Lenovo IdeaPad U410 review

Lenovo’s IdeaPad U410 14in Ultrabook is available in a range of colours, from hot pink to aquamarine blue. Our review sample came in a more reserved graphite grey, so there should be something to suit all tastes.

The case is a uniform thickness throughout, rather than the wedge shaped favoured by other manufacturers. This leaves ample room for ports: as well as two USB ports, two faster USB3 versions are also present, as is an HDMI video output, Gigabit Ethernet, a 3.5mm combination audio jack and a multi-format card reader.

Inside, there’s a dedicated GeForce GT 610M graphics chip. This may be one of Nvidia’s entry-level mobile GPUs, but that doesn’t mean it’s a slouch when it comes to games – it managed 25.8fps in our Dirt 3 test, an impressive feat for such a slim machine. Disabling anti-aliasing should help boost frame rates to above a playable 30fps too.

Despite the additional graphics card, the U410 still managed to last over seven and a half hours in our light use battery test – Nvidia’s Optimus graphics switching technology disables the GT 610M in favour of integrated graphics, meaning you don’t miss out on battery life compared to other Ultrabooks.

Desktop performance is supplied by a dual-core i5-3317U processor running at 1.7GHz. Intel’s Turbo Boost technology can increase this up to 2.6GHz in certain applications. With 6GB of system memory it completed our multimedia benchmarks with an overall score of 48 – easily powerful enough to run everyday applications such as web browsers or word processors.