Lenovo S20-30 Netbook Review

[Redaktion]

A netbook with Bing. The S20-30 was designed to be a little, mobile machine for writing and surfing. For around 250 Euros (~315 USD), you'll get a quiet netbook with a matte screen and Windows 8.1. The battery life is good, too.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-S20-30-Netbook-Review.130285.0.html

[Matej]

It would be interesting to compare this laptop and asus's x205ta. Both windows netbooks and very cheap. Great review

[dog]

Good article

[Ranjan]

I purchased this notebook only because of it's extremely low price though it comes along with Windows 8.1. And guess what I experienced?? - a waster piece of machinery. I had no knowledge about it's new mobile processor so I was not bothered about it's performance thinking it will be efficient since it was released last year only. It turned out that, the laptop is TOO TOO TOO...slow. If anyone does not believe this, go and try yourself but don't buy and later repent. I doubt that increasing the RAM to 4 GB will help, so I have been planning to sell it off. To elaborate little further about what I disliked;
- Processor too slow, poorest form of multi-tasking, it gets stuck unnecessarily. For instance only 3 to 4 tabs in firefox browser and let's say, two notepads with Windows Media Player can make your system hang !!! Are we in 2015 !!
- The display is too bad with very low contrast level and brightness.
I feel Lenovo should not manufacture such piece of crap by compromising so much on the processing speed. I wonder if there is a single user of this laptop who is satisfied.

[Dr. Vipin]

With Windows 8.1 I too observed lag which can be attributed to its 2 GB RAM which is not upgradable.

Along with Windows I installed Ubuntu 14.04. I also installed professional data analysis software ROOT. In Ubuntu I did not observe any lag.

[university student]

I purchased this laptop to be used for university due to its low price, and the fact that I would be doing only very light work such as internet browsing, typing notes and assignments (no games) etc. Within the first 2 hours of setting it up and using it, the machine ran frustratingly slowly - as someone above mentioned it freezes with only a few tabs in Google Chrome open with Microsoft OneNote or Word running, which as a student I do A LOT. The fact that the RAM is not upgrade-able does not help this in anyway. I am thankful for the removable battery which allowed me to shutdown the computer immediately whenever it froze, however the lags and freezing happened so frequently, I got sick of it and ended up buying an SSD to swap out the HDD, and I also downgraded it to Windows 7 (since it doesn't even have a touchscreen). It runs much much smoother (as long as you don't have 15+ tabs in Chrome open), doesn't freeze, and even starts up in seconds, which is what is so good about SSD's in laptops.

I also disagree with the review's statement about the battery life being decent. I get on average about a bit over 3 hours max even though I am just using it for light study related tasks (no games as I said earlier). The matte screen means I have to turn up the brightness which is probably what has shortened the battery life for me so much, however if I don't do this it strains my eyes a lot to be able to clearly see what is on the screen. The laptop and charger are both small and light, so it's not too much of a hassle to have both with me at all times, however if I am studying away from a powerpoint, I can only get about 3 hours of studying done before the machine shuts down itself, which is extremely inconvenient.

To those who are planning to buy this, be prepared to cough up an extra $100 or so for the SSD (which I think is fair given you're paying a low price for this laptop in the first place), and also make sure you'll be near a power source if you plan to use this for more than 3-4 hours straight everyday, otherwise it will be an absolute nightmare to use. Once you get the SSD in and you're always near a powerpoint, it's actually very pleasant to use. The keyboard is decent and Lenovo has done a good job by providing us with two individual left and right mouse keys. The only annoying thing would be that the function keys have been swapped (F1, F2 and F3 all control volume, F11 and F12 control brightness etc), and what I have found especially annoying is that the F4 key is a close program button - if you accidentally hit it while you have something running, it will close it without a second thought which is extremely annoying (sometimes I need to refresh my browser, which is the F5 key, but I accidentally hit F4 and thus close a few tabs I had open for research, so I have to find these again).

[Arthur]

Bought it and stopped using it after a month as it DRAMATICALLY REDUCED MY EYE VISION. Will sell for parts as I don't want anyone else to get suffered from it.

[Eric]

My lenovo s20 spends more time with its screen blacking out than when it's on...
It blacks out then cuts off and basically I have to reboot every 15 minutes...I've tried factory resetting it 2x...same problem.
Its the worst laptop I've ever owned.

[koos]

What a piece of utter crap. Why it is still in my house is beyond me but I have never ever just turned it on. It is always a lengthy process of waiting restarting waiting and giving up half the time. I've tried different OS including linux and even there it fails miserably.

[IanHenderson]

With W10 its pants.   Linux Mint 19.3 it way way better.