Lenovo 100e 11.6" Gen 4 2024, Intel N100, 8GB, 64GB eMMC, Graphite Gray

The Lenovo 100e Gen 4 is a lightweight, durable Chromebook built for classrooms. It has surprisingly good RAM for the price but a dim TN display and painfully small 64GB eMMC storage. Buy it if you're outfitting a school, skip it if you're shopping for yourself.

The Intel N100 is a 4-core chip that runs at 0.8GHz base, and it's not going to impress anyone. In our database, this CPU lands in the 15th percentile for Chromebooks, which means it's slower than most things we've tested. But ChromeOS is light, so basic tasks like writing in Google Docs, watching YouTube, or joining a Google Meet call are fine. Just don't expect to keep 20 tabs open without some stuttering.

The 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM is actually the best part of this machine. It's well above what most budget Chromebooks offer, and it means the 100e Gen 4 can handle a few more tabs than you'd expect. Storage is a different story. 64GB of eMMC is slow and cramped, landing in the 4th percentile. You'll be leaning on Google Drive constantly, and offline storage is basically an afterthought. The integrated Intel UHD Graphics are fine for video playback but useless for anything resembling gaming.

Stacked against the HP OmniBook X Flip 14-fk0033dx or the ASUS Zenbook UX3405CA-U7512, the Lenovo 100e Gen 4 looks like a toy. Those machines have better screens, faster CPUs, and actual SSDs. But they also cost two to three times as much, so it's not a fair fight. The real question is whether this Chromebook beats other budget options in its own class.

Against something like a used Dell Latitude XPS 13 or a Samsung Galaxy Book6 Pro, the Lenovo wins on price and durability but loses on everything else. The screen is the biggest gap. A 1366x768 TN panel with 250 nits and 45% NTSC color coverage is rough in 2025. Even a cheap tablet has a better display. If you can stretch your budget by USD 100 or so, you'll find Chromebooks with IPS panels and 128GB of storage that feel dramatically better to use every day.

Pricing on the Lenovo 100e Gen 4 is weird right now. In the US, we're seeing listings from USD 346 to USD 517, which is a huge spread for the same machine. The lower end of that range is reasonable for a classroom Chromebook, but once you cross USD 450, you're in territory where better options exist. The best US deal in our database is at the USD 346 mark, and that's about where this thing makes sense. If you're paying more than USD 400, you should probably look elsewhere. The CAD 483 listing in Canada is also in the ballpark, but the EUR 704 price in Italy is frankly absurd for this hardware.

The Lenovo 100e Gen 4 is a budget Chromebook aimed squarely at classrooms and kids who need something light, tough, and cheap to fix. It sits in that sub-$400 USD space, though pricing is all over the map depending on where you look. The core specs are modest: an Intel N100 quad-core chip, 8GB of LPDDR5 RAM, and 64GB of eMMC storage. That RAM is actually a nice surprise for this price bracket, but the storage and screen are where corners got cut hard.

People searching for a cheap student laptop or a classroom Chromebook will find this one easy to carry at 1.23kg and built to survive a backpack. But if you're wondering whether the Lenovo 100e Gen 4 is good for anything beyond Google Docs and web browsing, the answer is mostly no. This is a single-purpose machine, and it knows it.

ChromeOS keeps things snappy on weak hardware, which helps. The 11.6-inch display is small and dim, but it sips power from a 47Wh battery. For a school district buying in bulk, that's a reasonable trade. For an individual buyer, it's a tougher sell.

Skip the Lenovo 100e Gen 4 if you want a laptop for media consumption, creative work, or anything beyond basic web browsing. The TN display is one of the worst we've seen in this category, with poor viewing angles and washed-out colors. If you need offline storage, the 64GB eMMC will frustrate you constantly. And if you're hoping to run Android apps or Linux containers, the slow CPU and limited storage will hold you back. Look at a used Lenovo Flex 5 Chromebook or an Acer Chromebook Plus instead. You'll get a better screen, more storage, and a faster processor for not much more money.

Should you buy the Lenovo 100e Gen 4? If you're a school IT admin buying dozens of units for a classroom, yes. It's light, durable, and cheap to repair. The 8GB of RAM means it won't choke on a handful of tabs, and ChromeOS is easy to manage at scale. For that use case, it's a solid pick.

But if you're an individual buyer looking for a personal laptop, even a cheap one, this is a harder recommendation. The screen is genuinely bad, the storage is tiny, and the CPU is slow. You can find better Chromebooks for around the same price if you shop carefully. This is a fleet machine, not a personal one.