We take a look at why the Lenovo IdeaPad
U300s is not just a pretty looking thing
Lenovo's claim to fame in the PC market has
always revolved around their ThinkPad and IdeaPad line of notebooks. At CES
2012, they have launched a thousand and one devices and computers, but perhaps
one of the more notable ones include the very new Lenovo IdeaPad U300s.
We say notable because Lenovo's Ultrabook
offering looks nothing like the other ones we've seen before. What Lenovo has
done with the U300s is to borrow the design from their ThinkPad and IdeaPad
notebooks and fashion a chassis off a single block of aluminium, but what's
different here is in how it looks. The dark grey outer chassis only tapers
slightly, which makes opening the top a painless affair.
In way of ports, the U300s comes with two
USB ports, one of which is USB 3.0, a HDMI port, and that's pretty much it. The
lack of a card reader of any sort is a bit lamentable considering that other
Ultrabooks at similar price range all have one built in.
Moving on, the inside of the U300s is a
clean metallic aluminium surface that has been sandblasted and smoothed to
almost perfection. Taking more cues from the ThinkPad, the keyboard look and
feel is also almost similar to that of the business notebook, with the only
exception that it is not contoured to the shape of your finger. The travel
otherwise feels very close to that of the ThinkPad, and is by far the best
keyboard on an Ultrabook yet.
Powered by Intel's second generation Core
i7 processor, the U300s is a powerful workhorse. The benchmark scores we have
are as well as expected, and the U300s is well capable of handling most things.
Featuring the same 2 second sleep-to-wake
up time the other Ultrabooks boast, it also has one of the longest battery
lives around. On auto brightness with WiFi turned on, we managed to get over
six hours of battery life.
As we have the model which features the
Core i7 processor, the unit is fitted with a 256GB SSD, which is quite a
generous amount of SSD storage space.
Lenovo IdeaPad U300s Ultrabook
Price $ 1,125
Info www.lenovo.com
Specifications
CPU: Intel Core i7-2677M Processor
(1.8GHz)
RAM: 4GB
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
Display: 13-inch HD display @ 1366 x
768
Connectivity: Bluetooth, USB2.0,
USB3.0, Wi-Fi, HDMI, Ethernet
Extras: Webcam, WiDi support
Webcam: Integrated 1.3MP camera
Ratings
Performance 4 stars
Features 4 stars
Design 4 stars
Value 4 stars
