A very light chassis, beautifully textured surfaces, a great keyboard, and other quality finishing touches come with some solid, though not overwhelming, specs: a Core i5 ULV processor, 320GB hard drive, and 4GB of RAM, along with a couple of USB ports and HDMI. If its unimpressive battery life were better, we would have considered the U260 to be one of the best ultraportables we've ever used; as it is, consider the IdeaPad U260 a fascinating, if flawed, experiment in high-end Lenovo design.
Price as reviewed / starting price $1,049 / $899
Processor 1.33GHz Intel Core i5 U470
Memory 4GB, 1,066MHz DDR3 RAM
Hard drive 320GB 5,400rpm
Chipset Intel HM55
Graphics Intel GMA HD
Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)
Dimensions (WD) 12.5 x 8.0 inches
Height 0.7 inch
Screen size (diagonal) 12.5 inches
System weight / Weight with AC adapter 3.0 / 3.5 pounds
Category Ultraportable
The IdeaPad U260 is one of the first laptops to feature a 12.5-inch screen, making this ultraportable feel like a very svelte 13-inch laptop in everyday use. The design of the U260 is its biggest win: from its compact jewel-box-like packaging down to the colors, clean lines, and textured surfaces throughout, the U260 looks and feels like a luxury laptop.
Available in either brown or orange (we chose orange for our review sample), the wider-than-normal U260 caught the attention of many casual eyes around the CNET offices. Flush lines and an integrated battery give the U260 a pleasing wafer-thin look. The colored wrap-around magnesium lid covers the top and bottom of the U260, sandwiching the black interior inside.
As good as the U260 looks, it feels even better to the touch: a rubberized outer surface offers great grip and hides fingerprints, and a leather-like textured palm rest area is one of the comfiest we've ever felt against our wrists. Inset in the middle is a full raised keyboard similar to the design we've seen in the ThinkPad Edge series. Slightly concave keys cradle fingertips perfectly, and the keys are well spaced. A column of page up/down keys on the right side mar the experience slightly, forcing the Enter/Shift keys into the middle of the keyboard, and the keyboard exhibited a bit more flex than the standard ThinkPad, but it's better than any other ultra portable.
A single power button above the keyboard lies between small stereo speaker grilles, and a few status indicator icons light up stylishly in small grids of white LED lights. Framed by the glossy black-bezeled screen above, the U260 has a pleasingly restrained, composed look. Volume and brightness controls are relegated to function-combination buttons on the d-arrow pad. Unfortunately, there are no function-reversed control keys.
The glass multitouch touch pad is a bit small and has dedicated buttons beneath instead of a clickpad-style interface, but it's otherwise responsive and offers better level of traction to Apple's clickpads. One drawback: with frequent use, the black touch pad is a fingerprint magnet.
The glossy, 16:9 LED-backlit 12.5-inch display on the IdeaPad U260 has a native resolution of 1,366x768 pixels, which is standard for most midsize laptops. The screen's unique size sounds jarring at first, but in use it feels nearly the same as a 13-inch. Icons and text were easy to read, and videos and pictures played back with vivid color and brightness.
The stereo speakers embedded in grilles above the keyboard had decent enough sound for the U260's size, but weren't notably excellent. The 0.3-megapixel Webcam has a maximum image resolution of 640x480 pixels, and comes packed with Cyberlink YouCam software.
Lenovo IdeaPad U260 Average for category [Ultraportable]
Video VGA-out, HDMI VGA plus HDMI or DisplayPort
Audio Stereo speakers, headphone/microphone combo jack Stereo speakers, headphone/microphone jacks
Data 2 USB 2.0 3 USB 2.0, SD card reader
Expansion None None
Networking Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Ethernet, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, optional mobile broadband
Optical drive None None
The IdeaPad U260 has Bluetooth, but only two USB 2.0 ports along its edges. The sparse collection of ports is a bit of a letdown: there is room for more, especially since the U260 lacks an optical drive. We were surprised that the U260 lacks an SD card slot, too; even 10-inch Lenovo Netbooks come with SD card compatibility.
All being said this still is a great laptop and if you want one which has power but is very portable this is the one for you. So as usual if you have any questions just email me or post a comment.
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