It’s no secret that computer technology gets more advanced and less expensive. In fact, 25 years ago the chip technology that you find today in a musical greeting card used to cost $10,000. Now they run $4.99. Lenovo understands that as technology advances, you need to keep up with it without breaking the bank every 2 years.
The Lenovo Ideapad 100s runs just under $200, and packs a bit of processing power with a cool design to offer a really nice package for mere peanuts. Additionally, the Lenovo IdeaPad 100S is a lightweight, has a good 9-hour battery, and is powered by Windows 10. It also has a nice 11.6-inch display, and a decent keyboard and touchpad.
Lenovo Ideapad 100S Design and Build
While the price tag may be low, the Lenovo IdeaPad 100S looks pretty sharp, sporting a matte finish and a very lightweight design. It measures 11.5 x 7.95 x .69 inches, weighs 2.2 pounds, and comes with 32GB of memory and full Windows 10. You can expand memory with a microSD card or use the 1TB of cloud storage that comes with the included Office 365 subscription.
The 11.6-inch display isn’t super premium, but it works, offering decent viewing angles and good image quality. The Lenovo Ideapad 100s is available in blue, gray, red or white.
The Ideapad has speakers that face the bottom. This may sound weird, but this puppy is loud. In fact, you can fill a room with these speakers, and there is good separation of sound between the left and right sides.
The keyboard is not bad either. I did not have high expectations considering really good keyboards only come onboard more premium notebooks, but the keys on the Ideapad are large and they feel snappy as you type. The touchpad offers high accuracy, but unfortunately, does not support gestures. On the other hand, it does have left and right buttons.
Port-wise, the Lenovo IdeaPad 100S stuffs a number of useful ports onto its small frame including a microSD card slot, an HDMI-out, an audio jack, a proprietary power port, and two USB 2.0 ports. Also included are a 0.3-megapixel webcam.
Ideapad Performance
So you’re not going to get an i7 for $200, but Lenovo does give you a 1.33-GHz Intel Atom Z3735F CPU and 2GB of RAM. Actually, the Atom processor is a lot better than years past, and it really offers you solid performance that’s good enough for multi-tasking, watching movies, editing documents and surfing the web. Even with 10 tabs open, you almost never get any lag.
Gaming is probably not a good option for the Lenovo Ideapad 100s, but then again, this notebook is most suited for lighter work or a secondary PC. Battery Life, on the other hand is a different story. It will last you a strong 9 plus hours.
Along with everything else, the Lenovo IdeaPad 100S comes with a free, one-year subscription to Office 365 Personal (a $60 value), and gives you all of the basic office suite. Other than that, no other software is preloaded, which sometimes is a nice thing, and Lenovo backs the IdeaPad 100S with a standard one-year warranty on parts and labor.
Conclusion
The Lenovo IdeaPad 100S might be the most value for the money notebook we’ve ever seen. With a combination of decent performance, long battery life, Windows 10, free Office 365, a very good-looking design and, let’s not forget, the under $200 price tag, the Lenovo Ideapad 100s is a number one contender for a lot of market segments. We can easily taut this as the best overall Windows laptop under $200.
You can purchase the Lenovo IdeaPad 100s through Lenovo here for $179.99
