Previous offerings from Lenovo, which bought over IBM's PC division over a year ago, have catered mainly to corporate and SMB users. However, its latest Y series, which include the Lenovo Y300 and larger Y400 systems, aims directly at consumer's hearts with their affordable pricing and multimedia features. ...

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First Take

Previous offerings from Lenovo, which bought over IBM's PC division over a year ago, have catered mainly to corporate and SMB users. However, its latest Y series, which include the Lenovo Y300 and larger Y400 systems, aims directly at consumer's hearts with their affordable pricing and multimedia features.

Upside:The Lenovo Y300 is a 13-inch widescreen thin-and-light system with slot-in optical drive and discrete Nvidia GeForce Go 7300 graphics card. Though it integrates a Webcam above the display like many other contemporary portables, it has one cool feature which uses the camera in a novel way. Forget about biometric fingerprint scanning. The Lenovo Y300 allows one to login just by looking into the Webcam. By taking the distance between the eyes and nose, as well as several high points in one's facial features, the system can recognize authorized users and automatically logs in. Barring serious facial reconstruction, gaining a few pounds will not affect its accuracy.

The portable weighs 2.2kg, which is comparable with other 13-inch laptops like the MacBook. As a nod to its multimedia focus, a unique Lenovo Shuttle interface, which allows easy access to music and video files, with discrete playback controls makes it as easy to listen to your tunes as well as peek at your movies.

Downside: With more and more notebooks like the Sony C series, HP Pavilion lineup and NEC's Versa E6200 going for a unique aesthetic perspective, this Lenovo doesn't really break any new ground with its silver plastic body and not-so-sleek lines. The slot-in optical drive may look cool, but it excludes the use of the smaller 3-inch discs.

Outlook: It may not be a babe on the catwalks, but Lenovo has gasped the formula for a competent multimedia portable with the Y300. Add the unique face recognition software and the Shuttle interface, this notebook should find favor with users who prefer function over form.

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Lenovo Y300 (Core 2 Duo T5500 processor 1.66GHz; 1GB RAM)

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User Reviews

Rasheed

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Utterly competent

Feb 25, 2008

Rating: 8 out of 10 (Excellent)
Pros: light weight, screen clarity, battery life, ruggedness
Cons: mousepad, gets very hot, fan-noise, lousy speakers
Opinion:
I was looking for the lightest "complete" laptop I could afford. Removable drives etc were not an option for me because I'd still have to lug them around in the bag. For this same reason, I actually took in to consideration the weight of the power supply and cables for each laptop I considered. The Y300 was by far the best value for money on that account. The next step up would have been at least US$500 more.

I've now been using this quite intensively for the last 11 months and its stood up to quite a lot of rough treatment. I don't toss it like a frisbee but neither am I overtly delicate in my handling, shoving it in and out of various bags, jogging it around in my backpack, using it everywhere from the beach to street cafes, to all over my house and office. Its been in very high ... Read more

 

leegc

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Good for the Price

Feb 5, 2008

Rating: 8 out of 10 (Excellent)
Pros: Weight, size, battery life, noise control, price
Cons: Tacky plastic design, bundled sotware
Opinion:
While it's nowhere near as light and compact as a MacBook Air, the Y300/310 is nonetheless quite trim for a 13" notebook. Made entirely of tacky plastic, the Y300/310 looks and feels like a toy. It's many chrome buttons and those huge orange mulitimedia buttons hack right back to the 1960s and 70s. Sony VAIO this Lenovo is certainly NOT!

Despite it's aesthetics the Y300/310 is still very well assembled together. You won't find any panels that squeak or give way when pressed. The slot-in DVD writer does away the traditional CD trays and would probably last a bit longer. Don't expect it to survive a fall though as the Y300/310 would quite possibly shatter like glass! There's no rollcage like the Thinkpads do and the lack of water spillways means you'll have to be extra cautious when drinking liquids around the notebook.

The few bundled Lenovo software like the Shuttle is a poor copy of the ... Read more

 

alzw87

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small and light

Jun 30, 2007

Rating: 9 out of 10 (Spectacular)
Pros: 13.1 inch, dvd-rw, bluetooth, webcam, infrared and all the powerful features needed today.
Cons: if only it was window vista home premium.
Opinion:
a happy user of the lenovo y300. all the features that i need are all built in it. =D

 

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