Lenovo IdeaPad U150

The Lenovo IdeaPad U150 is an 11-inch notebook featuring the latest Intel CULV processors for extreme battery life combined with HDMI output for mobile entertainment. This attractive netbook alternative packs enough performance for everyday tasks yet is small enough to be your constant companion PC. Should you spend your next $750 on this impressive little laptop? Keep reading to find out.

BUY the IdeaPad U150 Laptop Computer - 690968U - Red - Intel Pentium- Dual-Core SU4100

LENOVO   $649.00

see all pricing for the IdeaPad U150 Laptop Computer - 690968U - Red - Intel Pentium- Dual-Core SU4100

Our Lenovo IdeaPad U150 Specifications:

• Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• Intel Core 2 Duo SU7300 Processor (1.30GHz, 800MHz FSB, 3MB L2 cache)
• 4GB DDR3 SDRAM (1066MHz)
• 320GB 5400 rpm SATA HDD
• 11.6-inch diagonal WXGA (glossy, 1366x768)
• Intel X4500M integrated graphics
• Intel 5100AGN, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR
• Dimensions: (LxWxH) 11.4 x 7.5 x 0.5-1.35 inches
• Weight: 2.97 lbs. (not including weight of AC adapter)
• 6-cell 57Wh battery
• One-year standard warranty
• MSRP: $749 (configurations starting at $649 at Lenovo.com)

Build and Design
Lenovo is best known for the ThinkPad line of business notebooks that the company inherited from IBM, but the new IdeaPad line of consumer-oriented laptops has managed to generate some buzz thanks to unique designs and a modest price. The Lenovo IdeaPad U150 continues that trend by offering an attractive 11-inch notebook that rivals the Dell Inspiron 11z and the HP Mini 311. Like most 11-inch notebooks currently on the market, the U150 walks the fine line between a full-featured notebook PC and an Intel Atom-based netbook. The U150 is larger and more powerful than the typical $400 netbook, but lacks the impressive features and size of a standard laptop with a high-end Core 2 Duo processor in the $650-$900 price range. That said, the U150 certainly offers an attractive design with a combination of matte black, glossy black, and glossy silver plastics.


The lid of the U150 features the same cross-weave texture imprint seen on the larger IdeaPad U350 and it's a nice alternative to the glossy lids seen on most 11-inch notebooks. Build quality is acceptable thanks to a solid bottom half of the chassis, but the plastic screen lid with thin metal texture panel and plastic palmrests suffer from a bit more flex than we like to see in notebooks that cost more than $600. Granted, most consumers probably won't notice the flex in the plastic exterior unless they apply significant pressure to the palmrests or the screen, but 11-inch notebooks are usually carried inside backpacks with heavy school books ... so we'd like the U150 to be a bit more solid. On the other hand, the textured matte lid (again, a combination of plastic and thin metal) not only looks nice, but hides day-to-day abuse by making scratches blend in with the imprinted pattern. It also does a very good job at hiding smudges and fingerprints compared to laptops with glossy plastic exteriors. The IdeaPad U150 will probably hold up quite well to typical user abuse ... but you certainly don't want to try standing on this laptop.

People who like to upgrade their laptops with aftermarket parts (extra RAM, a new hard drive or SSD, or a new wireless card) will find the U150 is extremely easy to upgrade. One panel provides access to the hard drive and RAM while a second panel gives you access to the wireless card and mini PCI-E card slot. We couldn't find any explicit "warranty void if removed" stickers inside the notebook, but there were some Lenovo-branded stickers covering the edges of the RAM, Wi-Fi card, and heatsink screws which may be used to indicate tampering.
Screen and Speakers
The 11.6" screen on the U150 is average, providing decent color and contrast but suffering from noticeably shallow viewing angles. Most thin-and-light notebooks come with low-quality TN display panels, but this display produces somewhat "pastel" colors using our test image. For standard activities like browsing the web or typing documents you don't really notice the color shift, but when viewing pictures or watching a dark movie the softer colors are a bit distracting. Vertical viewing angles are good until about 10 degrees forward or back when colors start to show visible shift. Horizontal viewing angles are a little better as colors remain essentially unchanged except at very steep angles. The screen backlight works very well under bright office lights, but the screen isn't quite powerful enough to overcome reflections off the glossy screen outdoors under direct sunlight.

The built-in stereo speakers are fine for listening to streaming radio or the occasional TV show, but lack much bass. Since the speakers are located at the bottom front edge of the notebook the audio output tends to sound muffled when you use the notebook as a "laptop." However, if the U150 is resting on a desk then the sound bounces up off the surface of the desk and toward the user. Still, headphones are a much better option to really enjoy music and movies from this notebook thanks to the weak bass and midrange from the built-in speakers. Another alternative is using the HDMI-out to pass digital audio to a home theater system.

Keyboard and Touchpad
The nearly full-size keyboard is great for typing and is about as good as you can expect on a notebook with an 11-inch chassis. The space bar is a little small and the tilde key has been shrunk to fit, but overall the keys feel like they are the size they should be. The editors in our office are evenly split between those of us who prefer the "Chiclet-style" keyboards that provide additional space between the keys and traditional keyboards like this one that offer larger keys. Honestly, keyboard preference is largely a matter of personal taste, so keep in mind that there are 11-inch notebooks with traditional keyboards and notebooks with Chiclet/island keys. The keyboard itself is quite firm and free of any flex even under heavy typing pressure. Each key emits a soft "click-clack" when pressed and isn't too disruptive for classroom typing. Key wiggle or travel is minimal and each key top is solidly attached to the scissor mechanism below. In short, the keyboard on the U150 is one of the nicer ones we've seen on an 11-inch notebook.


The IdeaPad U150 offers a reasonably large Synaptics touchpad and it's one of the nicer touchpads we've seen on an 11-inch notebook. The plastic surface texture is mildly rough and provides good traction without making it difficult to slide your finger across the surface. Speed and accuracy are great with the default settings and we didn't notice any cursor lag in our tests. Refresh rate of the touchpad surface is very good and prevents any "stutter" like what we've recently seen on a few Synaptics touchpads. The acceleration on each axis is adequately matched and helps guarantee that cursor movement on the screen matches your finger movement on the touchpad (unlike the touchpad on the Dell Inspiron 11z). The touchpad buttons are fantastic thanks to a perfectly deep, springy action with quiet "clicks" when pressed.
Ports and Features
Port selection is surprisingly good on the IdeaPad U150. You get VGA and HDMI-out, gigabit LAN, audio in/out, and an SDHC card slot, and three USB ports (two standard ports and one combo USB/eSATA). The eSATA port allows you to use much faster external hard drives with this notebook, and we're glad that Lenovo used a combo USB/eSATA port for those customers who need USB and don't use eSATA.
The front-mounted SDHC-slot is spring loaded, and unlike the card slot on the larger U350, this one allows the card to sit flush in the slot. When you fully insert a standard SDHC card into the slot it doesn't stick out. Don't expect to see a built-in optical drive in this notebook, so if you plan on reinstalling the OS or playing DVDs you will need to pick up an external USB optical drive. Multimedia keys are limited to a mute button and a direct access button to the Lenovo "OneKey" recovery software suite used for creating a system backup or recovering from a system crash.
Performance and Benchmarks
System performance with the Intel SU7300 CULV processor is quite reasonable for most daily tasks such as web browsing, checking email, editing documents in Microsoft Office, or even basic photo editing. That said, we would have liked to see Lenovo overclock the SU7300 processor to 1.73GHz the same way ASUS and Alienware have done with some of their recent notebooks. Most programs take noticeably longer to load or access information compared to faster Core 2 Duo processors, but the SU7300 does offer the benefit of greater battery life compared to more powerful CPUs. Our test configuration comes with 4GB of memory and a reasonably fast 320GB hard drive, so this laptop certainly isn't as sluggish as most Intel Atom-based netbooks and packs enough performance for average PC users.
HD video playback works reasonably well thanks to the Intel X4500 integrated graphics, and the HDMI port lets you connect this notebook to your HDTV. That said, the U150 does suffer from some lag when we tried watching HD video while multitasking with a web browser and Microsoft Office. As previously stated, if this system included an overclocked version of the SU7300 dual-core processor then the lag might not have been an issue.
Having said all that, here is a quick look at the synthetic benchmarks so you can see how the IdeaPad U150 performs compared to other notebooks.
Wprime processor comparison results (lower scores mean better performance):

PCMark05 measures overall system performance (higher scores mean better performance):

3DMark06 measures overall graphics performance for gaming (higher scores mean better performance):

HDTune storage drive performance test:


Heat and Noise
While most of the external surfaces of the IdeaPad U150 stayed within normal ranges, we did notice one hot spot next to the system RAM on our review unit. While the temperature wasn't horribly uncomfortable during periods of short use, the bottom of the notebook might get a little too hot for some users if you keep it on your lap for more than an hour at a time. Noise levels were about average for a computer of this size, but the fan might get on your nerves if you are used to a completely silent notebook. The U150 tends to keep its fan running all the time, either to keep case temperatures low or to keep the processor under a certain temperature range. Fan noise was only a little louder than the noise level of a hard drive, but if you have really good hearing it sounds like a distant hair dryer running in the background.

Battery Life
Battery life with the 6-cell battery and the SU7300 is quite good. In our test with the screen brightness set to 70%, Windows 7 set to the "balanced" power profile, and wireless active the system stayed on for 5 hours and 22 minutes before going into standby mode. Power consumption during this test floated between 9 and 10 watts. You can probably get more than six hours of battery life from this notebook if you lower the screen brightness to 30% or less and disable wireless when you're not online.

BUY the IdeaPad U150 Laptop Computer - 690968U - Red - Intel Pentium- Dual-Core SU4100

LENOVO   $649.00

see all pricing for the IdeaPad U150 Laptop Computer - 690968U - Red - Intel Pentium- Dual-Core SU4100

Conclusion
The Lenovo IdeaPad U150 offers a terrific balance of portability and value combined with enough performance to satisfy most consumers. Compared to similar 11-inch ultraportables like the Dell Inspiron 11z, the U150 delivers a better keyboard and touchpad for a modest increase in price. On the other hand, the IdeaPad U150 looks a little underpowered and expensive compared to the new Alienware M11x, which offers superior graphics horsepower, a backlit keyboard, the addition of DisplayPort, and better build quality for roughly the same price.
Bottom line: If you need a basic netbook alternative with HDMI and eSATA then the IdeaPad U150 should probably be at the top of your shopping list.
Pros:

• Good value
• Includes eSATA!
• VGA and HDMI video output

Cons:

• Average performance
• Weak plastic construction

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