IdeapadU300s
Latest
Lenovo quietly outs the IdeaPad U300e, a $799 Ultrabook with a hybrid hard drive
We thought we'd seen everything Lenovo had to show here at CES. We thought wrong. In a tour of the company's showroom / trailer today, we spotted that gray laptop up there, hiding amid the X1 Hybrid, T430u Ultrabook and S200 netbook. That, friends, is the IdeaPad U300e, a cheaper, lesser-specced version of the U300s we reviewed last fall. Check our gallery below: it has the same aluminum chassis, comfortable keyboard and sprawling trackpad, though the ports appear to have played musical chairs. The only differences? For one, we're seeing the U300e (top, above the U300s) adds an Ethernet jack, something the U300s is missing. More importantly, though, the U300e costs $799, not $1,200, and instead of an SSD it sports a hybrid drive pairing a 500GB HDD with 32GB of flash storage -- essentially, the same setup you'll find in the $800 Acer Aspire S3. We're also told it'll run "next-generation" Intel processors, though Lenovo's stopping short of calling it Ivy Bridge, which Intel has yet to reveal. Not a bad deal, though we might still prefer the new U310, which has the all-important SD slot the U300s was missing, but still costs a hundred bucks less than this here U300e. Disagree with us? The U300e is expected to go on sale this month.
Lenovo IdeaPad U300s ready for online pre-order, price puts on some winter weight
Lenovo's been keeping itself busy in the battle of the Ultrabooks, and now its 13-inch IdeaPad U300s is up for pre-order. Unfortunately, since our review, the price tag looks to have been burdened by an extra $200 so that it's now just under $1,300 -- and that includes a special online discount. With the likes of the MacBook Air and ASUS' Zenbook UX31 jostling for your skinny laptop affections at lower entry-level prices, that extra chunk of change could make the U300s' shortcomings -- like the lack of an SD slot -- even more of an issue. If you're willing to overlook those and hold on until the December 19 shipping date, you can stake your claim to an IdeaPad at the pre-order link below. [Thanks Jay] Update: We're seeing Lenovo has made changes to the product page, with only the top-end U300s appearing on the site at the moment. Having covered Lenovo for years, we know the company has a habit of removing models that have sold out, and re-listing them when more are available, so we wouldn't be surprised if that lower-end model surfaces again in the near future.
Engadget's holiday gift guide 2011: laptops
Welcome to the Engadget Holiday Gift Guide! We're well aware of the heartbreaking difficulties surrounding the seasonal shopping experience, so we're here to help you sort out this year's tech treasures. Below is today's bevy of curated picks, and you can head back to the Gift Guide hub to see the rest of the product guides as they're added throughout the holiday season. Let's get this out of the way: a laptop is an intimate gift. Even if you were to get away with paying just $400, it's a lot to spend on even your spouse (ten years is the netbook anniversary, right?). Not to mention, your lucky giftee will be spending more time with it, perhaps, than they do their friends, families and pets. At the same time, the selection is nothing if not overwhelming, and if you were to make a spreadsheet tallying prices and specs, you'd notice an uncomfortable similarity across different brands. So, we rounded up some of the best we've seen -- everything from all-purpose notebooks to Ultrabooks to high-end dream machines. If you're thinking of pulling the trigger, hop past the break for a few ideas and the (very brief) low-down on the trade-offs you'll be making.
Lenovo IdeaPad U300s review
Review enough Ultrabooks and you'll start to wrestle with this idea of value. We've seen cheap ones that don't perform well and expensive ones that do. Things get really dicey when you throw in machines that cost a bit less, look good and perform well, but are nonetheless flawed in some key way -- like having a sticky keyboard or a trackpad with a mind of its own.For more than a week now we've been testing the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s and, at the risk of spoiling this review altogether, it's made it even tougher for us to stack up one imperfect Ultrabook against another. What to do with a well-made, speed demon of a machine that boots in less than 20 seconds but starts at $1,095 without an SD slot, high-res display or backlit keyboard? Are the U300s' stately looks, brisk performance and sound ergonomics enough to make up for a handful of absent features? Find the answers to that and more in our full review after the break.%Gallery-138526%
Lenovo's IdeaPad U300S flaunts its trim frame at Computex
So-called Ultrabooks were all the rage at Computex 2011, and ASUS, LG and Compal weren't the only ones to stake a claim -- this Lenovo IdeaPad U300S is another contender in the ultra-thin, sub-$1,000 notebook game. Though we hear that Lenovo wasn't disclosing exact specs or availability at the show, the company's reportedly upgraded the slick IdeaPad U260 design with Sandy Bridge chips and a 13.3-inch screen, and put the already-trim unibody laptop on a diet to attain supermodel measurements. Here's hoping the engineers also improved that three-hour battery life too, eh? [Thanks, Sam]
