Lenovo IdeaPad U310 review

The weedy integrated speakers aren’t going to replace a pair of headphones, as they struggle to produce loud audio and lack any resemblance of bass. Music sounded tinny, with a dominating high-end, although it was still clear enough for the occasional YouTube video.

The i5-3317U processor normally runs at 1.7GHz, but can Turbo Boost up to 2.6GHz, and with 4GB of RAM on-board it should handle all your everyday tasks without any slowdown. The IdeaPad U310 coped reasonably well with our multimedia benchmarks, scoring 48 overall.

Intel’s processor also provides the graphics power. The integrated HD 4000 chip is capable of playing older games at medium to high detail settings, but it struggled with our Dirt 3 test – 14.65fps is one of the lowest scores we’ve seen from an Ultrabook.

There’s a 500GB hard disk, which provides plenty of storage space. It’s paired with an 8GB SSD cache, which helps speed up boot times: from a cold boot we were at the Windows Desktop in less than 20 seconds.

Battery life was slightly disappointing in Ultrabook terms – the U310 only just broke six hours in our light-use test, meaning you’ll need to keep the (admittedly rather small and light) power adaptor close by if you’re planning to spend all day out of the house or office.

As one of many second-generation Ultrabooks to go after the mainstream, rather than the high-end, the IdeaPad U310 gets a lot of things right. It’s low price and small form factor are certainly attractive, but if you want a bit more power and better battery life the slightly-larger HP Envy 6 is the better choice.