I am very fond of Lenovo laptops. IBM Thinkpads were know for their keyboards, and after acquiring IBM, Lenovo continued this tradition. So I look at each new Lenovo offering with a bit of interest. The latest new offering is the Lenovo IdeaPad S206, which is a 11.6-inch laptop. An 11.6-inch laptop is the smallest size which I find comfortable, as the 11.6-inch form factor allows for full sized keyboards. The best netbooks, with their 10.1-inch displays have keyboard which are 89% to 94% of the size of a full sized keyboard.
The display of the Lenovo IdeaPad S206 is priced at Php17,990. It has a HD display, the typical 1366 x 768 you find in most of todays laptops. A 0.3 MP webcam is fixed on the top of the lid. For storage you have a 320 GB hard drive and a 2-in-1 card reader. For ports you had a HDMI port, a USB 2.0 port, and a USB 3.0 port. Nothing missing here. As an operating system, you get Windows 7 Home Basic, which is a pleasant surprise. A lot of laptops at this price come with Windows 7 Starter. Unfortunately, I have no word on the battery used.
But there is an area of concern. This laptop is powered by an AMD C-60 APU with a dual core 1.3 GHz processor. Performance is pretty meager. CPU Mark benchmarks give it a score of 557 points, which is at the same level as the higher end Atom netbook processors.
This is substantially slower than the performance of AMD E-450 based systems, which we have been recommending for the past year for those looking for a low cost portable.
Making the AMD C-60 seem even more anemic, is the fact that the AMD E-450 has been phased out by the newer AMD E2-1800 which is a tad bit faster.
When you look at the Lenovo S206 as against the Asus X401U, with its faster APU E2-1800 and larger 500 GB hard drive, for Php18,990 the Asus looks like a better deal. But the Asus X401U does have a larger 14-inch display so it is not really a direct competitor.
While a little hard to find, the 11.6-inch Acer TravelMate B133 is a much better deal with its Intel Celeron B877 processor which is priced at Php16,999 with Linux installed. The Intel Celeron B877 is the best processor in the budget class.
Making the AMD C-60 seem even more anemic, is the fact that the AMD E-450 has been phased out by the newer AMD E2-1800 which is a tad bit faster.
When you look at the Lenovo S206 as against the Asus X401U, with its faster APU E2-1800 and larger 500 GB hard drive, for Php18,990 the Asus looks like a better deal. But the Asus X401U does have a larger 14-inch display so it is not really a direct competitor.
While a little hard to find, the 11.6-inch Acer TravelMate B133 is a much better deal with its Intel Celeron B877 processor which is priced at Php16,999 with Linux installed. The Intel Celeron B877 is the best processor in the budget class.
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