Lenovo Ideapad U330

In a move borrowed out of Apple’s repertoire, Lenovo has gone with a “zero-frame” in regards to its LED panel. Traditional laptops sport a bezel around the LED panel, which encases the panel itself and gives its sense of stability.  The method that Apple and now Lenovo has adapted, instead opts for a toughened glass piece that holds the LED  panel in place and gives the appearance of the LED  panel being larger and sporting more working area than it actually is — zero-frame. While this is a great move, there are two downsides to this method.

Firstly the glass sheet on the LED panel is very glossy and so reflective, that working in a brightly lit area becomes an act in frustration. Secondly the glossy nature of the sheet, also results in poor viewing angles from the sides. Had there been a normal bezel in place, the viewing angles would not have been a problem. The LED panel by itself, however is top notch. Since it's backlit, it offers significantly enhanced color, contrast and brightness levels.  Text was rich and crisp and movie watching was actually a joy with great sharpness and zero lag present at the native resolution of 1280x800.

Being a 13.3 inch model, the U330 comes with an average variety of connectivity options.  Though it sports only 2 USB ports, it makes up by offering an HDMI/VGA display slots, Firewire 400 and a 6-in-1 card reader along with the token dual-layer DVD-RW. Wireless connectivity included 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.0 EDR.

The U330 test piece we received, had a good specification overall in regards to other laptops in this range. It sported a C2D P8600 processor which runs on a 1066 FSB and a clock speed of 2.4 GHz, 2 GB of RAM, ATI Radeon 3450 chipset and a 320 GB SATA HDD. Our first performance test on the laptop was PCMark Vantage. As you can see from the scores above, the laptop performed exceedingly well, in its weighted averages in various sections and achieved segment leading scores overall. Our next test was 3DMark Vantage, which unfortunately was a no-show. Despite several reinstalls, 3DMark would keep crashing and no amount of coaxing made it work.