Jul 08, 2016 02:50 PM
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Lenovo has been coming out with some really good Ultrabooks of late, with its IdeaPad U410 offering excellent performance and features for less than you would expect. The company's latest offering is the Lenovo IdeaPad S300 - a smaller and more portable 13.3-inch proposition than the U410, but with an equal amount of power.
It sports a third-generation Ivy Bridge Core i5-3317U processor, a not-too-inconsiderable 4GB of memory and an AMD Radeon 7450M graphics card. It's more in line with the U310, but with a few differences - and it costs a lot less, at £469.99(around AU$729/US$757).
Compared with similarly-sized rivals, such as the super-slim Asus Zenbook U32A, the Dell XPS 13 or the ridiculously light Toshiba Satellite Z930, the Lenovo IdeaPad S300 is a little bit bigger. It weighs a rather hefty 1.8kg(4lbs), and 22mm(0.86 inches) at its thickest means it's some way off the skinny 14mm(0.55 inches) of the latest 13.3-inch Zenbook.
The thing is, technically the Lenovo IdeaPad S300 isn't actually an Ultrabook. It's actually a super-specced version of the existing Pentium S300 also available for a similar price.
On paper it has everything you might expect from an Ultrabook: performance, slimness and looks, but the lack of a fast-booting SSD drive - a 500GB HDD is all you get - prevents it from being able to sit in this category.
But don't let that little shortcoming get you down, because the Lenovo is capable of so much more, and it can do it for much less money than many of the other Ultrabooks out there.While this laptop doesn't feature the fast-booting capability of an SSD drive, Lenovo has included a Quick Start feature that enables you to boot into an alternative operating system in seconds, offering access to many basic functions such as internet browsing or media playing.
The idea is sound, but the delivery could have been better. For starters there's no dedicated hardware button - instead you must use a shortcut key to access it, and - in all honesty - in use it feels a little clunky.
