Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2 Netbook Review

Benchmarks

 SiSoftware Sandra (the System Analyzer, Diagnostic and Reporting Assistant) is an information and diagnostic utility. It should provide most of the information (including undocumented) you need to know about your hardware, software and other devices.


 SiSoftware Sandra
CPU, HDD, Memory
 

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The Intel Atom N270 (1.60GHz) fared fine in Sandra's CPU-specific test. It exhibited plenty of power for basic tasks and light-duty multimedia playback, but it's certainly not potent enough to push any serious pixels in 3D gaming. Overall, results here were as expected, though we would've enjoyed seeing an Atom N280 to better separate the S10-2 from the S10.


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In the CPU multimedia testing, the N270 held its own and didn't feel tremendously slower than other netbooks we've tested with Intel's Atom N280, but it still looks weak when compared to chips found in full-size notebooks. These tests make us long for a seriously revamped Atom, as anything at or beyond 720p was simply unwatchable.


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As with everyone other vanilla netbook with WinXP, the Lenovo IdeaPad S10-2 didn't exhibit the strongest scores in the memory bandwidth department. But really, would you expect anything different from a single-channel configuration with only one 1GB stick of DDR2 RAM?



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Our 160 GB WD Scorpio Blue WD1600BEVT (5400RPM) drive stacked up well against similar models in the benchmarks, but we did feel a bit of lag when booting up applications for the first time, particularly coming from an SSD-equipped Neutrino netbook. Things were rather snappy once loaded, though.

To test multimedia capabilities, we attempt to play back a 720p WMVHD clip, a 720p H.264 clip and a 1080p clip.


Click To Enlarge; 720p H.264


Click To Enlarge; 720p WMVHD


Click To Enlarge; 1080p

As with the Eee PC 1005HA, the 720p WMVHD clip was the only one that played back "smoothly." The 720p H.264 and 1080p files froze in place occasionally, dropped frames, and refused to play back in what we would consider a "smooth" fashion.  Intel's GMA950 integrated graphics core doesn't offer full video decode offload from the host processor.  Part of the issue here could be CODEC optimization and the multimedia player being used but in reality, the out-of-the-box experience in this area was simply lacking, as expected frankly.


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