Lenovo Ideapad S10

Full Review

It is still remarkable how despite its 6-cell battery bulge the Lenovo Ideapad S10 still retains its characteristic slim form factor, unlike some of the wedge-shaped netbooks. Build quality of the Ideapad S10 is pretty good. It has a standard 10.2-inch screen like all other 10-inch netbooks, albeit a non-glossy one, which we favor over the glossy ones from Acer and Asus. The screen bezel of the netbook is considerably slimmer than any other netbook in comparison, and it makes the Ideapad S10 very compact.

The unconventional placement of speakers on the front-edge sound good while the Ideapad S10 rests on a desk, but otherwise leads to muffling of sound while on the lap.

Apart from the Intel Atom 1.6-GHz processor, it comes with a 5,400rpm, 160GB hard drive, and 1GB of RAM. And the Ideapad S10 is the only featured netbook that has a combination of multi-card reader and express card slot which is a boon for expandability - you can plugin Firewire, external drives, a broadband modem, etc. However, the omission of Gigabit ethernet and Wi-Fi 802.11n is an overwhelming disappointment, hurting its prospects in comparison to others. The unconventional placement of speakers on the front-edge sound good while the Ideapad S10 rests on a desk, but otherwise leads to muffling of sound while on the lap.

On the other hand, the Lenovo Ideapad S10 came pre-installed with a lot of useful software like Norton Internet Security and OneKey Recovery 6.0, an easy-to-use backup and bootable recovery software. In terms of performance, Worldbench 6 pegged its system performance at 32, which is pretty good. And its 6-cell battery lasted lesser in comparison to the Acer and Asus netbooks – four hours in battery Eater’s benchmark tests. Expect over six hours of battery backup while surfing the net or working on productivity applications. From what we saw, the Ideapad S10 is still a great netbook, offering a lot of unique features for its price of Rs. 21,990.

Bottom Line

The Lenovo Ideapad S10 is the only netbook that has an ExpressCard slot and a multicard reader combo. It's slim and compact design, front-edged speakers (another unique feature), and OneKey backup software still makes it an alluring buy.