14 DAY TRIAL // 360-degree hinges have been done before, but they aren't really common, and they can't really be found on Chromebooks. Lenovo decided to change that when it created the N-Series of Chrome OS-running laptops.
Well, sort of. You see, Lenovo did give the N20P the ability to bend its display half backwards. It just didn't go all the way to 360 degrees.
Instead, it stopped at 300 degrees, which lets it sit with the keyboard face-down and the display looking like a tablet that was placed in a special stand (10-point touch supported).
It's not really the same thing as turning the Chromebook from clamshell to tablet form factor, but it's close.
Besides, it's not like Chrome has that many touch-based apps and games anyway. Mostly, you'll only use the bent-backwards position when watching a movie or something else of the sort.
That said, the new Chromebook from Lenovo has a Celeron central processing unit from Intel, which is backed by 4 GB of DDR3L RAM (random access memory).
Nothing that ground-breaking there, and the storage capacity isn't anything groundbreaking either. Just your standard 16 GB.
Chromebooks don't really rely on internal storage, you see. Mostly, they work in the cloud, where all the apps, programs and files are stored.
The 16 GB on-board NAND Flash is only there to hold the operating system, and whatever you feel you need to always have on hand. For those cases when you don't have access to an Internet connection. The Cloud-based space (Google Drive) is of 100 GB.
Moving on, the Lenovo N20P Chromebook does possess the other essential parts of a laptop, like the webcam (720p), two USB ports, an HDMI output, an SD/MMC card reader (2-in-1 card reader as it were), and a full-size keyboard. Finally, the LCD display has a diagonal of 11.6 inches, which is pretty routine for these things.
Lenovo's new N-Series of Chromebooks includes the N20 model as well, which is exactly the same as the N200P but without the ultra-flexible hinge. It has the normal, 120-degree range instead.
Finally, both Chrome-based laptops have internal batteries that can last for up to 8 hours on a single charge. The N20 has a price of $279 / €279, but the Lenovo N20P sells for $329 / €329. A pretty large gap between them really, with no real explanation as to why. Shipments will begin in July and August 2014, respectively.