Build and Layout

The layout of the IdeaPad S10 is unsurprisingly similar to other netbooks we’ve witnessed in current months, but Lenovo has managed to include a couple of enjoyable surprises. The exterior is coated in white “pearl-like” plastics with a slight glossy finish. The inside keyboard and palmrest surfaces are covered with matte white plastics with affordable longevity and only a minimal bit of flex around the palmrests when you press firmly on those surfaces.

What very first seems to be a giant beefy hinge for the ten-inch display is actually the three-cell battery with a little hinge on possibly side of the tiny laptop computer. Total, the appear is fairly good, but the white plastics do give this netbook a marginally “toy like” visual appeal. When I took the S10 with me and was using it in public with my 2-year-outdated daughter close by many other parents asked me if the S10 was a toy laptop for my daughter. That is unlucky given that, as we are about to point out, the S10 is a remarkably capable ultraportable laptop computer.

The develop quality of the IdeaPad S10 battery is really sound for a subnotebook of this measurement and fat. The building is mostly plastic but all of the plastics come to feel sturdy sufficient to handle being tossed all around inside a bookbag.

In phrases of upgradeability, the S10 lenovo s10 battery is much easier to upgrade than several netbooks at present on the market. Some of the netbooks we have noticed to date require complicated disassembly in purchase for you to get to the storage drive, method RAM, or wireless cards. Even even worse, some other netbooks have slots for upgrades but no connections on the motherboard so it is impossible to upgrade them. This is not the situation with the S10.

Keyboard and Touchpad

Most low-priced, full-dimension notebooks currently on the market function inadequately developed keyboards that demonstrate significant flex/bounce when typing stress is applied. Luckily, most netbooks have remarkably company keyboards due to the simple fact that the chassis is so modest there just isn’t a lot empty space inside of the notebook for the keyboard to flex or bounce.

The keyboard on the IdeaPad S10 is much less cramped than what we’ve witnessed on most 7-inch and 8.9-inch netbooks, but the S10 keyboard is nonetheless extremely compact. Most touch typists will possibly need to have some time to figure out suitable finger placement on the keyboard in purchase to prevent making typos. Yet again, this is nothing at all new for netbooks, which generally demand you to use a “hunt and peck” fashion of typing rather than traditional touch typing approaches. Bottom line, this keyboard is not created to be used as a major/principal pc. For consumers who are taking into consideration the S10 as their “major personal computer” in their home or office environment, a total-dimensions exterior keyboard and external mouse are recommended.

The touchpad layout, while smaller sized than a conventional laptop computer touchpad, is shockingly good for a price range netbook. The touchpad in our review unit was a Synaptics touchpad with outstanding sensitivity, responsiveness, and clean monitoring. The touchpad buttons are located in the appropriate placement and have nice, deep, well-cushioned presses with a fulfilling “click on” when pressed. A great addition to the touchpad was assistance for Synaptics multi-touch gestures which let you to do items this sort of as zoom in or zoom out just by “pinching” or “spreading” the touchpad with your fingertips.

Display

The matte 10.2″ WSVGA (1024×600) AntiGlare TFT exhibit on the S10 is good and vibrant with rich hues and great contrast. The white ranges are very apparent and the matte surface stops glare and reflections which assist make the display screen less difficult to study outside under vivid sunlight.

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Horizontal viewing angles are great, so you and a pal will not have trouble observing a film on the 8.9-inch display screen at the identical time. Vertical viewing angles are appropriate, but colors do are likely to turn into darker and slightly inverted when seen from beneath.

Ports and Attributes

Port choice was pretty extraordinary on the S10 in comparison to other netbooks, with the standout capabilities staying an ExpressCard slot for further expansion and created-in Bluetooth for employing an external mouse and keyboard without having needing to sacrifice a single or far more of the two USB ports.

In reality, if there isn’t significantly to complain about right here other than the simple fact that the S10 has only two USB ports. Nonetheless, if we had to pick among a third USB port or an ExpressCard slot and Bluetooth we will gladly sacrifice the 3rd USB port. Right here is a fast tour of what you get:

Front: No ports, just indicator lights and the speakers.

Functionality and Benchmarks

This Intel Atom centered netbook won’t be breaking any pace records, but it carried out a lot more than adequately for normal pursuits. Windows startup took significantly less than 30 seconds and world wide web searching, word processing, and even photograph editing duties had been downright “snappy.” While the 3D graphics benchmark figures are not particularly impressive, it can be critical to retain in thoughts that netbooks are not designed for enjoying personal computer games. The S10 and equivalent netbooks are cellular world wide web portals and productiveness tools for obtaining some speedy function done with out needing to carry a giant laptop computer.

PCMark05 measures all round method functionality (increased scores indicate greater efficiency):

Notebook PCMark05 Score
Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (1.60GHz Intel Atom, Intel GMA 950) 1,446 PCMarks
Acer Aspire 1 (1.60GHz Intel Atom, Intel GMA 950) 1,555 PCMarks

ASUS Eee Personal computer 901 (one.60GHz Intel Atom) 746 PCMarks

MSI Wind (1.60GHz Intel Atom) N/A

ASUS Eee Personal computer 900 (900MHz Intel Celeron M ULV)
1,172 PCMarks

HP 2133 Mini-Be aware (1.6GHz By means of C7-M ULV) 801 PCMarks
HTC Shift (800MHz Intel A110) 891 PCMarks
ASUS Eee Computer 4G (630MHz Intel Celeron M ULV) 908 PCMarks
ASUS Eee Pc 4G (900MHz Intel Celeron M ULV) 1,132 PCMarks
Everex CloudBook (one.2GHz By means of C7-M ULV)
612 PCMarks

Sony VAIO TZ (1.20GHz Intel Core two Duo U7600) 2,446 PCMarks
Fujitsu LifeBook P7230 (1.2GHz Intel Core Solo U1400) 1,152 PCMarks
Sony VAIO VGN-G11XN/B (one.33GHz Core Solo U1500) one,554 PCMarks
Toshiba Portege R500 (1.2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo U7600) 1,839 PCMarks

wPrime processor comparison outcomes (reduced scores suggest much better overall performance):

Notebook / CPU wPrime 32M time
Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (Intel Atom @ one.60GHz) 127.172 seconds
Acer Aspire One particular (Intel Atom @ 1.60GHz) 125.812 seconds

ASUS Eee Computer 901 (Intel Atom @ one.60GHz)
123.437 seconds

MSI Wind (Intel Atom @ 1.60GHz)
124.656 seconds
ASUS Eee Pc 900 (Intel Celeron M ULV @ 900MHz)
203.734 seconds

HP 2133 Mini-Be aware (By way of CV7-M ULV @ one.6GHz) 168.697 seconds
ASUS Eee Personal computer 4G (Intel Celeron M ULV @ 630MHz) 289.156 seconds

ASUS Eee Personal computer 4G (Intel Celeron M ULV @ 900MHz) 200.968 seconds
Everex CloudBook (By means of C7-M ULV @ 1.2GHz) 248.705 seconds
Fujitsu U810 Tablet Laptop (Intel A110 @ 800MHz)
209.980 seconds

Sony VAIO VGN-G11XN/B (Core Solo U1500 @ 1.33GHz) 124.581 seconds
Sony VAIO TZ (Core two Duo U7600 @ one.2GHz) 76.240 seconds
Dell Inspiron 2650 (Pentium four Mobile @ one.6GHz) 231.714 seconds

3DMark06 comparison final results:

Notebook 3DMark06 Score
Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (1.60GHz Intel Atom, Intel GMA 950) N/A

Acer Aspire One (1.60GHz Intel Atom, Intel GMA 950)
122 3DMarks

Sony VAIO TZ (1.20GHz Core two Duo U7600, Intel GMA 950) 122 3DMarks
HP dv2500t (two.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, NVIDIA GeForce Go 8400M GS 128MB) one,055 3DMarks
Sony VAIO FZ (two.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T7300, Intel X3100) 532 3DMarks
HP dv6000t (2.16 GHz Intel T7400, NVIDA GeForce Go 7400) 827 3DMarks

3DMark03 Graphics Overall performance Benchmark (increased scores indicate greater efficiency):

Notebook 3DMark03 Benefits
Lenovo IdeaPad S10 (one.60GHz Intel Atom, Intel GMA 950) 569 3DMarks
Acer Aspire One (one.60GHz Intel Atom, Intel GMA 950)
751 3DMarks

MSI Wind (one.6GHz Intel Atom, Intel GMA 950) 589 3DMarks

Lenovo ThinkPad T60 (2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T4400, ATI X1400 128MB) 4,622 3DMarks

Speakers and Audio

The speakers on the IdeaPad S10 are reasonably impressive for a spending budget netbook. Whilst the two tiny stereo speakers found on the front edge of the netbook generate excellent quantity stages with minimum distortion and acceptable variety, it is worth mentioning the somewhat odd placement.

Given that the speakers are positioned on the front edge of the notebook the audio isn’t really becoming directed up and towards the person when the S10 is utilised as a laptop computer. In fact, our employees usually refers to laptop computer speakers with this sort of placement as “crotch speakers” because the speakers are directing audio to your waist instead than your ears. Offered the compact design of the S10 there weren’t numerous other locations for the speakers to go, but we’d like to see a various speaker place on following year’s design.

The headphone jack on the S10 operates effectively with the three diverse manufacturers of earphones I employed in the course of the examination. No static or other noise was discovered via the jack besides imperfections in the audio resource alone.

Heat and Sound

As we proceed to see in our labs, practically all of the Intel Atom-primarily based netbooks make a reasonable volume of warmth whilst running. The IdeaPad S10 remained on par with the opposition in this regard. Even below normal situations this kind of as browsing the web, typing paperwork, or downloading email attachments, exterior temperatures peaked above a hundred degrees Fahrenheit soon after far more than twenty five minutes of use. Granted, this stage of warmth just isn’t horrible by any means, but it may be a minor unpleasant on your lap after an hour.

The hottest spot on this netbook was the location around the challenging generate and RAM. The external temperature readings under (detailed in degrees Fahrenheit) had been recorded although searching the Net and working two HDTune assessments in a row right after roughly 30 minutes of use

In phrases of sound, our critique unit of the S10 remained tranquil during most of the testing period of time … other than during graphics benchmarks. When the relatively weak integrated graphics had been stressed for the duration of our critique the inner cooling fan kicked into high gear. The enthusiast sound wasn’t horrible by any means, but it would be loud sufficient to get a teacher’s attention in a quiet classroom. Once again, this only occurred when stressing the S10′s graphics, so it should not be an problem for informal net searching.

Battery

Under standard use, backlight at one hundred % and employing wireless for internet searching and observing a number of streaming video clips at 75 percent quantity, the S10 managed to produce 3 several hours and 43 minutes of battery lifestyle. This is similar to what we have observed from Atom-based mostly netbooks with 3-cell batteries, so there isn’t really considerably to complain about right here. Even so, as we have explained in the earlier when reviewing other netbooks, these tiny laptops would make excellent mobile companions if they just had an choice for a six-cell or 8-cell battery for all-day use. In any situation, lowering the display brightness and turning off the wireless card need to present ample battery daily life for prolonged use with the 3-cell battery.