Home | Forums | Article Search | Subscribe & Shop | Contact Us | Log Out Lenovo IdeaPad S12 Email This Print This View My Personal Library Heavy Gear March 2010 • Vol.10 Issue 3 Page(s) 19 in print issue Add To My Personal Library Lenovo IdeaPad S12 IdeaPad S12 $449 Lenovo www.lenovo.com CPU Rating: 3.5 Newegg Item#: N82E16834146604 Specs: VIA Nano ULV 2250 (1.3+GHz), VIA Chrome9 HC3 IGP, 1GB DDR2-667 (with 256MB used for video), 160GB SATA HDD, Windows XP SP3 A 10-inch netbook may be fine for occasional use, but for prolonged typing or a lot less browser scrolling, you want at least a 12-inch screen. The 12.1-inch, 1,280 x 800 LCD in Lenovo’s IdeaPad S12 is a vast improvement over the more cramped 10-inch competition. The netbook’s fuller keyboard is more usable, and it ships with the common specs you’d expect for Windows XP Home. At $449, it’s a good deal for a functional ultramobile that is neither exceptional nor disappointing. The standout feature of this S12, though, is its VIA Nano ULV platform, our first serious challenger to the Atom-opoly. We threw PCMark05 and Pass-Mark’s PerformanceTest 7 at the S12 and an OCZ Neutrino based on the ubiquitous Atom N270. Despite the Neutrino having a slightly higher CPU clock (1.6GHz vs. the Nano ULV 2250’s 1.3+GHz) and 2GB of 667 MHz DDR2 compared to the Lenovo’s 1GB, the S12 clearly emerged as the better performer. The PCMark CPU Test Suite composite was 4% higher for VIA. In PassMark’s 3D Graphics Mark, VIA’s integrated Chrome9 graphics crushed Intel’s GMA 950, 89.6 to 20.9. Overall, the composite PassMark rating finished at 359.4 for the S12 and 183.8 for the Neutrino. The price to pay for VIA’s superior performance is in battery life. Preferring a real-world test to the usual “absolute longest runtime” approach, we started with Lenovo’s lowest power profile and kept adding whatever was necessary to continuously view a stream from Hulu at 50% screen brightness. The system shut down at 2 hours 57 minutes—not great but still acceptable for heavy hotspot usage. Ultimately, we had to give the S12 a fair rating for being a fair netbook, but with VIA’s platform undercutting the Atom equivalent by $50, the Nano itself is a great value in this space. by William Van Winkle  User Reviews Be the first to write a review of this product Want more information about a topic you found of interest while reading this article? Type a word or phrase that identifies the topic and click "Search" to find relevant articles from within our editorial database. Enter A Subject (key words or a phrase): ALL Words (‘digital’ AND ‘photography’) ANY Words (‘digital’ OR ‘photography’) Exact Match ('digital photography'- all words MUST appear together) Home      Copyright & Legal Information      Privacy Policy      Site Map      Contact Us Copyright © 2010 Sandhills Publishing Company U.S.A. All rights reserved.