Lenovo IdeaPad U260 - Easy to Carry, Easy on the Wallet

The demand for portable laptops seems to be on the rise. Almost every manufacturer is out in the market with a lightweight and slim laptop hoping to impress customers with his designs.

IdeaPad U260 - a compact, affordable notebook

Lenovo plans to do the same with their IdeaPad U260 notebook that is designed to be a stylish portable companion.

Features
The IdeaPad U260 is a slim, but not necessarily sleek notebook. There are no fancy curves and glossy panels covering the external surfaces of this notebook. In fact, the matte finish has a somewhat softer feel to it, like synthetic leather.

Open up the lid and you find a 12.5-inch LED backlit display that supports a resolution of 1366 x768 inside. The bezel surrounding the display could have been thinner. In terms of specifications, it’s not very impressive. There’s only an Intel Core i3 U380 1.33 GHz powering it with 4 GB of memory. The processor supports hyperthreading on its two cores. Lenovo ships this model with a 64-bit version of the Windows 7 Home Premium operating system. In terms of storage space, you get a 320 GB Hitachi Travelstar hard drive running at 5400rpm. It’s not the ultimate in performance, but space of just 320 GB is a little low by current standards.

Scaled down trackpad

The smaller form factor means limited connectivity options, as well. For example, there are only two USB 2.0 ports, an HDMI port, D-Sub and an Ethernet port on the notebook. There’s also a WiFi toggle switch on the left side of the notebook.

Build quality and Design
The treatment to the external surfaces is pretty and feels good to the touch as compared to a hard glossy finished surface. It comes in a mocha brown and the sides and the insides of the notebook are black. The upper panel holding the screen is thin but, solidly built. The screen wobbles a  bit but nothing that will annoy you while you’re using it at work or home on a desk.

The keyboard feels a little smaller than other notebooks primarily because of its smaller size. The touchpad too has been scaled down to a smaller size. The touchpad though is decent and the mouse clicks are really soft. They seem sturdy and at the same time they’re fun to use.

Not the curviest of notebooks

The surface surrounding the keyboard too, has a matte finish and has a texture similar to the top surface of the notebook. The screen does lean back quite a bit, which is a good thing.

The battery charger Lenovo supplies with the IdeaPad U260 is compact and we noticed that it gets pretty heated up after charging the notebook for more than an hour or so.