Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t Video

Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t Video Transcript

>> Scott: Hi, this is Scott Stein, Senior Associate Editor at CNET.com and this is the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t. Now, we've seen Lenovo NetBooks before and we really enjoy their keyboards. What's interesting about this model is that it's actually a convertible tablet as well. The screen swivels 180 degrees around and suddenly becomes a 10.1 inch tablet device with a capacity of a touch-screen. Now it's interesting timing because with a price range from $549 to $649 it's priced very similarly to an iPad and the question is does a 10 inch device like this with Flash, with the ability to have USB ports and a full hard drive, does it compete well and offer something that's competitive or even superior? Well, we'd love to say but there are some drawbacks. While this device does have better than NetBook specs it includes a 250 Gig hard drive, 2 Gigs of RAM in the $650 configuration and a faster Atom N470 processor. Still for $550 to $650 that's a lot of money for a NetBook. You can get ones at $299 that offer very similar functionality, maybe slightly less hard drive space or a Gig fewer RAM but, you know, that's really hard to justify all that extra money for the touch-screen. And as far as the touch-screen while we love the fact that it's capacitive, which means like an iPhone you can touch the screen without having to press on it using a stylus or, you know, using like the old fashioned tablets do, it's a little bit laggy and it has a little bit of a slow reaction time with some of the programs that we use. Although Lenovo does have a really nice set of natural touch apps that include an eBook reader, media player that you can enjoy on some really nice large stereo speakers that are included. But, again, the experience is sort of a little bit laggy and it's not quite as fast as we'd expect and the battery life, unfortunately, is pretty low, it's under 3 hours on our tests which won't really last even a long plane flight or even a medium plane flight. So, you know, we may prefer watching our movies on our smartphone with a battery life like that. So another interesting thing to point out about the S10-3t is the keyboard. People love to know about NetBook keyboards and if they're comfortable. A lot of them kind of get a little bit shrunken down. You feel like you're in a dollhouse; this one is great. We always love Lenovo keyboards. This one is a little bit shallow compared to others but it's an old fashioned style tapered keyboard design. The keys are nice and large. It's very easy to type on. On the other hand, you can see to shave down on the space and the width the palm rest area's pretty small, so you're gonna have to find you have to angle your hands a little and it can get a little awkward at times, and the touch-pad is very tiny. Now, it has a great tactile surface that makes, you know, gives you great friction and allows you to navigate the screen well for its size. It also doesn't have any buttons it uses a click-pad much like the MacBook does and a lot of other notebooks are doing now. So you actually click on the corners of the screen for the buttons. We love that idea but on a track-pad that's this small it makes navigating that just even more difficult. Overall it's a great concept but, you know, we feel like we'd love to see the next generation of it. This is the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t. I'm Scott Stein with CNET. ^E00:03:05