CES 2010 Roundup: Lenovo Ideapad U1 Hybrid

Posted on 16. Jan, 2010 by Nana Kwabena Owusu in Gadgets

Tablets and 3D compatible televisions were the main predictions of every tech blogger or media outfit for CES. They were not wrong.

When it comes to tablets the Lenovo Ideapad U1 Hybrid was the talk of CES. The Lenovo Ideapad U1 is based on a super interesting half-tablet, half ultraportable laptop concept in which the screen detaches from the base of the laptop to become a full feature touchscreen tablet (or slate, depending on which buzzword camp you belong).

Now for me the killer feature is that because the base can also function as a separate Core 2 Duo (some say Dual Core) laptop when the the screen is released, you have real two device separation, each complete with its own battery and Wi-Fi card.

And so what? Imagine one person typing up a document with the notebook by attaching it to a monitor while another person checks out their email, Facebook and YouTube on the couch using the tablet.

As a notebook, the Lenovo Ideapad runs on an Intel CULV processor, 4 GB RAM and has a 128GB SSD drive powered by Windows 7 Home Premium. The device looks stylish and well designed from photos (see below) and several hands-on reviews seem to suggest the same.

Images Courtesy: Ndevil via a Creative Commons License

The sleek round notebook has a form almost like the old clamshell iBooks from years ago, or a Motorola PEBL as a laptop. Textured surfaces on the inside and a shiny, translucent ruby lid give the machine an instantly eye-catching appeal

CNET

The screen becomes a Snapdragon CPU powered tablet running Lenovo’s custom Linux based OS, Skylight. The detached screen also houses the 3G and Bluetooth antennas, as well as speakers and a webcam. It also has a 16Gb SSD drive for storing files.

No doubt this device is cool but does it work. Only an actual hands on can tell us that and so lets find out from those that played with it.

Touchscreen

How’s the touch experience? Well, the resistive 11.6-screen supports multitouch, (Lenovo wasn’t saying where it came from) and though it was responsive, it was far from flawless; we had to double tap a few times to make sure our touches registered. It’s also a little bit loose, although we expect that’ll be cleared up by the time the U1 ships.

Windows could be expanded and photos zoomed in on with iPhone-esque multitouch, but the performance was generally choppier and laggier than on an iPhone.

Engadget

Apps, Media Playback, Browsing

– it’s built around a six-panel interface, which can be customized with email, calendar, RSS, and social media widgets, and there’s a second four-panel screen with image, music, video, and e-reader widgets that’s especially finger friendly.

Engadget

There’s a movie gadget that lets you scroll through and play your videos. There’s a photo gadget that lets you scroll through thumbnails of your photos and open them. There are gadgets for Twitter and Facebook. There’s an eReader gadget. It almost goes without saying that there’s a Firefox gadget.

Laptop Mag

Screen

Unfortunately, the screen itself was pretty abysmal, with terrible horizontal and vertical viewing angles — it basically disappeared at 45 degrees off axis. That’s probably not optimal for a hand-held device, and we’re hoping Lenovo sorts that out before release.

Engadget

Switching and Syncing between Laptop and Tablet

You actually wouldn’t know there’s a slate hiding in there — until you pull it out and watch it switch to Lenovo’s Skylight UI, a process that was smooth and quick for us. Lenovo says the goal is for the full switch to occur in under 3 seconds, and the U1 delivered, as far as we could tell.

Engadget

One of the most impressive things about the U1 Hybrid is its ability to share information about the user session on the tablet with the base. Right now that means that, if you are surfing the Web on the tablet and then reattach it to the base, Windows will open a browser with the same Web page or pages (in the case of multiple tabs) you had open in Skylight OS. In Windows there is also a share program that makes it easy for users to copy media from the notebook base to the tablet.

Laptop Mag