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.