Event Coverage

Lenovo’s Colorful New Mainstream Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks

By Leo Boon Yeow - 5 Jun 2012

Lenovo’s Colorful New Mainstream Ivy Bridge Ultrabooks

Lifestyle Ultrabook Designs for the Fashion Conscious

Today, Lenovo introduced two new Ultrabook models, namely the IdeaPad U310 (13.3-inch), and the IdeaPad U410 (14-inch). This is Lenovo’s Ivy Bridge follow up to last year’s very impressive IdeaPad U300s Ultrabook. These new models (both using Core i5 ultra-low-voltage processors) are however, targeted at mainstream users. That means while these notebooks retain the same size and look as the U300s, they are slightly heavier, and have hybrid (500GB for U310 or 750GB for U410 with 32GB SSD cache) drives instead of full solid state drives.

The U310 Ultrabook will come in three different colors: lavender, blue and black.

While the smaller 13.3-inch U310 relies on the onboard graphics (Intel HD 4000) that comes with its brand new Ivy Bridge Core i5 processor, the 14-inch U410 sports discrete graphics - which is the NVIDIA GeForce 610M (1GB). While this makes it slightly more powerful than the integrated graphics found on the new Ivy Bridge processors, you probably shouldn’t expect to play games that are more graphical intensive than those found on Facebook. However, for most mainstream users, it should be more than enough.

The U410 will come in punchier red and blue hues, in addition to black.

As for build quality, we’re still very impressed with the full aluminum body of both new models. Design-wise, they are still very much the same, with top notch build quality. Our favorite features on the U300s were the very robust chiclet keyboard, and the large clickpad - both of which can still be found on the U310 and U410. And in case you’re not sure if the wide variety of colors (lavender, blue, and black for U310; red, blue, and black for U410) available for these notebooks would make them suitable fashion accessories, Lenovo is also collaborating with local multi-label online retailer Eriin to showcase just how these colorful machines would match your wardrobe.

The new Ultrabooks remain largely the same as Lenovo's previous generation of Ultrabooks. All are generously covered in aluminum, a luxurious material which also happens to dissipate heat pretty well.

The 18mm thick, 1.6kg U310 (above) has more of its ports on the left side of the machine. It also has an RJ45 port, which looks pretty big alongside the two USB 3.0 ports and the HDMI port. The 21mm thick, 1.7kg U410 only has two USB 2.0 ports and an audio jack on its left side.

On the right side, the U310 is more sparse on ports, while the U410 has everything else - card reader, two USB 3.0 ports, HDMI and RJ45 ports - you name it.

The Lenovo Ideapad U310 will retail first on the 7th of June, for S$1,499, just in time for the PC Show. But the bigger U410 will reach Singapore by the end of June, and will be going for S$1,599.

Join HWZ's Telegram channel here and catch all the latest tech news!
Our articles may contain affiliate links. If you buy through these links, we may earn a small commission.