The Googlebook 15’s keyboard was simply unpleasant and unproductive, and I felt like I’d seen better displays. My other complaints were with the Googlebook platform itself, from its inexplicable inability to connect to Samsung and older Android phones, to the incoherency of its interface. I’m left with the impression that the existing Google Chromebook lineup does everything more effectively for less money. It feels like it was rushed to meet a deadline, when the whole experience could have simmered for a few more months while everything came together. Lenovo Googlebook 15: Specifications Model: Lenovo Googlebook 15 OS: Googlebook OS Processor: Intel Core Ultra 5 325 Graphics: Intel Graphics Memory: 16GB LPDDR5X Storage: 256GB-512GB PCIe Gen 4 SSD (512GB as tested) Display: 15.3-inch (2880×1800) OLED touchscreen, 120Hz Brightness: Up to 500 nits Camera: 5MP IR camera with facial recognition and manual privacy shutter Ports: Thunderbolt 4 40Gbps (2), HDMI 2.0, 10Gbps USB-A, 3.5mm headphone/mic jack Battery: 70Wh Wireless: Wi-Fi 7 2×2, Bluetooth 6.0 Charger: 65W USB-C GaN adapter Dimensions: 3.43 × 9.29 × 0.63in Weight: 2.84 pounds Price: $1,099.99 to $1,149.99 ($1,149.99 as tested); Lenovo includes its “AI Mouse” in the box Lenovo Googlebook 15: Design and build quality Lenovo’s opening message is that this Googlebook is different. It makes that clear through the “gray” (white, really) colorway, which also appears on some IdeaPad consumer laptops. Two design cues stand out. The underside of the keyboard features a ripple effect that differs from the usual flat surface. On top, Lenovo and Google have included the Glowbar, the evolution of the “lightbar” found on Google’s earlier Chromebook Pixel from a decade ago. On that device, a hidden feature allowed the lightbar to function as a battery gauge. On the Googlebook, that functionality is now a full-fledged feature, with a green bar indicating a battery level above 60 percent. I like the fact that there is one Thunderbolt 4 port on either side of the Lenovo Googlebook 15. (Here, there is an HDMI port and a headphone jack as well.) Mark Hachman / Foundry I vaguely recalled that the Chromebook Pixel had included a lightbar, so I went hunting to confirm. What I found were just reminders of how sturdy the Chromebook Pixels and Pixelbooks were, prompting comparisons to the MacBook. Lenovo’s GoogleBook 15 reminds me very much of the ceraluminum-based Asus Zenbook, whose plasticky construction detracted from an otherwise excellent design. Nothing really feels particularly special here, although there’s nothing particularly bad, either. Setup was a relatively quick process. This Googlebook seems to recline slightly further than most Windows laptops (about 35 degrees off of the horizontal). The middle of the keyboard tray noticeably sags if you press down in the middle of the keyboard, though that doesn’t affect typing. The lip from the webcam enables this Googlebook to be easily opened with a single finger. A legacy USB-A port and the other Thunderbolt 4 port appear on the right side of the Lenovo Googlebook 15. Mark Hachman / Foundry Lenovo has added one USB-C (USB4) on either side of the Googlebook, which allows you to place the power cable or USB-C/Thunderbolt expansion dock on either side of the laptop. That’s ideal for righties and left-handers, who can put their mouse on whichever side they choose. The two Thunderbolt connections allow you to connect a Thunderbolt 4 dock for additional ports. Lenovo Googlebook 15: The Google experience Google’s Googlebooks launched and immediately alienated a sizeable chunk of their audience, including me, for their inability to connect to Samsung Galaxy phones. That’s still the case, sort of — even though some recent Samsung phones are still supported, you’ll need Android 17 to connect them. My colleague Alex Wawro received a Google Pixel 10 Pro XL from Google as a surefire solution to show off the Googlebook’s ability to connect the two devices and, by golly, it worked! What a pain for such little payoff, though. After setting up the Pixel, I had to upgrade it to Android 17. Then I had to ensure that the two devices were close to one another, with Bluetooth enabled and both connected to the same Wi-Fi network. I then dug through this support document to make sure I was doing everything correctly. I connected the Googlebook to a “connected group” of devices (including the Pixel) and made sure to turn on the appropriate services. Lenovo mounts the glowbar on the rear of the Googlebook, where it can be used as a battery gauge or an indication of AI activity. Mark Hachman / Foundry The two key services enabled by “connected devices” (or “Better Together”) are Cast My Apps and Continue On. The first lets you access your phone’s apps directly from your Googlebook, and Continue On lets you, well, continue tasks like web browsing from your phone on the Googlebook. Some of these features have been in the Windows Your Phone app for years, which connects to an Android phone running Android 10 or higher. Neither Cast My Apps nor Continue On really justify the purchase of a Googlebook. Cast My Apps allows you to see apps on your phone, such as a game. But both Cast My Apps and Continue On open in the same landscape window. Games don’t really render correctly. Even worse, the game felt laggier on the Googlebook (probably because of the connection) than the phone. If you Continue On with a web page from your phone, it will open in that window. There’s nothing really wrong with that, but it does feel like the Googlebook and the phone are separate experiences rather than the single cohesive whole I expected. My other feelings about the Googlebook Aluminium OS and what it’s like to work in it are summed up in my newsletter, which was written using the Lenovo Googlebook 15. I do like some of the features, including the ability to create your own widgets. Google’s Googlebooks now have a dedicated “Google” key, similar to the Copilot key on modern Windows PCs. Mark Hachman / Foundry Remember that a traditional Chromebook offers a “phone hub,” basically an earlier, more rudimentary version of what the Googlebook provides. Maybe it’s just familiarity with the Chromebook environment, but the Chromebook still feels more focused. Googlebooks have some good ideas, but they also feel like they’re struggling to find a reason to be. Lenovo Googlebook 15: Display OLED displays intrinsically look “better” than their IPS counterparts (at least to me) because their high contrast ratios enable deep, rich blacks. I wasn’t able to test the display as thoroughly as I’d have liked because our display analysis software isn’t coded for the Aluminium OS. My light meter confirmed that the display brightness was 466 nits or about the 500 nits the display is rated for. I like Lenovo’s Googlebook 15 OLED display a lot more when the screen is in motion, especially when I was watching a video. The display’s bright colors really pop against a black background, and the audio (discussed below) really shines. Lenovo’s Googlebook is at its best when the workday is over and you can kick back with a video on YouTube or Netflix. During the workday, I noticed the speckling on the display. I’ve noticed this on some other OLED screens, too. Squint and you can make the individual pixels out. I never really noticed anything while working on a document (shaded in either black or white, depending on my system preferences), but my eyes picked it up on a gray background such as the Google settings menu. This photo was taken zoomed in, so the speckling is more pronounced than it appears to the naked eye. It is apparent, however. Mark Hachman / Foundry Lenovo Googlebook 15: Audio The Googlebook’s speakers compare fairly well to the competition, with no audible distortion up and down the audio spectrum. The volume delivers the oomph you need and then some, delivered from two user-facing speakers on either side of the keyboard. I couldn’t see any audio enhancement technology, however. While the sound was clear at high volume, there was no real separation so certain tracks were just mashed together. For watching movies or YouTube, however, I don’t think you’ll have any complaints. Lenovo Googlebook 15: Keyboard I really hate using this Googlebook’s keyboard. My guess is that my fingers simply reject the way the keys seem to “begin” at about the height of the keyboard tray before depressing. The closest approximation that I can come up with is that some stairs are mounted too closely together, and your feet (and my fingers) tend to stumble over them rather than actually stride naturally. The keyboard of the Lenovo Googlebook 15 looks totally normal, aside from the lame-duck fingerprint reader. Mark Hachman / Foundry I always try to write a review on the laptop I’m reviewing, but I gave up. I had to. I went back to what at the moment is my preferred keyboard of choice — another Lenovo. That’s the point: Lenovo typically has superior keyboards. This Googlebook simply doesn’t. I don’t dislike what Lenovo has done with the row of function keys, which are far more populous than other Chromebooks I’ve used. This Googlebook places Android-style “back” and “menu” keys to the upper left, along with the more traditional keys for screen capture, adjusting the brightness and sound, and so on. Does this Googlebook use a haptic trackpad? The specs say it is. Otherwise, it feels like a normal scissor trackpad but clickable across its full surface. Functional yet sort of limp. I was a little surprised by the overabundance of biometrics. You can log in using either your face or a fingerprint reader mounted in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. That fingerprint reader has no other purpose, however. I’m used to fingerprint readers doubling as power buttons and this one doesn’t. It just sits there, somewhat redundant, taking up space. Lenovo Googlebook 15: Webcam That plays into another question I have about this Googlebook. The device just seemed to forget about face login midway through the experience. I set up facial login using the webcam, which requires a PIN for backup just like Windows Hello — no surprises there. Tapping the Google key plus L locks the device. Early on, the device would try to recognize me using the webcam. After a while, it asked for my PIN or a fingerprint instead. Deleting my stored face allowed me to “re-enter” it again, where it worked as expected. Mark Hachman / Foundry I found the webcam to perform well when reproducing my facial tone and hair, and the 1080p webcam captured detail quite well. I just found that some of the color accuracy was off, such as rendering my blue shirt as sort of a blah gray. Lenovo Googlebook 15: Lenovo’s AI Mouse Finally, Lenovo includes a “Lenovo AI Mouse” as part of the bundle, at least when purchased from Lenovo. The AI Mouse is a squat, wireless mouse with a small, round “Gemini AI” button below the scroll wheel. Pressing it launches the Gemini application. Mark Hachman / Foundry I liked the AI Mouse more than I would have thought, even though it’s designed for right-handers. A light bar runs along the periphery, adding a nice little accent. Lenovo made an odd choice, though. Clicking the Gemini button launches Gemini, but you’d think a long press would open the Magic Pointer application. Nope! That’s handled by the front side button, which serves as a “page ahead” control, while the other small button takes you back a page. It’s a strange choice. You can also control the mouse with the keyboard, thanks to a “mouse keys” shortcut in the Google settings menu. Lenovo Googlebook 15: Performance The numbers below will tell you one thing. My experience says another. Using the Lenovo Googlebook’s Chrome browser sometimes felt laggy and slow, even with ad-blocking extensions turned on. Dragging an open tab to its own window caused the browser to pause for a second before it reloaded the page. I also recall times when simply moving the windows around the screen felt slow. (That wasn’t always the case.) Chrome even asked to restart on occasion. On the other hand, I would try opening a web page and it would open immediately. The consistency was all over the place. Unfortunately, this happened while just doing some routine Web surfing while using the Lenovo Googlebook 15. Mark Hachman / Foundry Since these are Googlebooks, we don’t have the option to run PCWorld’s normal suite of executable benchmarks. Instead, we make do with browser-based benchmarks as well as a version of the PCMark productivity benchmark coded for Android. We use the same benchmark to establish an estimate of battery life, looping it over and over. For now, we have five Googlebooks, from Acer, Dell, HP, Asus, and Lenovo. We have already reviewed the $899 Acer Googlebook 14 , plus the $1,199 HP Googlebook 14 , and to that we add the slightly larger $1,149 Lenovo Googlebook 15. Note that the processor on the other Googlebooks differs in architecture, including the HP Googlebook, which uses a first-generation Snapdragon X Elite. For additional context, I’ve tested the Asus Chromebook Plus CX35 from 2025, which costs about half of the Googlebooks at $479. We measured performance via Basemark’s Web benchmark, which gauges graphics performance. To that we added Motionmark, a similar test that measures complex scenes at a fixed frame rate. WebXPRT uses a variety of HTML5, JavaScript, and WebAssembly tasks to produce a final score. Most of these scores are fairly close, evidence of the similarity of the processor used. The older Chromebook, however, uses a much older though still viable 13th-gen Intel Core chip. Mark Hachman / Foundry While the Snapdragon X Elite was a competent chip strictly from a CPU standpoint, anything that brings the GPU into play favors the Intel X86 architecture. Qualcomm’s graphics performance improved significantly in its second-gen X2 Elite CPU, but that wasn’t included here. Otherwise, the Acer and Lenovo Googlebooks are within a few percentage points of each other. The Chromebook Plus is 12 percent slower than the HP Googlebook in this test. Mark Hachman / Foundry Motionmark, which shows how well a browser can animate scenes at a fixed frame rate, is where the difference between the older Chromebook and the newer Googlebooks is most pronounced. In real life, you’d see smoother performance with whiteboarding apps, sites with animated layouts, and probably some 2D games. From the standpoint of processing most Web frameworks, however, all three Googlebooks are essentially the same. Mark Hachman / Foundry Here, there’s basically no difference between all four machines. That’s fairly significant, as WebXPRT is specifically designed to measure browser-based tasks. Anecdotally, this somewhat tracks. The CX34 just feels snappier and more responsive to use. Lenovo Googlebook 15: Battery life Although my colleague Ashley was able to measure the battery life of the other Googlebooks, I just wasn’t satisfied that I had a reliable number. Googlebooks lack the sophisticated tools Windows laptops have to estimate or record battery life. However, the PCMark Android application includes a battery rundown test. It’s not directly comparable to the PCMark test we use on Windows laptops , as it appears to be more intensive. Still, it’s a consistent number… though the number certainly wasn’t impressive. Five hours and 26 minutes isn’t a lot of time. (Note that I was able to set the screen brightness to the same level that we use for our normal PC laptop testing, which provides a more relevant result.) Should you buy the Lenovo Googlebook 15? For me, it’s a pass. I just can’t get past how unfamiliar and unproductive the keyboard feels under my fingers, which is where my dislike for the Googlebook 15 begins. That surprised me, since I assumed going in that the Googlebook hardware would be something that I would just accept without much thought. I reviewed Lenovo’s $899 IdeaPad Slim 3i , which uses a similar, though slightly more powerful chip from Intel’s “Wildcat Lake” family. My takeaway was that it was marginally better, though it had its quirks as well. However, I just liked how the older $479 Asus Chromebook Plus CX35 felt under my fingers, and how snappy it was. I think there’s room for the new Googlebook features, but remember that the Gemini app is also available on older Chromebooks. There’s some overlap between the two platforms. Personally, I’d opt for an existing Chromebook Plus before buying a new Googlebook.
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