Lenovo IdeaPad S10 Review
Construction and Design
The design of the IdeaPad S10 is surprisingly similar to other netbooks we’ve seen in recent months, but Lenovo has managed to include a few pleasant surprises. The exterior is covered in white “pearl-like” plastic with a slightly shiny surface. The inside of the keyboard and palmrest surfaces are matte white plastics with reasonable durability and only a minor bit of flex around the palm rests if you press firmly on those surfaces covered.
What at first seems a huge Beefy for the 10-inch display hinge is actually the 3-cell battery with a small on both sides of the small laptop hinge. Overall, the look is nice, but to do the white plastic, give this netbook a slightly “toy like” appearance. When I have the S10 with me and she was in public with my 2-year-old daughter nearby several other parents asked me if the S10 was a toy laptop for my daughter. This is unfortunate because, as we are about to mention is the S10 is a remarkably capable ultraportable notebook.
The construction quality of the IdeaPad S10 battery is extremely solid for a subnotebook of this size and weight. The construction is mostly plastic but all the plastics feel strong enough to handle a thrown about in a school bag.
In terms of upgradeability, the S10-S10 Lenovo battery is much easier to upgrade than many netbooks currently on the market. Some of the netbooks we’ve seen so far require complex disassembly in order for you to get the hard disk storage, RAM, or wireless cards. Worse yet, some other netbooks have slots for expansion, but no connectors on the motherboard so that it is impossible to update it. This is not the case with the S10.
Keyboard and touchpad
Most low-priced, feature full-size notebooks currently on the market poorly built keyboards that significant flex / bounce when typing pressure is applied to show. Fortunately, most netbooks have remarkably firm keyboards due to the fact that the chassis is so small there is not much empty space inside the notebook for the keyboard to flex or bounce.
The keyboard on the IdeaPad S10 is less than what we most 7-inch and 8 seen cramped. 9-inch Netbooks, but the S10 keyboard is still very compact. Most touch typists will probably need some time to figure out the correct placement to prevent fingers on the keyboard to that typo. Again, this is nothing new to netbooks, which typically require a “hunt and peck use” style of typing rather than traditional touch typing methods. The bottom line is this keyboard is not designed to be used as a primary / main computer. For users who are considering the S10 as the “main computer” are recommended in their home or office, a full-size external keyboard and external mouse.
The touchpad design, while smaller than a traditional laptop touchpad, is surprisingly nice for a budget netbook. The touchpad in our review unit was a Synaptics with excellent sensitivity, responsiveness and smooth tracking pad. The touchpad buttons are in the correct position and have nice, deep, well-cushioned presses with a satisfying “click” when pressed. A nice addition to the touchpad Synaptics was allowing support for multi-touch gestures, things like pinch zoom in or out by simply “or” dissemination “of the touchpad with your fingertips.
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The matt 10th 2 “WSVGA (1024×600) TFT display anti-reflective coating on the S10 is nice and vibrant with rich colors and good contrast. The white levels are very clear and the matte surface prevents glare and reflections that are easier to read the screen outdoors in bright to help sunlight.
Horizontal viewing angles are good, so that you and a friend will not have problems when playing a movie on the 8th 9-inch screen at the same time. Vertical viewing angles are acceptable, but colors tend to become darker, and conversely, if seen from below.
Connections and functions
Port selection was pretty impressive the S10 compared to other netbooks, with the outstanding properties is an Express Card slot for additional expansion and built-in Bluetooth for using an external mouse and keyboard, without the sacrifice of one or more of the two USB ports.
In fact, if there is not much here except the fact that the S10 has only two USB ports to complain. However, if we had to choose between a third USB port or an ExpressCard slot and Bluetooth we will gladly sacrifice the third USB port. Here is a quick tour of what you get:
Front: No ports, just lights and the speakers.
Performance and benchmarks
This Intel Atom based netbook will not break any speed records, but it is pursuing more than adequate for normal activities. Windows boot took less than 30 seconds, and surfing the Internet, word processing, image editing, and even tasks were downright “snappy.” While the 3D graphics benchmark numbers are not particularly impressive, it is important to remember that not think Netbooks designed for playing computer games. The S10 and similar netbooks are mobile internet portals and productivity tools for ever some quick work done without wearing a huge laptop.
PCMark05 measures overall system performance (higher scores mean better performance):
PCMark05 Score notebook Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (first 60-GHz Intel Atom, Intel GMA 950) 1.446 PCMark Acer Aspire One (first 60-GHz Intel Atom, Intel GMA 950) 1.555 PCMark ASUS Eee PC 901 (the first Intel Atom 60GHz) 746 PCMark MSI Wind (the first 60-GHz Intel Atom) N / A ASUS Eee PC 900 (900MHz Intel Celeron M ULV) 1.172 PCMarksHP 2133 (1 6GHz VIA C7-M ULV) 801 PCMark HTC Shift (800MHz Intel A110) 891 PCMark Asus Eee PC 4G (630MHz Intel Celeron M ULV) 908 PCMark Asus Eee PC 4G (900MHz Intel Celeron M ULV) 1.132 PCMark Everex CloudBook (first 2-GHz VIA C7-M ULV) 612 PCMarksSony VAIO TZ (first 20GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U7600) 2.446 PCMark Fujitsu Lifebook P7230 (the first 2GHz Intel Core Solo U1400) 1.152 PCMark Sony VAIO VGN-G11XN / B (33GHz first core mission Solo U1500) 1.554 PCMark Toshiba Portege R500 (first 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U7600) 1.839 PCMark
wPrime processor comparison results (lower values mean better performance):
Notebook / CPU wPrime 32M time Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (Intel Atom 60GHz @ 1st) 127,172 seconds Acer Aspire One (Intel Atom 60GHz @ 1st) 125 812 seconds Asus Eee PC 901 (Intel Atom 60GHz @ 1st) 123,437 seconds MSI Wind (Intel Atom 60GHz @ 1st) 124 656 seconds Asus Eee PC 900 (Intel Celeron M ULV @ 900MHz), 203 734 secondsHP 2133 Mini-Note (Via CV7-M ULV @ 1st 6GHz) 168 697 seconds Asus Eee PC 4G (Intel Celeron M ULV @ 630MHz) 289 SecondsASUS Eee PC 156 4G (Intel Celeron M ULV @ 900MHz) 200 968 seconds Everex CloudBook (VIA C7-M ULV @ first 2GHz) 248th 705 seconds Fujitsu U810 Tablet PC (Intel A110 @ 800MHz) 209 Second 980 Sony VAIO VGN-G11XN / B (Core Solo U1500 first @ 33GHz) 124 581 seconds Sony VAIO TZ (Core 2 Duo U7600 first @ 2GHz) 76,240 seconds Dell Inspiron 2650 (Pentium 4 Mobile @ 1st 6GHz) 231,714 seconds
3DMark06 comparison results:
3DMark06 Score notebook Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (first 60GHz Intel Atom, Intel GMA 950) N / AAcer Aspire One (1 60GHz Intel Atom, Intel GMA 950) 122 3DMarks Sony VAIO TZ (Core 2 Duo U7600 20GHz first, Intel GMA 950 ) 122 3DMarks HP dv2500t (2nd 0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB) 1055 3DMarks Sony VAIO FZ (2nd 0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100) 532 3DMarks HP dv6000t (2 16 GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400) 827 3DMarks
3DMark03 Benchmark Performance Graphics (higher scores indicate better performance):
3DMark03 results Notebook Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (first 60GHz Intel Atom, Intel GMA 950) 569 3DMarks Acer Aspire One (1 60GHz Intel Atom, Intel GMA 950) 751 3DMarks MSI Wind (1 6GHz Intel Atom, Intel GMA 950) 589 3DMarks Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2 16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T4400, ATI X1400 128MB) 4622 3DMarks
Speakers and Audio
The speakers on the IdeaPad S10 are quite impressive for a budget netbook. While the two small stereo speakers located at the front edge of the netbook produce good volume with minimal distortion and acceptable range, it is worth mentioning the somewhat odd placement.
Since the speakers at the front edge of the notebook are the sound is not up and pointed at the user when the S10 is used as a laptop. In fact, our people usually refers to laptop speakers with this type of speaker placement as a “step” because the speakers are solid direction at the waist, rather than the ears. Due to the compact design of the S10, there were not many other places to go for the speakers, but we would like to have a different position of the speaker in the next year to see the model.
The headphone jack on the S10 works well with the three different brands of earphones I used during the tests. No static or other noise was noticed through the jack besides imperfections in the audio source itself.
Heat and Noise
As we continue to see in our labs, nearly all of the Intel Atom-based Netbooks produce an adequate amount of heat while running. The IdeaPad S10 remained on par with the competition in this respect. Even under normal conditions, such as Internet browsing, typing documents or the downloading of email attachments, the outside temperatures reaching above 100 degrees to use for more than 25 minutes Fahrenheit. Granted, this level of heat, not terrible, but it could be a little uncomfortable on the lap after an hour.
The hottest spot on this netbook was the area around the disk and RAM. The external temperature readings below (listed in degrees Fahrenheit) were recorded while browsing the Web and operates two HDTune noise tests in a row after about 30 minutes from useIn terms, our review unit of the S10 was calm during most of the testing phase. . . except for the graphics benchmarks. With the relatively weak integrated graphics during our review of the internal fans were stressed kicked in full swing. The fan noise was not terrible, but it would get loud enough to attract the attention of a teacher in a quiet classroom. Again, this was only to indicate the S10 graphics, so it should not be a problem for casual Internet browsing.
Battery
In normal use, backlight at 100 percent and using wireless for web browsing and watching several streaming videos at 75 percent volume, the S10 was able to provide three hours and 43 minutes of battery life. This is similar to that which we of Atom-based netbooks with 3-cell batteries have seen, there is not much to complain here. However, as we have said in the past when reviewing other netbooks, these tiny laptops would make excellent mobile companions they would use only one option for a 6-cell or 8-cell battery for the whole day. In any case, a reduction in the brightness of the screen and turning off the wireless card should provide enough battery life for prolonged use with the 3-cell battery.
