-Hi!
I'm Scott Stein, senior associate editor at cnet.com and this is the Lenovo IdeaPad U 260.
Now, if it's style you're after on a laptop, you've come to the right place.
This is a 12.5-inch ultra portable that bridges the gap between a small netbook and a more full-fledged laptop.
The U 260 has got style all over the place.
This thing is a great Windows competitor to the MacBook Air, and at first glance, we've yet to see somebody who
doesn't step back and say, wow, what is that laptop.
It's got rally sleek lines.
The color scheme either comes in clementine orange which we chose for our review unit or mocha brown.
Now, believe it or not, this laptop is even better to touch than it is to look at.
Even though it's got great lines to it, the back lid has a really nice texture to it, believe me.
It's a rubberized finish on top of its metal.
In addition, the whole palm rest area has a kind of a leatherized feel.
It's-- It's a leather soft finished that really feels great on your wrist and the keyboard
is somewhat a variant of we've seen on the ThinkPad edge line.
Its got raised keys that are a lot like a MacBook's and they are really comfortable, well-spaced out.
There is a glass trackpad here that is multi touch.
Now, it's not as big as a MacBook Air's and you still have buttons beneath to click, it's not a clickpad, but it feels really nice, although it does collect finger prints a bit if we're gonna be picky.
Overall, it's gonna be a wonderful eye catcher of a laptop.
There is a drawback, however, and that's in its processing power.
It's not that great, it's a little expensive, and its
battery life is let down.
Now, it uses a Core-i5 ULV processor.
You can also get one with an i3 ULV processor.
That's a lower voltage, lower speed version of what you'll see normally in most laptops.
But that amounts to as a slightly more sluggish performance.
It's gonna be a lot better than when you get on a netbook, but if you're comparing it to other main stream laptops, you might be let down.
Also, the battery life is under 3 hours.
That's a let down for a laptop this size, especially since Apple's MacBook Air has a better battery life and still is a little bit thinner.
The price is no bargain either.
It starts at 899 and goes up to about 1049 for clementine orange version.
Now, that's fine compared to a MacBook Air, but it's still a lot of money compared to what you get in other laptops.
It has a 320GB hard drive, and 4GB of ram, which is fine, but there aren't many ports on the side and there is no SD card slot, which, hey if you're taking it to CES 2011 as we did, it got to be a bit of a little bit of a pain on the butt especially if you are taking pictures at your pocket and wanna transfer them in a middle of live blog.
Also, gaming lovers, before warn, there are no dedicated graphics on this laptop, so while you can play streaming video, forget about playing games.
Overall, the U 260 comes really close to being a really fantastic all around, ultra portable for the style set, and that battery life, that's a killer.
I'm Scott Stein and this is the Lenovo IdeaPad U 260
