Lenovo's Ion-powered IdeaPad S12 shows HD prowess on video

Lenovo did itself a solid by beating the likes of Acer and ASUS with its Ion-infused IdeaPad S12, and now we're beginning to see a few more details on what performance will be like. We still wish the machine had something a bit more powerful than a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270, but despite the fact that it's hobbling along on an aged CPU, the machine seems to handle 3D gaming and 1080p content with poise. The crew over at Notebooks managed to spend a little quiet time with a pre-production version of the S12, and it even managed to host up a few videos while the machine was kicking out content that would make the typical netbook buckle. Feel free to hit the read link to have a look yourself, and be sure to mind the three American SKUs. Here's a preview: the Ion-powered version (read: the one you want) will run $499.99 and include 1GB of RAM, a 6-cell battery and a 160GB hard drive.

[Via GottaBeMobile]

[NickNick @ May 25th 2009 10:58AM]

sexilicious

[DR House @ May 25th 2009 11:59AM]

Sexy features , Scary Size, look at the third video omg so huge
This is as big as my current Laptop...... , Dual Core laptops 12inch is already available and costs 500$ New with HP/DELL and they are much stronger "However they are heavier and less battery life"

I think if that laptop ,,,, I mean Netbook 10inch only i would have gotten it DAY 1
Give us a 10inch version please

[jon @ May 25th 2009 12:31PM]

Doc,

Dell's cheapest 12" notebook is $1600 and HP's low end AMD 12" dual core starts at $850 after rebates.

Do you ever get tired of talking out of your ass?

[DR House @ May 26th 2009 12:26AM]

I meant 13.3 BITE ME

[zfurie @ May 26th 2009 2:41AM]

Jon's name should be changed to Wilson.

[you @ May 25th 2009 10:59AM]

Wow. For such slim specs, I'm surprised that it can play Call of Duty 4 even at 30 fps.

[voodoo @ May 25th 2009 11:17AM]

Well, if its a 9400M (or equivalent), it should have just enough power to run COD4 at low settings and low res. You're talking around 2000 3Dmark06, so low, but do-able. The demo didn't look super smooth, so i'd say that's about right.

I'd be more interested in the (excellent) HD video capabilities rather than the (fairly basic) gaming abilities.

[DWells55 @ May 26th 2009 5:36AM]

Yeah, smooth 1080p playback is the real selling point here.

[Homeboy @ May 25th 2009 5:44PM]

Wow, only after 3 months and my HP mini 1000 is already an obsolete dinosaur:( That Ion is one hell of a GPU and the fact that it gives a netbook the capabilities to handle COD4 blow me away, especially when non-ion netbooks even struggle to play full youtube videos in HD, let alone SD youtube clips in full screen.

[Mitch @ May 25th 2009 11:12AM]

Ion has nothing to do with youtube or hulu because flash isn't hardware accelerated automatically.

[MrAlexander006 @ May 25th 2009 11:29AM]

When I use flash to watch Hulu, mine was hardware accelerated by default... At least, that little box was clicked?

[Phil @ May 25th 2009 11:46AM]

I have no problem playing fullscreen SD youtube videos on my netbook (Eeepc 901). Infact I have no problem playing any SD movie of any source in full screen. Occasionally at high bitrates it can get a bit jerky, but a quick button press allows instant CPU overclocking to 1.8Ghz and this instantly sorts out any problems...

[r3loaded @ May 25th 2009 11:02AM]

Freakin' finally! Now if Intel released an Atom that had 64-bit support, I'd be sold.

[Vince @ May 25th 2009 11:08AM]

I really don't care about this, 'its 12" so it's not a netbook' argument.

It's cheap, its Ion, and it will soon be mine.

[David @ May 26th 2009 2:13AM]

Everything Adobe has become synonymous with BLOAT.

Fix your stuff Adobe.

[Mitch @ May 25th 2009 11:11AM]

Not worth it if it can't play hulu and youtube content....more so the hulu than youtube.

[AlexNC @ May 25th 2009 12:04PM]

Amen ... I wish this fault highlighted more by Engadget. The Atom processor is a piece of crap, but none of the blogs are willing to go on record calling this out. They need to start guilting these manufacturers into including a processor that can handle HD flash.

[Major4Play @ May 25th 2009 1:02PM]

I'm sure it would be easier if this shit just got thrown at Adobe's door, Silverlight excellerates video through GPU why can't Flash ? They must be rolling in licencing money over at Adobe there really is no excuse !

[Marcus @ May 25th 2009 1:07PM]

It's flash that has to be replaced by something functional. Honestly, it really sucks ass.

[jaecob @ May 25th 2009 4:12PM]

The flash based video player is a CPU hog. Use a different player (like mplayer) and you will get full framerate playback with near 0% CPU utilization. Stop blaming the ATOM for your lack of competence to play videos.

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/24999

[tekd @ May 26th 2009 1:47AM]

@jaecob
That script doesn't even support Youtube HD, and it runs with a slew of errors in windows, with C++ runtime errors and all sorts of problems (just read the discussions at your own link).

The real solution is to get Adobe to fix their stupid flash plugin so it isn't a pile of CPU hogging poo.

[M. @ May 25th 2009 11:12AM]

now if only some OEM would pair a Core2Duo with that Ion GPU + 12 inch display and sell it for less than 699 I would be set for my ultraportable needs.

[jon @ May 25th 2009 11:26AM]

Too bad battery life would be about half an hour, even with a 6 cell.

[Nick @ May 25th 2009 11:14AM]

Why is older ACER playing a video at over 100mbps while the "ION" playing the 40mbps video... hardly a fair comparison? Am i missing something?

[Jeffrey @ May 25th 2009 12:44PM]

My thoughts exactly. He even said they were both running at 40 Mbps. I smell shenanigans.

[edscot @ May 25th 2009 9:09PM]

Theyre actually both running at ~ 40MBPS if you notice the first time it zooms in on the acer it says 40MBPS then the video ends and it jumps up to 117 or so.

Clearly you're reading too much into it.

[Chris @ May 26th 2009 8:48PM]

their are parts of the video that jump to 120mb thats where you see the jumps to about 50% on the ion platform even but its still fast enough on the ion to keep it silky smooth

[r3loaded @ May 25th 2009 11:20AM]

Just read the article, more interesting is the fact that Lenovo will also be pairing the Ion with the VIA Nano cpu in some S12 SKUs. So we'll finally have a netbook that does 64-bit, out-of-order execution and HD graphics :)

[jon @ May 25th 2009 11:41AM]

Not in the us.

[Ian @ May 25th 2009 1:45PM]

Oh good, a decent CPU. :) I think I'd prefer a faster Intel Atom, but having the option for a VIA Nano would be great, even if I had to have it delivered.

[Phil @ May 25th 2009 11:34AM]

Can't seem to get too excited about this myself. The screen/resolution can only show 720p anyway so for portable video watching it would be no better than a standard Atom netbook. Maybe for gaming........but then i'm not into really into PC gaming. We really need more ION based set top boxes/small form factor PC's. Couple this with XBMC and you have a very cheap and powererful mediacentre.

[Lando Calrissian @ May 25th 2009 11:37AM]

Add a TrackPoint and this will be the bestest netbook evar!

[Zane @ May 26th 2009 1:29AM]

Amen to that!

[miscz @ May 25th 2009 11:47AM]

30 fps is too low. You get 50 fps while staring at the door from 20cm away and 10 fps during regular action. There have been some benchmarks of Ion platform in nettops and while it's ok for hardware video decoding it fails badly in games. Wake me up when there are at least dual core Atoms in netbooks because this CPU is just old and trying to sell it as anything other than power efficient will fail.

[advil @ May 25th 2009 12:10PM]

I want this -- with a 10" screen.
... and while I'm making requests, give me a trackpoint or multi-touch trackpad. Please.

[Buis @ May 25th 2009 12:34PM]

Asus N10J. It's a 9300M, instead of a 9400, but the only difference is a few Hz. It's about as expensive, but that gets you an external optical drive and a more "mature" look. Plus, it's available now.

[E C S Sucks @ May 25th 2009 12:27PM]

The two videos were are two different bitrates. The geforce at 40Mbps and the other at 117 Mbps. Was that cheating or what?

[HoWai Ng @ May 25th 2009 12:31PM]

Ion option+6cells would probably = >$800

[jon @ May 25th 2009 12:35PM]

Read the article, Ion+6 cell= $499.99

3 cells aren't even an option in the US, looks like neither is the eventual Via chip.

[Eddie N @ May 25th 2009 12:49PM]

There goes to whole concept of a netbook... :(

[Major4Play @ May 25th 2009 1:05PM]

In 5D Crysis runs iKurt

[htd @ May 25th 2009 1:08PM]

compaq 2710p with U7700 was $600+tax from staples, but I still like this s12 a lot better.

[Wwhat @ May 25th 2009 1:22PM]

Did anybody ever test one of those Atom based portables with CoreAVC's codec to handle the HD? CoreAVC is pretty well coded and can do wonders on old computers as many windows users will agree I think.
I sound like a paid ad, excuses for that, it's just a fact that some codecs are ass and some are good and for instance early quicktime's HD efforts could not play HD smooth on a freaking 25+GHz computer whereas CorceAVC's codec manages on my old single-core 2GHz one.

[Chris Paris @ May 25th 2009 1:37PM]

Here here. Wish more folks would think a bit more about cleaning up code as a way to improve performance. It will never match a hardware solution, but it's DEFINITELY a way to help improve performance. A lot of cycles are being wasted on crap code and bad codecs, and you never hear anyone talk about it. Like the old mantra "throw money at the problem", most writers just emphasize throwing more processor speed or RAM at a problem and ignore the benefits of smart programming.

[pizzaman @ May 25th 2009 1:24PM]

I think it can run the Matrix pretty well, yes, the Ion does that.

[Thoth @ May 25th 2009 2:44PM]

Come on, give it a cheap Core2 Duo and a 128 GB SSD and I'll gladly pay another 300$ !

[Lazarpandar @ May 25th 2009 9:24PM]

Those two things together are worth way more than 300$

[Thoth @ May 26th 2009 4:37PM]

Make it +400$ but it will still be a way under 1k machine with good graphics, a powerful CPU and a kick ass drive in the SSD for speed and low consumption.

[Me4u2 @ May 25th 2009 3:21PM]

Pc guys: Too bad the fanbois are missing out on this great discussion...

Apple fanbois: Oh damn, it's all Jobs fault, he said netbooks, were cheap, underpowered, piece of plastic crap... Now see what am missing *sniff sniff*... Am dumping my overpriced, underpowered macbook air and switching over to a PC. I've got too much cum in my mouth already, I can't keep sucking his nuts...

[jed @ May 25th 2009 4:28PM]

I think the sweet spot for these netbooks will be when the atom 2.0ghz dual is running in them, with a normal hard drive, the 9400m, and 2gb ram. It will be really fun to have lan parties on airplanes.