IdeaPad U350 - super popular 'mobile'

Lenovo IdeaPad U350 is more capable of executing than a netbook, but it is more affordable than expensive ultraportables .

The IdeaPad U350 weighs about the same as netbooks, weighs less than 1.3 kg, but the price is slightly higher, about 850 USD. It offers ample workspace with a large screen and better performance than netbooks. However, battery life is only half that of 13-inch ultraportables.

IdeaPad U350 13.1-inch screen. Photos: iTechnews .

IdeaPad U350 is designed to be similar to the popular "ultra-portable" MSI X340. The body is less than 3 cm, the thinnest is 19.8 mm, and the weight is about 1.63 kg with battery. Black plastic shell is quite eye-catching thanks to interlocking rhombus motifs and stylized diagonal lines. This design of Lenovo is not too beautiful but still emphasizes the slim body, the cover is beautiful and firm without fingerprint printing when in use.

The black keyboard covers the palm rest area and shiny polished aluminum touch pad. IdeaPad U350 uses a standard-sized keyboard with comfortable buttons but lacks a separate multimedia control key. When tested, the center key is slightly bouncing on the outside. The touch pad is larger than the standard size of ultraportables, with 83 x 51 mm (3.25 x 2 inches) in length and width respectively. This is a new generation touch pad with gesture support feature of two fingers to zoom in, zoom out and rotate photos with some other applications.

Black shell with interwoven motifs. Photo: Laptop-advices .

In the price of 800 USD, besides the new touch pad, the U350 also possesses many advanced features. Spacious storage space with 320 GB HDD, equipped with shockproof technology and special data protection, when the machine falls or bumps hard, the read / write heads on the hard drive will be kept still. ensure data safety. In addition, the device also has a LED backlight screen with a light sensor that automatically adjusts the screen brightness when the light outside the environment changes. Add HDMI port besides basic communication and connection ports including VGA, LAN, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, 3 USB ports, SD / MMC memory card reader, Micro / Headphone jack. But because of the compact design, there is no extra space for ExpressCard expansion card slots. In addition, U350 does not have an integrated optical drive, users will have to equip themselves with an external optical drive via USB if required.

13.3-inch mirror screen with U350 LED backlight gives clear, vibrant colors. Not only does it show true color when running applications based on Windows operating system or viewing digital photos, when watching movies, it is also great, the image is very natural in color thanks to the good color mixing ability of the screen background. . The resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels is very reasonable, not only for beautiful movies, display characters are big enough, very clear. The entertainment feature of the U350 is enhanced with the Dolby Sound Room dual bass amplifier system.

The 1.3 Megapixel webcam is a bit dimmed and only works well in bright environments. Lenovo also preinstalled on the utility EasyCapture with Webcam to take photos, and users can choose many features of this software with photos like adding frames, cartoon characters or photo effects other photo.

IdeaPad U350 uses Intel Pentium SU2700 processor. Photo: Laptoping .

IdeaPad U350 is equipped with Intel Pentium SU2700 power-saving processor, 3 GB RAM. If you choose 2 GB RAM, the price is reduced by 100 USD. The Intel Pentium SU2700 1.3 GHz processor is much more powerful than the Intel Atom models on netbooks, but is not comparable to the popular Intel Core 2 Duo chip in current laptops. The U350 scored 1,512 points in the test PCMark Vantage evaluated the system performance. This score is only half of the test results in ultraportable laptops priced at around $ 2,000, but equivalent to two "rivals" HP Pavilion dv2 (1,566) and MSI X340 (1,628) in the machine segment. "popular" super mobile.

System performance evaluation table.

Similarly, Cinebench 10 rated CPU processing power with 1,356 points, while HP Pavilion dv2 scored 1,406 points and slightly better than MSI X340 (1,514 points). This level is only half the average of ultraportables in general. However, the results are double that of netbook test results.

Evaluate CPU processor power.

In terms of implementing multimedia processing, the U350 proved quite sluggish when it took 22 minutes to convert the specified video file format with Windows Media Encoder 9 software, 5 minutes slower than the average. in netbooks, and also slower than HP dv2 (23 minutes) and MSI X340 (19 minutes). The processing of audio files is better, the U350 takes 9 minutes and 44 seconds to complete the test of converting music formats with iTunes, slower than HP dv2 (8 minutes 52 seconds) and MSI X340 (8 minutes 51 seconds). ). But this result shows the U350's position in the segment between the netbook and the ultra-high-end laptop.

Assessment of graphics capabilities.

Graphics capabilities with Intel GMA X4500 integrated card are just enough for the Aero effects of Windows Vista operating system and some "lightweight" 3D games. Quite surprisingly, the U350 scored 670 points in the 3DMark06 test, not too far from the 888-point average of the ultraportable segment.

The U350 uses a 4-cell battery, reducing weight, but can still watch videos continuously for 2 hours and 26 minutes, far behind an average of 4 hours on netbooks.

In Vietnam, the version uses SU2700 1.3 GHz chip, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB HDD, Intel GMA 4500MHD VGA cost about 850 USD.

Advantages
- Affordable
- Slim and light
- Beautiful design
- Safe hard drive protection technology
- Brightly colored LED background screen

Defect
- Ignore the optical drive
- Average performance
- No separate multimedia keys
- Short battery life.