Digital Trends

Lenovo IdeaPad U110

June 16th, 2008 | by Josh Norem

Soft-touch keys

Several of the notebook’s we’ve reviewed in the recent past have included soft-touch media keys, most notably Gateway and Toshiba. While the Toshiba’s buttons worked well, the Gateway’s were hit-and-miss, especially the volume control which basically didn’t work at all. On the IdeaPad, there is a soft-touch volume control on the far-right of the area under the LCD that can always be seen by its faint glow, and it actually works very well. Lightly pressing it brings up an onscreen menu showing the volume moving up and down, and we found it to be accurate and easy to use. When you press anywhere along the media bar (that’s what we’re going to call it) the other customizable soft-touch buttons slowly illuminate and require very little pressure to activate. Overall, Lenovo’s implementation of the soft-touch keys is a slick way of keeping the interface uncluttered while still making the keys easy to access. .

The Bad Stuff

As much as we like the U110, we do have a few gripes. The biggest disappointment is the display, which has a very grainy look to it. We’re not sure if it’s the display itself or the glossy cover, but it’s not pretty and was tough on our eyes. Our second semi-big gripe is the keyboard. We’ve stated repeatedly that the keyboards that come with Lenovo ThinkPad notebooks are the best in the business, bar-none, but this keyboard is not even in the same ballpark. The problem is that rather than having keys with tapered edges to distinguish a key from the one next to it, all the keys are totally flat and line up right next to each other, making it difficult to tell where your fingers are located and ultimately making typing more difficult than it should be. We were also nonplussed by the lack of support for the emerging 80211.n wireless standard. In our minds anyone buying a notebook these days should take the N-factor into consideration. At least it has an ExpressCard port so you could always buy an N adapter in the future.

Conclusion

The IdeaPad is an excellent freshman outing from Lenovo, especially in the style category; who would have thought Lenovo had it in them? Certainly not us, that’s for sure. We also like the form-factor a lot too, as mini-PCs like the Asus Eee PC are a bit too small for practical use, and 13.3” notebooks are basically full-sized, so the U110 fits perfectly into its own niche called “very small and very portable.” It’s a shame about the screen though, and hopefully Lenovo will fix this issue as we can see it bothering a lot of people. The keyboard is less of a concern to us, simply because this is a notebook for web surfing and emailing, not major productivity. And for that purpose, it does a better than average job and includes all the accessories you’d ever need including a big battery and a USB optical drive.


Pros:

• Very small and light
• Stylish
• Lots of great accessories
• Face recognition

Cons:

• Display is very grainy
• Keyboard is difficult to type on
• No 80211.n capability