Lenovo IdeaPad S12-2959 – Acceptable, But Expensive

Pros

The Lenovo IdeaPad S12-2959 comes with enhanced graphics performance for a Netbook, superb keyboard and vigorous display screen.

Cons

Despite such high price the Lenovo IdeaPad S12-2959 comes with same old Atom N270 processor.

Introduction

Lenovo was the one of the very first pioneers to seek an Ion Netbook and with the introduction of the Lenovo IdeaPad S12-2959 it appeared just the perfect “mini-Netbook” to have it. But apart from this the S12 also featured excellent Keyboard, great aesthetics and superbly crisp screen. One of the biggest reasons for this was the fact that the IdeaPad S12 was expected to be priced under $499, but sadly this didn’t happened.

But regardless of the price the IdeaPad S12 is much better than its original IdeaPad S12 with Atom N270 processor. With its Nvidia Ion-packing the IdeaPad S12 is a lot more advanced than the Atom N270 version, and with its expanded 3GB of RAM, a huge 320GB hard drive and 256MB of discrete graphics in addition  to Bluetooth and 32 bit Windows 7 Home Premium the all New S12 promises a lot and can easily deliver what it promises. On the other hand, it’s priced slightly higher and will cost you $650, so this can be a bit of a problem.

Design

From designs point of view the IdeaPad S12 looks like slightly bigger than its younger sibling the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2, which debuted in 2009. The IdeaPad S12 is well-balanced and compact; the external lusterless case comes in two color choices of black and white. The outer case is topped with a lustrous plastic top ornate in a faint sequence of anecdotal polka-dots. Though, the top of the system is a serious smudge-collector, but still is immensely attractive. Opening the lid reveals a smooth lusterless black plastic surrounding the keyboard, and the 12 inch lustrous screen is enclosed in shiny plastic. The screen looks stylish and professional at the same time, not different than a ThinkPad. The keyboard here is a full sized keyboard and gives great feel, whereas the touchpad for S12 is clearly an improvement from S10-2, at least in terms of size. The overall system feels like a real laptop, and as far as the keyboard is concerned, we have no doubts in saying that it is one of the most contented keyboards we’ve seen on a Notebook.

Located just above the keyboard are certain dedicated buttons that are used for Volume control and muting, talking of buttons there also is a QuickStart button which launches the OS instantly. The music player, photo viewer and browser in this OS are practical and loads faster than booting up the Windows 7, but still the fastest way to boot the system is to keep it in standby mode and reawakening it as per the need. Among the other buttons there is the OneKey backup/data recovery hot button. The vigorous screen of the system measures 12.1inch and has got 1280 x 800 pixels of Native resolution, which is pretty standard for screens of this size.

System Configuration

Price: $649.00
Manufacturer: Lenovo
Part Number: 29595GU
Notebook type: Netbook and   Budget
OS Provided: Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium

Processor: 1.6 GHz Intel Atoms N270
System weight: 3.5 lbs
Dimensions (W x D x H): 11.5 x 9.1 x 1.4 in
RAM: 3GB, 667MHz DDR2

Display Type: 12.1 in TFT active matrix
Graphics Processor / Vendor: NVIDIA ION Shared video memory (UMA)

Input device type: Keyboard and Touchpad
Hard Drive: 320 GB
Features: Glossy, VibrantView, LED-backlit, hard drive password, Power-on password, Security lock slot, Administrator password
Software: Lenovo VeriFace , Adobe Reader , Windows Live Toolbar , Lenovo Quick Start, Lenovo Energy Management , Lenovo OneKey Recovery , McAfee VirusScan Plus 2009
Supported flash memory cards: MultiMediaCard, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, SD Memory Card
Built-in Devices: Bluetooth antenna, Stereo speakers and Wireless LAN antenna
Environmental standards: EPA Energy Star,   RoHS and EPEAT Silver

Performance

The 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor now days have become synonymous to performance and with almost every system, systems getting powered by the 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor also are our benchmark for performance testing. But with its Ion processor the Lenovo IdeaPad S12-2959 clearly had an edge over all the other Netbooks and performed slightly better in our multimedia multitasking tests and also offered significantly fast performance in iTunes and Photoshop performance.

Though, there were certain tasks in which the IdeaPad S12 was almost twice as slow as the Toshiba Satellite T115-S1105 powered by single-core Pentium SU2700 processor. The overall performance of S12 was slow and nothing special. This is what made us think that the Toshiba Satellite T115-S1105 powered by single-core Pentium SU2700 processor costs $200 less than the IdeaPad S12 and still offers fast performance. So is it worth spending another $200 just to get a system with better hard drive, RAM and a considerably nicer chassis. What do you think?

With its included six-cell battery the IdeaPad S12 with Ion delivered performance of 3 hrs and 45 minutes, which is about an hour less than the IdeaPad S12 without Ion, in our battery life test. The overall performance for the system was acceptable, but surely not exceptional.

Support

The Lenovo IdeaPad S12-2959 is backed by one-year standard parts and labor warranty from Lenovo. You can upgrade the warranty for three years by paying $129 for a mail-in service. The technical support also is available through a telephonic support system 24*7 and you can get driver downloads and an online knowledge base.

Word from the Experts

Though, the Lenovo IdeaPad S12-2959 powered with Nvidia Ion graphics processor, offers some firm 3D strength, but the system is comparatively expensive than the other Netbooks.