New Lenovo Chromebooks

Lenovo announced two consumer-grade clamshell Chromebook models today, each with an 11.6-in. display and running Intel Celeron processors. The Chromebooks go on sale this summer starting at $279.

The new N20p includes a touchscreen with a keyboard that can flex backwards by 300 degrees to convert the Chromebook from laptop mode to standing mode.

"Chromebooks have really taken off with those nice, low price points targeted toward education," Ashley Rodrigue, a Lenovo ambassador, said in an interview. Successful sales of earlier Lenovo clamshells with the Chrome OS prompted Lenovo to produce the new Chromebooks, which are even lower in price than some education models announced in January, and will probably attract some of the most price-conscious schools and consumers, she explained.

The N20 model, selling for $279 starting in July, has a traditional laptop design. The new N20p, selling for $329 starting in August, upgrades on the clamshell concept to include a touchscreen with a physical keyboard that can flex backwards by 300 degrees to convert the device from laptop mode to standing mode.

In standing mode, the N20p lets users watch videos or play games or browse with touch.

Each new Chromebook weighs less than 3 pounds and the 11.6-in. displays offer 1366 x 768-pixel screens.

Each model provides six to eight hours of battery life and will be powered by a Celeron processor, Rodrigue said. Also, each will come with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0, 16GB of internal storage and 100 GB of free cloud storage from Google.