What do you do when you can’t decide between buying a netbook and buying one of these shiny new tablet devices? You may like having a physical keyboard for ease of typing, but you also like touchscreen interfaces for ease of use. Well, the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t is trying to offer the best of both worlds. In a nutshell, the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t takes the S10 netbook platform and throws in a convertible tablet form factor. Can it really live up to its promise of being all things to all people? Let’s find out.
Features at a Glance
There are many people out there who will tell you that netbooks are already obsolete. In an effort to be a little more relevant, the Lenovo S10-3t features a swiveling touchscreen display, allowing the user to collapse it entirely and use it just like a tablet. It’s not the first to do this and it likely will not be the last.
Going through the technical specifications, the exact model being featured in this review came powered with an Intel Pineview N450 1.66GHz (Atom) processor, 1GB RAM, 250GB hard drive, 10.1-inch HD display, Intel GMA 3150, and a 4-cell battery, along with Windows 7 Home Premium. This configuration is called 0651.
Depending on your budget and preferences, there are a few other configurations that you can consider, including faster Atom processors and the like. They all have the same 1-.1-inch SD LED multitouch display with a 1024×600 pixel resolution. Our configuration hits the streets at around $629 US.
Looking Inside the Box
The Lenovo S10-3t convertible tablet netbook comes in a pretty nondescript black and brown cardboard box. Inside, you won’t find anything that’ll really surprise you; if you’ve ever purchased a netbook from any number of other manufacturers, then the inside of this box will look familiar.
Aside for the convertible netbook itself, you get a power supply brick, a power cable, a user guide, and an accessory guide. Some other netbooks come with protective sleeves, but that’s not the case here. I’d recommend you having some sort of sleeve or bag ready when you buy a product like this. The glossy surfaces will surely get swirl scratches from day to day use.
Ports, Jacks, and Inputs
Just like the inside of the box, the ports and jacks available on the Lenovo S10-3t pretty much run par for the netbook course. Putting the twisting hinge aside for a moment, you’ll find the 10/100 LAN port, power port, headphone jack, and microphone jack along the left side.
In the front are an integrated microphone and SD card reader slot. Along the right edge is a hard switch for the Wi-Fi radio, two USB ports, and a VGA video-out port. It would have been nice to have a USB port along the left side of the netbook too, but I find very few netbook offerings do that; you really only find them on real notebooks.