Lenovo Ideapad S10e Review

Despite having a rather late launch, the Lenovo Ideapad S10 instantly won good reviews as it offered a good mix of features, design and durability – though the hardware specs were standard ones. Now, Lenovo is back, and it has definitely learnt from its past mistakes, and tried to eliminate each of them. It has just launched the new Lenovo Ideapad S10e which is primarily aimed at the education market and students who want a netbook which can do all the basic stuff and doesn’t cost a bomb. It is a marked improvement over its predecessor and features a longer battery life and a quick start OS. It is also priced very competitively at just around $399. In this review, we check out the Lenovo Ideapad S10e and see how it stacks up against the new breed of low cost netbooks springing up.

Lenovo Ideapad S10e Specs:

• Dimensions: 9.8 x 7.7 x 1.4 inches
• Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Processor: Intel Atom N270 at 1.6 GHz, 512 KB L2 Cache
• RAM: 1 GB DDR 2 RAM
• Hard Drive: 80 GB SATA HDD, 5400 RPM
• Display Size: 10.1 inch LCD Display, 1024 x 576 pixels
• Integrated Graphics: Intel GMA 950 with 64 MB VRAM
• Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth 2.1
• Operating System: MS Windows XP Home
• Ports: 2 USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet, Headphone, Microphone, Modem, VGA out, 4 in 1 card reader, ExpressCard slot

Design and Build Quality:

The Lenovo Ideapad S10e sports a basic design which isn’t very stylish, but the simple touch may be preferred by many. It is completely subjective, so check it out yourself before buying it. It is dressed fully in metallic gray and matte black and looks quite simple. Considering it is aimed at kids, it is very decent. Even casual users and office users won’t mind using it, atleast not due to the design. The build quality is very nice, after all it is aimed at kids. It should last for a very long time if you use it well. The chass feels very sturdy and solid. It has dimensions of 9.8 x 7.7 x 1.4 inches and weighs around 2.8 pounds which is quite near the category average. In all, a simple design, good build quality and quite compact.

Display and Speakers:

The Lenovo Ideapad S10e sports a 10.1 inch LCD display supporting a native resolution of 1024 x 576 pixels – the new standard for netbooks. Almost all netbooks are now phasing away from the older 1000 x 600 pixels resolution and moving on to the 1024 x 576 standard. The lesser number of horizontal pixels requires more scrolling during web browsing and reading documents. It has adequate brightness and offers decent contrast. The colors are vibrant and real. It has good viewing angles both horizontal and vertical. It is well suited for all sorts of multimedia playback. You would want to consider connecting it to a better display though using the VGA out connection.

The speakers, located above the keyboard, offer average volume and good sound quality. It will suffice for casual music and movies but anything more than that, and you will need to use a good pair of headphones as in all netbooks. It also has a 1.3 MP webcam which has decent capture quality.

Keyboard and Touchpad:

The Ideapad S10e sports a very spacious keyboard which is just a wee bit smaller than a normal laptop keyboard. It is almost in the league of the legendary HP Mini Note and MSI Wind keyboards. The key spacing and travel is almost perfect and the keys have a nice feel. The keys also offer good feedback. It is suited for touch typing, the typing speeds are very reasonable and fall just short of typing speeds on a normal desktop keyboard. There is very little flex in the keyboard area. It is near the best you can get in netbooks.

The touchpad is a bit small and falls short of spanning the whole screen. The touchpad surface has a nice feel which allows for better and faster navigation. The touchpad has nice response and sensitivity. It also support basic multitouch gestures, another reason why we would have preferred a bigger touchpad. Below the touchpad, you find the two touchpad buttons which are soft and easy to click. They also have a distinctive click. The touchpad also has a vertical scroller to its right.

Performance:

The Lenovo IdeaPad S10e is powered by a Intel Atom N270 processor clocked at 1.6 GHz. It offers 512 KB of L2 cache and has a bus speed of 533 MHz. It has become the standard in all netbooks around the world. The performance it offers is good enough for casual usage and normal office work. The main advantage it offers is superb power efficiency, having a TDP of just 2.5W. It also has 1 GB DDR 2 RAM which is quite capable of running the bundled Windows XP OS and some applications easily with some multitasking thrown in. Underneath it lies the Intel 945GSE Express chipset with the Intel GMA 950 integrated graphics with 64 MB VRAM. This can easily handle normal multimedia playback and ultra light gaming. It also has a relatively fast 80 GB HDD at 5,400 RPM which is fast and offers good read / write speeds. It runs on Windows XP Home as stated before, which is quite fast and responsive. It boots from a cold start pretty fast.

However, the killer feature with the Ideapad S10e is the new Quick Start OS – a modified version of Splashtop Linux. It boots much faster than the Windows XP OS and offers access to all the basic features like Music, Pics, Chat, Web Browser etc. The Quick Start interface is very cute and will definitely appeal to kids.

Battery Life and Other Features:

It comes with Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 as wireless data transfer options. The Wi-Fi reception is excellent and offers a good range and signal even when placed far away from the router. The Wi-Fi download /upload speeds are superb. It comes with a 6 cell battery compared to the 3 cell battery on the original Ideapad S10. It has a nice battery life of slightly more than 5 hrs with moderate usage. With some more effort, 5.5 hrs can easily be squeezed out of it. It sports a nice range of expansion ports – 2 USB 2.0 ports, Ethernet, Headphone, Microphone, Modem, VGA out, 4 in 1 card reader and an ExpressCard slot.

Pros:

• Inexpensive
• Quick Start OS
• Nice Battery Life

Cons:

• Still on a GMA 950!

Final Words:

A nice little netbook with nice features, a low price and perfectly suited for students and basic office users who just need to run spreadsheets and documents.

Our Rating: 3.75 / 5.