By Brian X. Chen
LAS VEGAS — Dubbed the Skylight, Lenovo’s smartbook is one of the freshest looking products showcased so far at CES. It’s a groovy “notbook” (a netbook that tries oh-so-hard to not be called a netbook, but in essence still is one) with an extremely thin form factor, rounded edges, a 10-inch screen and an ARM-based processor.
Why’s it called a smartbook? Oh, ’cause it features the Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, which you’d typically find in smartphones. The Snapdragon processor clocks in at a wee 1 GHz — meager by our standards today — but Lenovo promises it will be sufficient for web-centric utilities. (The purposes of a,cough, netbook.) Plus, the advantage of using a low-powered ARM-based chip is long battery life: 10 hours, so Lenovo claims.
I had some hands-on time with the Skylight, and I really enjoyed the feel of its light weight (less than two pounds) and polished body. The curved corners give it a more modern look. The keyboard? So-so for a netbook this small, though I’ve reviewed netbooks with better keyboards closer to full size, such as the HP Mini 5101. The trackpad is solid — wider and better than the MSI Wind’s cramp inducer.
A somewhat quirky feature is a flip-out compartment above the keyboard, which contains a USB port. Ideally, you’d want to stick a fat drive there with a couple of gigs of storage, like the one shown in the photo above. Keep in mind the idea of this netbook is to do most of your computing in the cloud, so you’ll have a chance to be creative with how you want to store your data. Most of your space is probably going to be allocated to the OS and a few crucial native apps.
Some more specs:
- Operating System: Linux
- Resolution: 1,278-by-720 pixels
- Battery life: 10 hours, according to Lenovo
- Connectivity: Two USB ports, Micro SDHC (with card installed), SIM slot, multimedia card slot (SD, SDHC, MMC), mini HDMI connector, headset jack
- Camera: 1.3-megapixel webcam
- Colors: Earth red and lotus blue
Note the OS — a Lenovo build of Linux. I’ve never been a big fan of Linux, but I’m sure plenty of Red Hat fans will find the Skylight intriguing.
Will the Skylight deliver on its promises? We’ll put this baby through benchmark and battery testing once we get a review unit in the lab. For now, I have mostly positive early impressions.
Overall, the Skylight is a breath of fresh air compared to the rather monotonous netbook product category — a slew of mini notes that typically come equipped with a 1.6-GHz Intel Atom processor, a 10-inch screen, and, and …snore…
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