Battle of the Netbooks : Lenovo IdeaPad S10
7. Lenovo IdeaPad S10
The display
Displays on laptops rarely have outstanding quality and this one is no different.
Horizontal viewing angles are decent as with any TN screen. Vertical viewing angles are fine with colors becoming darker when viewed from below. We appreciate however that the display is matte and not glossy.
Lenovo’s IdeaPad S10 follows the netbook trend of the moment - technology on the go with a 10 inch display, a hard drive (from 80 to 160 GB) and the usual Intel Atom processor.
Handling and Design
Lenovo’s S10 has a solid build and offers a choice of colors: ruby red, classic white, bold black, deep blue and pastel pink.
As you can see on the picture, the touchpad is very small (only 2.5 cm long). This is far from ideal, so an external mouse is a necessity. The keyboard has a comfortable size, but the right/left click buttons are in matte metal and are a bit noisy.
Even though the laptop is silent overall, you will notice when the internal cooling fan kicks into high gear.
The webcam colours aren’t the best. There is quite a bit of lag between the moment one moves and the movement on the screen.
The microphone is on the front edge of the notebook (bottom left on picture) so all the typing can be heard. But as its sensitivity is actually very poor, you would have to talk (or type) very loudly to be heard.
On the sides you will find two USB ports, one Ethernet jack, VGA (up to 1920x1200), 2 mini-Jacks, a 4-in-1 memory card reader, and an ExpressCard/34 slot. The latter can be used for extensions such as a FireWire, additional USB ports, or a TV tuner card.
The volume of the speakers is weak, hardly enough to watch movie on your own with some noise around. We can’t recommend enough the use of a headset.
When you take out the 2 screws from below the netbook, you have access to the RAM (512 MB) and to the 2.5 inch hard drive.
 |  |
| Express Card, 2 mini Jack | USB, RJ45 |
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| VGA, memory card slot and USB | Webcam |
Processor Power
Mini laptop components are all very similar, especially the Intel Atom CPU. The main difference is usually storage, and whether or not you get flash-based or a traditional hard drive. The S10 has (above) average results: read speeds are at 55 MB/s, although this figure gradually slows down to 30 MB/s as the disk fills up.
The Intel N270 allows you to do everything a normal PC would do, including picture and video editing, compressing files, and presentations for work. Despite being able to handle these tasks, the S10 will be about two or three times slower than a recent Core 2 Duo-based laptop. Is that really a problem? It shouldn’t be, as this is not the sort of machine you would use to edit your latest HD movie.
The machine takes 41 seconds to boot, which puts it somewhere inbetween the rest of the netbooks in this roundup. Video playback is good, but as always, avoid HD.
Battery Life & Portability
At 2.65 lb, this is a rather light 10 inch offering. The charger weighs 10.6 ounces, which is just about average.
Battery life was short: 1 hour and 43 minutes compared to the 5 hours of some Asus models. The test was conducted on the low capacity battery included. A 6 cell battery (high capacity) is also available.
| Lenovo IdeaPad S10 | |
|---|---|
| Pros Cons -good build -noisy when heavily used -large keys on board -touchpad too small -Express Card slot -poor webcam, microphone -Colors available -speakers not loud enough -battery life of 1 hour, 43 minutes | |
The IdeaPad S10 is a good product, bu there are some better ones out there. The size of the touchpad and the short battery life are two points that left us unimpressed.
- Ideapad S10e Netbook...
why is it that tom's always leave out the acer aspire one?
Hmmm, this just reinforces my decision to buy an eepc 901a.
Some of the articles pages are cut off.
the article is linked from DigitalVersus so goin there you can read the pages that were cut off
Shouldn't the last page have a CHART that shows Score, battery life, HD size, etc. Obviously, they all have 3 USBs, Audio and video ports.
Many of the reviews are cut off. Please fix this.
You need a chart at the end of the article, and you need to fix, as mentionned by ddelrio, some of the reviews that have been cut off
A chart with all the netbooks side by side would be nice.
It would then, for example, be easier to compare weight with batterly life.
Yeah I'm clicking around trying to find the conclusion, where's the end of the article?
Acer Aspire One... how could you leave this out?
As others have mentioned, some kind of chart or summary is needed. I've noticed that recent multiple-product reviews have been lacking in that area. Being able to jump to the summary, then backtrack to individual reviews would be much better.
Jeez, has it only been 18 months?
gateway LT31XX series at about 399US leave all these in the dust,1366*768 hi-def led display,athlon64 1.26ghz,sturdy noiseless keyboard,Hd dolby surround sound,250gb hd,ati mr1270 gpu,2Gb ram,Atheros wifi,multicard reader,home vista(yuck :-P )but is still snappy and runs great,flyes with linux(tested with pclinuxos,ubuntu and mandriva 2009 kde 4,....still to try win xp though....70sec to boot to desktop on vista....esxp index on vista...proc=2.7,mem=4.5,graph=2.7,games=3.0,disk transfer rate=5.6
just my 0.02.....
Why, why does Intel tie the hands of manufacturers?!?!?!
I'll wait till AMD comes up with some sort of ATOM alla style product, but Dual Core. When that will happened only then I'll consider a NetBook.