Lenovo S100, S205 Review

The Lenovo Ideapad S100 features a LED backlit display and comes with a 98 percent Lenovo's AccuType chiclet keyboard.Lenovo says that it is 98 percent of a full laptop sized keyboard. This is clearly very impressive for a 10-inch netbook. After using the keyboard for a while, I found that the keyboard actually looks a lot like the chiclet keyboards found in the 11.6-inch netbooks by Lenovo and other ThinkPad laptops.

It is available in an array of colors that include sky blue, black, red and fuchsia. The S100 weighs in 2.2 pounds and includes a 2.0MP webcam for Skype video chats.

The Lenovo S205 is the return into the crossover mini laptop category and expands to 11.6-inch display packing a nice 1366x768 pixel resolution. The design has the option of a 3G radio and Lenovo's DirectShare feature which allows you to sync data in a P2P network connection. The S205 is powered by the AMD E-350 dual core processor that packs more power than the typical Atom-powered netbooks you see around. With the S205, you get HDMI connectivity and VGA port for outputting the display to an HDTV or a bigger screen. Even though the machine is smaller than a typical notebook computer, it packs 98 percent full size Accutype keyboard.

The Lenovo S205 comes equipped with a lithium-ion battery that is rated to give you up to 8 hours of runtime on a single charge. However, I was able to get just 4.5 hours with some Youtube videos and web-surfing. Talking about YouTube videos, I was easily able to view HD as-well-as full HD videos with ease, thanks to the amazing ATi Radeon HD 6310 GPU with dedicated 512MB RAM. This one will retail at a heftier starting price of 500 dollars.

If you are looking for battery life, stay clear with the Lenovo S100 (8 hour battery life), but if you want a little bit of power too in an ultra portable laptop, go with the Lenovo S205