Lenovo IdeaPad S205 review

On first inspection, you could be forgiven for mistaking Lenovo’s tiny IdeaPad S205 for a netbook. It has the same small footprint and 11in screen that we’re used to seeing, but look a little deeper and it’s clear this is an evolution of the traditional netbook form factor.

Unlike traditional netbooks, which are restricted to certain hardware in order to ship with Windows 7 Starter edition, Lenovo has opted for Windows 7 Home Premium, which allows for a greater range of hardware choices. For starters, the usual Intel Atom processor has been jettisoned in favour of an AMD Fusion E-350, which is about as powerful in desktop applications but slightly better at handling video and full-screen 3D. With 4GB of memory, up from the netbook-standard 1GB, and a 500GB hard disk, this is more of an ultra-portable than a laptop, even if our benchmark results don’t paint quite the same picture.

Although fine for single tasks, the processor was quickly bogged down by our intense tests, producing a low overall score of 12. This might appear low, but we rarely noticed slowdowns during everyday use. We could browse the web, edit a text document and play 720p video at the same time without seeing any system lag. If you don’t need to perform intensive tasks such as image or video editing, you shouldn’t have too much trouble getting things done on the S205.

Naturally there’s no dedicated graphics card, but AMD’s purchase of graphics giant ATI means there’s still some performance to be squeezed from the integrated chipset. We had no trouble playing 720p video on the laptop, and could even play 1080p files on an external display using the HDMI output. Unfortunately the Radeon HD 6310m isn’t well-suited to gaming. It failed our Dirt 3 test, unable to produce a smooth frame rate at 1,366×720. Even when we dropped the resolution, disabled anti-aliasing and turned down the detail settings to medium, it still only managed an unplayable 12 fps.

Watching video on an 11in screen isn’t ideal, but the impressive image quality makes the IdeaPad S205 one of the better laptops to do it on. There was ample contrast at the default picture settings and the 1,366×768 screen made everything look incredibly sharp. Colours appeared slightly muted, but it only took 30 seconds to increase the colour gamut using the graphics driver. There was very little bleed from the backlight, but brightness was only average. Viewing angles were also reasonable, but not exceptional: horizontal angles were great, but there were limited vertical angles. The glossy screen reflects a great deal of light, but thankfully there’s enough screen tilt that this shouldn’t be a serious issue.

Typing on the full-size keyboard was a pleasure, thanks to the tight spring action in each key, although it wasn’t all good news. The touchpad below is incredibly compact, which can make navigating the desktop at 1,366×768 slightly laborious. Multi-touch gestures are supported, but anyone with large hands will struggle to use them consistently. The touchpad is at least made of a very smooth plastic that creates minimal friction, but the buttons below it are far from ideal. Long travel and almost no tactile feedback made us constantly doubt whether our clicks were being registered by the operating system.

We really liked the IdeaPad S205; it’s a much bigger step up from the average netbook than we’ve seen from other companies that use AMD processors, paired with a high resolution screen and excellent keyboard. If you want something inexpensive for web browsing, but would prefer a laptop keyboard to a tablet touchscreen, this is definitely one of the best.