Lenovo Ideapad 100S Notebook Review

Communication

WLAN and Bluetooth 4.0 are provided by an integrated Realtek RTL8723BS with support for up to 802.11n networks. We experienced no connectivity issues during our time with the notebook. Unfortunately, there are no WWAN or GPS options available, either.

Accessories

Proprietary extras aren't available for the 100S. Users will get a Quick Start guide out of the box with optional USB mice and DVD burner options.

Maintenance

Opening the bottom panel requires only a Philips screwdriver and a sharp edge to detach the edges and corners. It's a relatively painless process, though users will find nothing of interest for upgrading. The motherboard is but a small section of the left side of the notebook, which will have an effect on surface temperatures as detailed in our Temperature section.

Warranty

Lenovo warranty options are one of the most versatile alongside HP and Dell. The base one-year limited warranty applies with options for in-Home repairs, accidental damage protection, and extensions.

Keyboard

The Chiclet keyboard is adequately sized (25.5 x 9.5 cm) considering the 11.6-inch form factor. The QWERTY keys themselves are 15 mm across and 3 mm apart. Travel is short as expected with a quiet-but-firm feedback. It's even shorter than the AccuType keyboards as found on most newer ThinkPad models, so it can be difficult to adjust. We would have liked to see a more satisfying click as each plastic key can feel stiff in addition to the cramped space available.

Aside from the main QWERTY keys, the smaller Arrow keys have softer feedback while the larger Shift, Enter, and Backspace keys have a louder click when pressed. The Dedicated Lenovo OneKey Recovery button next to the Power button simply opens the standard Windows Recovery menu.

Touchpad

Touchpad size is small (8.5 x 4.5 cm) even for an 11.6-inch netbook due to its inclusion of two dedicated mouse keys. This is compared to the Lenovo 11e Chromebook, which utilizes the larger glass touchpad on recent ThinkPad models at the expense of the two keys. The smooth touchpad is textured similarly to its plastic palm rests and exhibits no issues such as cursor jitters or noticeable latency. Note that the surface does not support multi-touch inputs and will not automatically disable when typing.

As for the mouse keys, both buttons are shallow in travel with loud and firm responses when clicked. Little effort is required to push each one and we definitely prefer them to the integrated solution on the ThinkPad 11e.

Color coverage is typical for a budget panel at 38 percent and 60 percent of AdobeRGB and sRGB, respectively. This is comparable to the Acer Aspire ES1 and Asus X200MA. The limited gamut should not be a concern for the target audience as tasks such as browsing, word processing, or gaming do not require the most accurate of colors.

Further color analyses with an X-Rite spectrophotometer confirm the inaccurate colors and grayscale out-of-the-box. Color temperature is much too cool and creates a Blue tint in most cases. Many displays on other 11.6-inch notebooks are more accurate without any calibration required.

The 100S improves dramatically after a calibration. Colors still become more inaccurate the higher the saturation level due to the screen's limited sRGB coverage, but color temperature is toned down significantly. A calibration is absolutely recommended for new owners. If not possible, then our provided profile above should help.

Pulse-width modulation can be measured with the help of an oscilloscope and photosensor. Windows 7, 8, and 10 each utilize 11 discrete steps of brightness from 0 to 10. The sharp shape of the curves for our Ideapad 100S suggests an LED backlight instead of CCFL and the steady frequency of ~300 Hz is thankfully above the 250 Hz minimum threshold deemed harmful to sensitive eyes.

Outdoor usability is acceptable under shade and below average when under direct sunlight. The backlight is simply not strong enough to overcome sunlight or even a bright overcast. The 180-degree hinges and matte screen help in providing an optimal viewing angle to reduce glare as much as possible.

Speaking of viewing angles, the TN panel severely limits the usefulness of the wide hinges. Pushing the display too far back will degrade colors almost immediately. The limited angles won't impact browsing or word processing unless if attempting to share the display with others nearby. An IPS panel could have improved outdoor usability tremendously, though likely for a higher starting price.

Atom-based notebooks are poor performers when it comes to PCMark benchmarks. With our final score of 2377 points in PCMark 7, the Ideapad 100S is in the same ballpark as the HP Pro Tablet 608 G1 and the older Acer TravelMate P255. The integrated eMMC SSD helps, but the CPU is still the bottleneck. With that said, the final scores in both PCMark 7 and 8 are about where we expect them to be for a netbook. Competing models like the HP Stream 11 x360 and Acer Aspire ES1 score similarly, if not just slightly better due to their Celeron cores.

Subjectively, system performance is on the slow side as installations and applications take much longer to complete and load, respectively. Windows updates are incredibly slow to install and a cold boot can still take well over 40 seconds. The Windows 10 OS itself performs smoothly, though frame skips are a bit more common compared to standard notebooks.

The passively cooled Atom CPU and integrated GPU are not for gaming. Running the Tomb Raider benchmark on the lowest settings and at XGA resolution will barely cracks 12 FPS. Frame rates will drop further after continuous play due to the throttling issues mentioned below. Sprite-based titles like Angry Birds and others should play without any issues. 

Objectively, its final 3DMark 11 score of just 192 points is only 22 points above the current lowest entry in our database: The One Xcellent 10 tablet. This device also happens to be carrying the same Atom Z3735F CPU as our Ideapad 100S.

The 100S does not perform very well in stress test situations. Running Prime95 will result in a stable 1.6 GHz CPU for the first couple of minutes, but this steadily drops to the 1.25 to 1.33 GHz range once core temperature reaches 65 to 67 C. Similarly, the GPU will operate at its base 620 MHz before throttling down to 300 MHz once core temperatures approach the 65 to 67 C ceiling. The core will maintain a stable temperature in the 55 to 60 C range at these throttled speeds.

Running Unigine Heaven to better simulate gaming stress unfortunately produces the same outcome. Both the CPU and GPU will drop to 500 MHz and 300 MHz, respectively, after just a few minutes. This means that heavy users can experience throttling with the 100S if running intensive applications. 3DMark 11, for example, resulted in a final Physics score of 1128 points, while subsequent runs resulted in a Physics score as low as 745 points.

Running on battery power appears to have no effect CPU or GPU performance, so users can still have the full power of the notebook if not connected to mains. Throttling, however, can still occur.

The integrated battery pack provides great runtimes of almost 7 hours of constant WLAN use at a setting of 150 nits. Lenovo advertises 8 hours under the same settings, but we believe that our looping browser script is a more accurate representation of non-stop WLAN use. Users can still squeeze out just over 4 hours if under extreme processing loads at maximum display brightness.

It's worth mentioning that charging from nearly 0 percent to full capacity can take up to four to five hours. The notebook cannot be powered on if the battery is depleted even if connected to mains. Users will have to wait a few minutes for the battery to charge up a bit first.