Lenovo IdeaPad U310 13.3-Inch Deals

By Craig M. Hamm -
This review is from: Lenovo IdeaPad U310 13.3-Inch Touchscreen Ultrabook (Graphite Gray) (Personal Computers)
I generally gravitate towards Lenovo ThinkPad products for business, because they've always worked well for me in the past. I usually stay away from the IdeaPad line, because they're inferior, but I purchased this laptop for my dad, and was pretty pleasantly surprised. First off, the roughly equivalent ThinkPad (Carbon X1 Touch) is about three times the price, so I was heavily motivated by price as a factor. Of course the Carbon is a great laptop (I've used the previous generation for over a year, and I love it completely.) but it's tough to justify spending $1800 on a laptop that my Dad is going to use for email, Internet browsing and playing solitaire.

First off, the construction quality is fantastic. It feels very solidly built, and all the pieces fit together nicely. The touchscreen works great, and overall the screen looks pretty good. I like the fact that it has a lot of USB ports. (My ThinkPad has only two, which can be a real problem sometimes.)The hard drive, although theoretically slow, seems pretty zippy. I'm guessing this is because of the 24GB SSD that's attached. (It doesn't show up as an extra drive, so I can only assume there is some proprietary caching mechanism that it uses to keep the stuff that needs fast access on there.) The fact that it has only 4GB of RAM (non-upgradeable) was also a concern to me, but I've found in practice that setting up the virtual memory on an SSD makes 4GB seem like a lot more, since the HDD doesn't have to churn when swapping out programs between physical and virtual memory. I am a very heavy multi-tasker (I even have a second monitor so that I can multi-task) and the 4GB of RAM has never seemed to slow down the computer.

There are some negatives, which is why, although I'm very happy with the laptop, I was reluctant to give it five stars. First of all, I'm not nuts about the keyboard. Windows 8 has quite a few "special" new buttons that I've become accustomed to, such as the search button and the settings button. Many new laptops have these buttons on the function keys, but this one does not. Also, I found myself constantly trying to hit the backspace key, and instead hitting the "home" key, taking be to the beginning of the line. I don't have this problem on my Carbon X1, because the backspace key is the rightmost key on the keyboard. Finally, I hate glossy screens. If glossy is your thing, then this might not be a big deal to you, but I can't stand them. The ThinkPad has a matte screen finish, as do most business-centric laptops I've come across. I realize that the glossy looks pretty in the showroom, and might make a screen stand out among others, but they're impossible to keep clean, especially on a touch-screen device, and I avoid them whenever possible.

By vvelez -

This review is from: Lenovo IdeaPad U310 13.3-Inch Touchscreen Ultrabook (Graphite Gray) (Personal Computers)

The WiFi never worked correctly on this device. It would drop signal constantly and give very low connection speeds. I called Lenovo tech support and they told me to return it because it is a defect in the network card. Google "lenovo u310 wifi" and you will get a 70+ page thread made over a year ago about how this problem exists. Lenovo acknowledges it but still sells the device like it is.

By Eman -
This review is from: Lenovo IdeaPad U310 13.3-Inch Touchscreen Ultrabook (Graphite Gray) (Personal Computers)
So I just purchased this machine. It will NOT Let me Download ANY software (ie adobe reader, free subscription to Microsoft Office- it comes with ect). I called them and was on the phone for 1.5 hours. They are completely Unprofessional and continued to transfer me around. I started at Customer Service then was transfered to "Software" - where I was told I would have to PAY them to have them fix my BRAND NEW FRIGGEN COMPUTER, less than a week old. Then they transfered me to Hardware, which I was told "This is a courtesy one time and we will help you".

What?!?! My computer is BRAND NEW, less than a week old.

Conclusion: NO CUSTOMER SERVICE. NO WARRANTY. DONT BUY FROM THESE CLOWNS.

You have been warned.