Introduction and design.
For the most part, Chromebooks are just terminals that access the internet and its limitless content. Since broadband distribution has reached a point where most people can access the internet at respectable speeds anywhere, a computer that lives on the web makes sense.
Stripping away all the bells and whistles and leaving only the essentials to access the great wide web makes owning one affordable. With the $180 (about £120, AU$250) Lenovo 100S Chromebook, that affordability reaches new levels, but with the low price comes a ding in performance.
Design
The 11.6-inch Lenovo 100S Chromebook brings the barest of essentials to the laptop experience. The chiclet-keyboard isn't backlit, and the corresponding numbers, letters and symbols are adhered to, rather than printed on, the keys. The bezel around the 11.6-inch screen is surprisingly large, especially given the recent laptop trend of the amazing, shrinking bezel.
If anything, the Lenovo 100S looks like it's from a different era entirely, resembling a high-end 2010 netbook. However, it makes up for its lack of visual pizazz with an aluminum palm rest, and the solid feel of metal under my wrists makes a big difference in keeping the 100S from feeling like a cheap piece of plastic.
There's nothing offensive about the laptop's design, but there's also nothing truly outstanding, either. Lenovo's Chromebook just sort of exists, navigating you through the web without drawing your ire with shortcomings in the hardware. The one exception is the shiny, beveled edge around the trackpad, which really pops when the light catches it.
Other than the silvery bevel, the Lenovo has no eye-catching design features to speak of. This puts it way behind the Asus Chromebook Flip, which somehow is made with a fully aluminum body and flips into a tablet.
Small time thrills
While the bezel around the screen is substantial, the display panel itself is adequately sized. I was worried the 11.6-inch screen would be too small to be useful, but the 1,366 x 768 resolution is just right and everything scaled well to the small screen. Color reproduction is a bit on the muddy side, as everything on the screen looks somewhat dull.
The matte-finish screen does a fine job of avoiding reflections, which makes it a decent machine to use outside, particularly on an overcast day. The screen brightness can be adjusted to a point where it's almost too bright to see, which helps it compensate for sunny days.
For a laptop aimed at students and teachers, the Lenovo 100S sure does pick up stains. The finish on the aluminum palm rest picks up fingerprints and marks from my hands entirely too easily, and you can see clearly where I've placed my fingers any time I've closed or carried the laptop. The surface doesn't easily wipe clean with the corner of a t-shirt either, and instead requires a bit of electronics cleaner and a microfiber cloth.
Specifications and performance
The Lenovo 100S Chromebook weighs 2.6 pounds (1.18kg) putting it close to the Acer Chromebook C740's 2.91 pounds (1.32kg) but way above the Asus Chromebook Flip's 1.96 pounds (0.88kg). The Lenovo is light enough to carry around without being bothersome, and all three are light enough that comparative differences in weight would be difficult to discern.
The 100S measures 11.81 x 8.23 x 0.78 inches (299 x 209 x 19.8 mm).This makes it just a hair thinner than the 0.79-inches (20mm) thick C740, but loses out against the Asus Flip, which measures a mere 0.60-inches (15.24mm) thick. Still, at such small dimensions there's really no practical difference between thicknesses when it comes to portability or determining value.
Here is the configuration for the Lenovo 100S Chromebook sent to techradar for review:
Spec Sheet
- CPU: 2.16GHz Intel Celeron Processor N2840 (dual core, 1MB Cache, up to 2.58GHz with Turbo Boost)
- Graphics: Intel HD Graphics
- RAM: 2 GB
- Screen: 11.6-inch, 1366 x 768 matte display
- Storage: 16 GB eMMC Flash
- Ports: 1 x USB 2.0, 1 x USB 3.0, headphone/mic combo jack, 4-in-1 Combo Card Reader, HDMI
- Connectivity: 802.11 a/c Wi-FI, Bluetooth 4.0
- Camera: 1MP 720p front camera, dual digital microphone
- Weight: 2.6 pounds (1.18kg)
- Size: 11.81 inches x 8.23 inches x 0.78 inches (299 x 209 x 19.8 mm) (W x D x H)
The 100S comes with an additional 100GB of cloud storage on Google Drive, free for two years. That's great, because 16GB of local storage is practically worthless if you plan on loading it up with music or video for on-the-go watching.
Inside the laptop there's a dual-core Intel Celeron Processor N2840 running at 2.16GHz, which puts it behind the Asus' quad-core 1.8GHz Rockchip 3288-C but ahead of the Acer's' dual-core 1.5GHz Intel Celeron 3205U. However, the 4GB of RAM on the Acer offsets the 2GB of memory on both the Lenovo and the Asus.
Still, for a sub $200 laptop, there's not a lot to complain about. Retailing for around $180, it works just fine for most internet-related tasks, and Google has set up Chrome OS to work adequately even when it's not grabbing wireless internet signals. The speakers aren't great, but they're much louder than you might expect from such a small machine, and it feels sturdy enough to survive a tumble or two.
Unfortunately, it doesn't look like the United Kingdom or Australia will be getting the Lenovo 100S Chromebook anytime soon. However, if it should come to retail abroad it would cost approximately about £120, or AU$250.
Performance
I'm always a little apprehensive using smaller computers, because I tend to leave a dozen or more tabs running at any given time. If I behave myself, I'll stick to half that amount, and I'm glad to say that with five or six tabs open and switched between frequently, I never once ran into any problems with the 100S Chromebook. The little machine easily kept up with my obsessive Twitter posting and Facebook checks, and I was able to work in Google Docs and read a few Feedly tabs.
As I started opening more and more tabs, it seemed as though the Chromebook was taking each new webpage in stride. One nice thing about the Lenovo 100S is that it never became uncomfortably warm to the touch, even with computationally heavy processes, like streaming from Amazon while Ajax-heavy websites ran in open tabs, running in the browser. I didn't notice any issues having 12 tabs open while watching a movie on Amazon Prime.
The real problem came when I would leave a bunch of tabs open for an extended period of time. Returning to a Facebook tab or any other constantly refreshed website after an absence would render the tab useless. I would have to close out of the tab and try again. Chrome told me it ran out of memory in an apologetic message. If you plan to have a ton of memory-hungry pages running simultaneously, the Lenovo 100S won't be up to the task.
Here's how the Lenovo 100S Chromebook performed in our suite of benchmark tests:
- Octane: 8,938
- Mozilla Kraken: 3,704
The Lenovo beat out the Flip in the Octane benchmark test, but fell well short of the C740's score of 13,700. However, the 100S Chromebook's place was swapped in the Mozilla Kraken test, in which the C740 lagged behind with a score of 2,137 while the Flip came in at 5,447. The 100S seems perfectly capable, but at a more attractive price-point than its competitors.
Battery life on the 100S came pretty close to the advertised 8 hours, with 7 hours and 35 minutes of continuous viewings of Guardians of the Galaxy in HD. It's really a pleasure to be able to tote a laptop around for an entire day on a single charge, as I am wont to do, and not have to worry about dashing to the charger. The battery life lasts effectively for an entire day, so it almost feels like having a cellphone. Before bed, I would plug the Lenovo in and let it simmer overnight.
The speaker on the Lenovo 100S is also surprisingly loud. The quality leaves something to be desired, but it's a step above the quality of a tinny, built-in phone speaker and really sounds better than such a cheap and compact laptop has any right to. While watching videos in my living room surrounded by my kids and dogs and their associated sounds, I actually had to turn the volume down a few notches at certain points.
Verdict
A Chromebook has a natural set of limitations that need to be considered, but the Lenovo 100S is priced low but doesn't come off as cheap. It has a solid feel, and the aluminum palm rest gives the illusion of a much higher quality machine. Still, as much as it doesn't feel cheap, it doesn't feel like a premium product, either.
We liked
Performance on the small machine is perfectly adequate for just about every task a Chromebook needs to do. The keyboard has a good feel and the tiny bezel around the trackpad gives it a nice shiny break up of the otherwise all-black shell.
We didn't like
Stains are a big problem. Anyplace your hand touches gets marked, and if a child will be using the Lenovo 100S, look forward to a lot of messy fingerprints. The stickers that identify the keys on the keyboard seem like they won't stand up to extended use. Having to close and restart tabs is a pain, but that shouldn't crop up unless you're a messy browser user.
Final verdict
The Lenovo 100S Chromebook is far from a perfect machine, but it does everything you would expect from a $180 laptop. In fact, strictly on price alone, the machine does more than it should. Given that the price is so low, you should consider buying one or two for your kids to kick around the house.
The screen and speakers provide an experience well suited for watching pre-loaded movies on the road, and the long battery life means movie after movie, or song after song, can be enjoyed away from an outlet. The matte finish screen even holds its own outside, making this laptop a great choice for anyone looking to use it in a myriad of locations.
Minor performance complaints aside, the Lenovo 100S is a competent, wholly adequate machine. It won't blow you away with its features, but neither will it disappoint by being severely underpowered or feeling like a child's plaything. For less than the price of a New Nintendo 3DS XL, you can have a laptop that does everything you would probably use a Chromebook for, anyway.
from TechRadar: Technology reviews http://ift.tt/1PxV8wf
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