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.
Some First Impressions
A comparison to the Gigabyte M912 convertible tablet I reviewed some time back is inevitable. These two products are very similar, except the Lenovo comes powered by Windows 7 out of the box, which is arguably better than the dated Windows XP. But that of course is a machine that is well over a year old. The rest of the specs and performance however are comparable.
Lenovo has done a good job with providing a stylized cover, but like so many other glossy covers, it is very much a fingerprint magnet. I find it interesting that Lenovo went with a “panda” color scheme too, as the top cover is black, but the keyboard are is white. This appears to be more prevalent in Asian markets than in Western ones.
Overall build quality feels quite solid, but I’d be wary of the moving parts involved with the swiveling screen over time. I know that the hinge on a regular laptop can get loose over continued use, so this more complex mechanism can become problematic. When folded into a tablet the two halves don’t seem to completely sit together as well as one would hope either.
Keyboard and Trackpad
As mentioned, the majority of the keyboard is white. Only the top row, consisting of the standard function keys, is black. The spacing and size of the keyboard seems to work reasonably well; it won’t be as comfortable as a true full-size keyboard, but it’s pretty good for a netbook. I also appreciate that they included a full-size shift button on the right.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that the keyboard can feel quite cheap and “clacky” when you use it. The sizing is comfortable, but I would have much preferred a chiclet-style keyboard like what you find with certain Eee PC units.
Worse yet is the remarkably tiny trackpad. There are no dedicated “mouse” buttons for the trackpad, being replaced by tiny red dots in the bottom-right and bottom-left corners. The trackpad is textured and multi-touch, but it’s really too small to use for more than a couple minutes at a time. Since there are no dedicated buttons, for example, doing a click-and-drag or multi-select can be an exercise in frustration.
Using as a Tablet Device
When you twist and flip the display around, it can fold back down flat so that it appears like a slate device. It won’t be nearly as thin as a dedicated tablet like the iPad or Galaxy Tab, but it’s still reasonably compact. Since Windows 7 isn’t exactly finger-friendly, Lenovo has included something it calls NaturalTouch.
This brings up a carousel-like interface and you swipe around to get to photos, web browser, e-book reader, and so forth. There are also a series of quick shortcuts docked along the bottom of the screen. The idea is that this makes the tablet easier to use with just your fingers. At least, that’s how it works in theory.
In practice, this NaturalTouch interface felt sluggish and I ended up using the Lenovo S10-3t more as a netbook than a tablet, which effectively nullifies the primary feature that separates this device from other netbooks.
General Everyday Use and Performance
I went in wanting to like the Lenovo, but I ended up feeling disappointed. The lower 1024×600 resolution leaves something to be desired. The keyboard, while a good size, is nowhere near as nice as what you’d get on something like the Asus Eee PC 1000HE, which is by no means new anymore.
Yes, it’s good that Lenovo has included some notable features like the multi-touch display and embedded webcam (which is to the side of the screen rather than above it), but the final execution feels like this machine is clearly dated. As a netbook, you’re probably better off buying a real notebook. As a tablet, you’re probably better off buying an Android tablet or the iPad.
Don’t get me wrong. The S10-3t is perfectly usable, but there are other products that do it better. Especially when you factor in the price, I can’t really recommend something that is still powered by an N450 processor.
Benchmark: HDTune 2.55
Is the relatively sluggish performance all in my head? To put it to the test, I ran through our usual suite of benchmarks on the Lenovo S10-3t. To start, we put the 250GB hard drive in the Lenovo S10-3t through HDTune 2.55. The data transfer rate ranged from 34.9MB/sec to 54.7MB/sec with most of the test staying about the 50MB/sec range. The access time was clocked in a 19.3ms with a burst rate of 29.7MB/sec. This is generally faster than the 80GB drive on the old MSI Wind, but it’s pretty much on par with more contemporary netbooks. That’s to say, it’s not fast.
While one could ponder putting in a solid state drive ala the new MacBook Air, it would also price this machine right out of netbook territory.
Benchmark: PCMark05 and 3DMark06
As I encountered with several other netbooks that I have tested over the years, the Lenovo S10-3t was not able to complete the full suite of benchmarks from PCMark05. However, it is quite notable that the CPU score is not up to snuff. The N450 only got a CPU score of 1398. The older N280 on the Eee PC 1005HA, on the other hand, was able to get a CPU score of 1559.
Pineview is supposed to be an improvement, but the performance just isn’t there.
On the 3DMark front, the results weren’t any more impressive. As before, I had to remove the Batch Size Tests in order to get a score; if I do not, the netbook freezes and leaves me with a blank screen. After removing those tests, 3DMark computed an overall score of 153 3DMarks.
This is slightly better than some of the other netbooks I have reviewed in the past, but you do have to realize that this is still very much a netbook and will perform as such. I was able to play HD video on it, but I wouldn’t recommend playing much more than Peggle on here.
Battery Life Test
To test the battery life, I ran a 720p HD video on a continuous loop in Windows Media Player. The Wi-Fi radio was left on but the connection was dormant. Both screen brightness and volume level were cranked up to the maximum too. The HD AVI video file was just under an hour in length.
Based on these cirumstances, the included four-cell battery was able to hold up for just under two-and-a-half hours before the computer hibernated on its own. This is with the power setting configured to hibernate when battery level is at 5% or less. This isn’t the best, but playing HD video is a heavier load. Under more casual use, you can probably expect about four hours.
Closing Thoughts
The Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t leaves a lot to be desired and I don’t think this kind of form factor is going to be relevant moving forward. The performance just isn’t up to snuff and I’d be more inclined to buy a 15-inch notebook with a “real” processor than a netbook like this given the price point.
On the tablet front, again, you’re better off with a real tablet with a more tablet-appropriate operating system. It’ll also be much faster and more responsive on dedicated hardware. The NaturalTouch interface tries to give a better tablet experience, but it comes up short. What we’re left with is a product that is neither here nor there. It’s a very expensive way to play minesweeper that’s for sure and that’s the only thing we thought it was good at in terms of touch screen performance.
The IdeaPad S10-3t, as configured, has an MSRP of about $629US, but you can find it for sale at various retailers in the $500US range. Personally, I’d be more inclined to consider the Lenovo Skylight smartbook we saw at CES 2010 than this particular offering. We know you can do better Lenovo.
Pros
- Bright and vibrant display
- Multitouch interface with NaturalTouch software
- Good-sized keyboard and full right shift key
- Included security software package
Cons
- Sluggish overall performance
- Awkward multitouch interface
- Terribly tiny trackpad
- Too expensive given current market alternatives
Overall Rating: 6.0 / 10.0
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