Techie
6:33 PM | Friday | 02 April 2020

Netbooks have become all the rage of late with their ultra-portability, adequate computing power, and a feature set (as well as an operating system) that satisfies most users' needs. The Lenovo Ideapad S10-3T, on paper at least, meets all those requirements. Our inquisitive minds here at Techie, however, demand much more than a quick glance at a spec sheet.

With years of manufacturing laptops (for IBM, notably) under its belt, Lenovo's build quality has become the industry standard in terms of fit and finish. The exterior of the 3T has a black glossy finish, which, while being a fingerprint magnet, gives this lappie a certain flair. With a flick, a twist, and a fold, the 3T also transforms itself into a tablet. Now that's fancy.

Materials and workmanship aside, the real litmus test is how much this unique netbook improves your computing experience, starting with, of course, ergonomics. With such a tiny footprint, cut corners, pun intended, are expected.

The 3T's 10-inch screen has a native resolution of 1000x800, which isn't too bad at all. The keyboard feels a bit cramped at first, but given a few minutes, your fingers will be typing away.

The trackpad, however, was a mixed bag. It's tiny – with half the real estate of a business card, and slow, deliberate movements seem to be the best way to use it. The textured surface of the pad really helped in this regard. With the latest generation of Intel Atom processor under the 3T's hood, we were expecting often-used programs (like IE and Firefox) to load faster under Windows 7. Puzzlingly, this wasn't the case.

Switching over to Tablet mode, and Lenovo's touch-screen front end loads – after a fair bit of lag. The interface is intuitive, however, and using 3T as a tablet seems to be a great way of reading ebooks or viewing videos – as long as the device is oriented to you straight-on. Images and text will induce headaches when viewed from a wide angle.

Initially, the S10-3T seems like a great idea, combining netbook and tablet functionality. But then again, in doing so, some compromises had to be made. The biggest of all seems to be the device's sometimes-sluggish performance, and it's short-by-netbook-standards battery life. Maybe a remedy, such as a firmware update or a RAM upgrade, needs to be prescribed.

Click here to see the Lenovo S10-3T in the Buyer's Guide.