In our Lenovo IdeaPad 100S review, you will learn why Lenovo has struck gold with its new netbook. This Lenovo laptop is now available for under 200 dollars in US and Asian countries. This Lenovo 100s review will also be accompanied by a video review that will give you a better idea of its looks and features.
First of all, this is not a review unit and I bought it for my personal use. I fell in love with the Lenovo IdeaPad 100s the moment I saw it in person. It comes in three colors, silver, blue and red. The silver and red have black keyboards while the blue one has white keyboard. Since I have sweaty hands, I went for the red one that has black keyboard. Here is our Lenovo 100s youtube review.
Screen: The Lenovo IdeaPad 100s packs 11.6 inch display packing 1366 x 768 HD resolution. It has been given matte coating and has decent viewing angles. It is good enough for doing office work and web browsing but if you are going to show off your photo gallery to the people sitting around you, it would not be the best choice. See the colors do not pop up like your smartphone displays but it definitely wins some points for having anti glare coating. You will be able to work in brightly lit environments without a problem and this will definitely make the mobile warriors very happy.
Keyboard: I am covering keyboard of Lenovo IdeaPad 100s so early in this review because it is the best part of this netbook. I typed all of this Lenovo IdeaPad 100s review on Microsoft Word and I must say despite having shallow key pitch, it is one of the best netbook keyboards out there, even better than the Asus Eee PC 1000HE chiclet keyboard which used to be my favorite – before I saw the 100s of course. I love the fact that it has full size right shift key unlike some of the Asus laptops that used to come with a tiny right shift key that hampered the typing experience. Infact the keyboard of the Lenovo IdeaPad 100s is so good that you can type the entire novel on it.
Trackpad: It is great but could have been better. I hate the fact that it lacks multi touch support so no double finger scrolling. But I like its matte surface and dedicated left and right click buttons – something that is missing in netbooks and mainstream laptops out there.
Battery life: I was able to get 7+ hours of active use from it. I disabled hibernation which is important if you are using a laptop with eMMC storage and kept the laptop in sleep mode when not in use. The wake up times are almost instant like any modern windows 10 tablet. I used Chrome for web browsing and Microsoft Office 2016 for doing my office work.
Performance: The Atom Z3735F packs quad cores and runs at 1.3GHz. Coupled with flash storage, the Intel processor delivered amazing user experience. Windows 10 booted in less than 10 seconds thanks to UEFI boot and flash storage. There is almost no bloat ware onboard and no anti virus apps that are majorly responsible for slowing things down. I installed photoshop CS3 (portable version) and it was good enough for editing pictures taken by my iPhone.
Specs: 11.6 inch display, quad core Atom Z3735f processor, 1366x 768 pixel resolution, 32GB eMMC, 2GB RAM, micro SD card reader, HDMI and two USB 2.0 ports.
Pros of Lenovo IdeaPad 100s: + wonderful keyboard + excellent battery life + compact and very thin design + flash storage
Cons of Lenovo IdeaPad 100s: – no expandable memory – only 2x USB ports – no USB 3.0 port – no VGA
Verdict: Great laptop – easily the best netbook of 2016. Let us hope Lenovo continues to make advancements in this field and keep netbooks alive for many more years to come.