They've become the browser-centric portal for the education market which is the only thing a lot of people need/want. (I probably prefer that to defaulting to tablets/smartphones.)

At the same time, as far as I can tell, Chromebooks are pretty much all K-12 focused devices at this point. Which is fine. But I'd potentially buy something higher-end if it were available. But it isn't.

Lenovo doesn't have any current Thinkpad Chromebooks, but they had at least a few models in the past. Those qualified for at least pretty nice, depending on which CPU you optioned. If you picked a Chromebook model that used mainstream CPUs (ex Intel Core), chances were good that they'd have a SKU with a higher tier cpu (i5/i7), even if the case and the screen were nothing special. The atom and arm based ones didn't really have a high tier cpu to consider.

Of course, having found and incubated a useful niche, Google has canceled Chrome OS, so Chromebook offerings are going to be trickier to find.

I buy and re-image old chromebooks to use for terminals for paperwork at a few places I volunteer, they're like $50 and easy to reimage... and nice for doing paperwork.