Portable Laptop Review: Lenovo IdeaPad U110

April 2009
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Thursday, April 9th, 2009 @ 10:50 pm | Laptop, Review

I have to say, I love the way this laptop looks. It comes in black or red, with a nice sleek design. It also has the large singular hinge I love. Its design is primarily lightweigh aluminum, which gives it a sturdy metal design without too much weight. You’ll find its 11 inch screen a nice size for most forms of usage, and they keyboard is large enough to be easily usable too. At a price just under 2000 dollars, it’s a little pricey, but a great quality ultra portable laptop. Coming in at 2.4 pounds, it’s a great choice to consider.

One thing you’ll notice is that all components of the keyboard are all in one flat surface – a feature that took a little to get used to. Thankfully the keys go all the way to the edges, which accommodate a slightly larger keyboard. It also has slightly curved keys, which actually help a lot with your typing. These features combine to make a great typing experience – despite a smaller size I had no problems. The touchpad was a little hard to use – it sits very close to the front edge, and the mouse buttons are actually on it. It’s a slight acquired taste, but I think you’ll find it enjoyable. The glossy finish also looks nice, at least until you start typing – it gets smudged very easily. Its quick-launch buttons are also pretty cool – they only light up when you put your fingers near them, plus the design is very pretty.

With this screen size and resolution, for most portable use you will have no issues at all. After a while of using this laptop though you’ll find your eyes being strained, so try not to use this laptop for too many hours on end. If it’s your primary laptop, I suggest some alternative arrangements like hooking it up to an external monitor. On the note of external, I have to bring up what I consider to be this laptop’s biggest shortcoming – it lacks a built -in optical drive. Yes, you heard me right – your DVD or Blu-Ray drive is going to have to be packed in with your luggage when you’re on the go. As for performance you will have no issues running most programs such as word and excel. It has an Intel Core Duo processor plus 2 Gigs of RAM, so I doubt you’ll find much you can’t run. I guess as long as your games support the resolution you won’t have any issues. It also has a built-in webcam, which is ideal for using Skype.

So overall, this is a great quality ultra portable laptop for a respectable price. It certainly is fantastic looking – it almost seems like you should look at it rather than use it. It’s powerful for an ultraportable laptop, and you should have no performance issues. You might have a few issues with screen resolution with games, but that should be the only issue unless you’re running lots of programs at the same time. The only real issue is the lack of a built in optical drive. I suppose it is a concession you have to make for a lightweight yet sturdy design.