It’s a Chromebook thing: Hands-on with new ChromeOS AI features

As an elder member of Gen-Z, every screen in my life has its purpose. My small screen (my phone) is there for personal communication, ordering food, and mindlessly scrolling memes on the internet. My big screen (my TV) takes on the role of in-home entertainment, whether it’s a giant Spotify hub, a way to keep up with the Club World Cup, or endlessly streaming reruns of Letterkenny.

Left in the mushy middle between the two, however, is room for a medium screen, like a laptop or a tablet. These medium screens have always been the hard work, big purchase screens — the ones I turn to when the matter feels too serious for a phone. And now, Google seems to agree. It’s trying to make more tasks feel like they were meant to be done on Chromebooks, and here’s how that’s working out so far.

I’ve been a fan of Chromebooks — especially Chromebook Plus models — for a while now, and I’ve noticed where the classic pitfalls lie. To many, Chromebooks still feel like the lightweight, go-to options for students or those people who want to browse YouTube and check their emails. Unfortunately, that means ignoring some of the cooler AI-powered features Google has added over the last two years.

Now, though, I have to think the new stuff is inescapable. Every time Google rolls out a major Chrome OS update, it adds a handful of new AI-powered features, many of which feel like scaled-up versions of things I love about the Google Pixel series. Today, some of those additions include Select to Search and Text Capture, which work like screenshots combined with the ever-present Circle to Search on Android. You’re a little more limited in that you have to drag and drop a square over what you want to search for, but it feels like a pretty reasonable approach when not every Chromebook Plus has a touchscreen.

Google is also bringing some new functionality to the Quick Insert menu that it added to Chromebook Plus devices a few months back. You could already use it to insert GIFs, links, and more quick items without jumping between too many tabs, but now Google has also added the ability to generate and insert images, a la the Pixel Studio, one of my favorite exclusive Android apps. I like that it feels like a faster, more efficient way to plan things out with friends, since a custom image is way more attention-grabbing than a simple mass text — ask me how I know.

Of course, there are still a few new Chromebook Plus wrinkles that feel tailor-made for students, or at least those who love learning. This time, the main addition is a new segment of Help Me Read dubbed Simplify. It works pretty much how it sounds, allowing you to highlight a large section of text and have Gemini boil it down into more digestible bites for you, not quite the same as the Summarize feature, as it doesn’t swap paragraphs for bullet points so much as make the paragraphs easier to understand.

Google’s latest announcement also includes the fact that NotebookLM now comes preinstalled on every Chromebook Plus, and the previous free year of Google One AI Premium has been upgraded to a year of Google One AI Pro, which adds access to Gemini 2.5 Pro and limited access to Veo 3 Fast to generate videos.

I’ve also come to expect a brand-new Chromebook Plus or two from almost every major Chrome OS announcement. Usually, they check virtually all the required boxes, offering sharp enough webcams, decent RAM, and processors that make the grade, but this time, Google aimed a little higher. For the first time, it brought a partner on stage at its Chromebook Showcase, having Lenovo launch its brand-new Chromebook Plus 14.

And, to hear Google and Lenovo say it, this seems like the flagship Chromebook Plus design they’ve wanted all along. It’s just the right size at 14 inches, offers plenty of power thanks to the mix of a MediaTek Kompanio Elite processor and up to 16GB of RAM, and offers up to 17 hours of battery life with a silent, fanless design. I’ll admit I only had a few minutes with the lightweight laptop, so I can’t speak to the validity of most of those claims, but my brief session felt like a bright start. Also, the rubberized bottom panel reminds me a lot of Google’s old Pixelbook Go, so much so that I’m ready to start begging for an update.

If the Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 were just a pretty face, I don’t know if I’d have too much to say about it. After all, Samsung’s Galaxy Chromebook Plus was already downright impressive with its sleek metal body and physical Quick Insert key, but functionally, it was the same as any other Chromebook Plus. This time, though, a few exclusive software features keep my attention.

As the top dog in Google’s Chromebook Plus lineup, the Chromebook Plus 14 benefits from Smart Grouping, which uses AI to organize your Chrome tabs and documents into related groups that you can then send from one desktop to another. If you were, say, training for a fall marathon but also trying to research the Club World Cup, the Chromebook Plus 14 could split those into two well-organized desktops that you can easily jump between with minimal distractions.

The other currently exclusive wrinkle is the ability to edit images in the Gallery app, which feels like Magic Editor on a much larger scale. It lets you apply AI to remove the background of your image and quickly create stickers that you can then layer into other images and save for later usage. I didn’t have a chance to try this one too thoroughly since I was checking out one of Google’s demo units, but I’d be curious to see how quickly it processes through my extensive Gallery, especially since I’ve already made so many stickers in the past.

If there’s one drawback to the new flagship of the Chromebook Plus fleet, it’s that it comes with a flagship price. The Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 will set you back $649 for its base configuration with 12GB of RAM or $749 for 16GB of RAM, which is no small sum. I generally think that the power and overall specs justify the price of admission, too, though deciding whether or not to buy one seems like a medium screen decision — a Chromebook thing, if you will.