Lenovo Ideapad S400 (59-355933) Laptop (Pentium 2nd Gen/2 GB/500 GB/Windows 8/1)

First thing that any potential buyer must know is this device is light, like real real light! That is probably the best feature it has. Feels awesome to carry around. The build is polished and beautiful but is susceptible to dents, so handle with care. This is not like the Thinkpads!! The Pentium 987 processor is good enough to do most tasks. The AMD Radeon 7450 chip does the graphics a world of good, though if you're not much into graphics intensive stuff you can change the graphics to the Intel UMA (HD 2000 apparently) to save battery. The RAM is just about okay for Windows 8, though if you want to multitask you may want to upgrade to 4GB and the 500GB HDD is okay. The main issue here is Windows 8 itself. It plain sucks on a non-touch platform. Hence replaced it with Windows 7 (the drivers are available from the Lenovo website, though you may want to call them to get assistance and they are very professional) The primary OS I use is Xubuntu 64-bit. Everything works out of the box like Ethernet, wi-fi, Bluetooth etc. Steam does not work with the AMD graphics chip and the AMD driver being used. Hence switched to Intel UMA in the BIOS. Tried playing TF2 on Steam, it plays alright but the frames hover in the 20's and sometimes there is lag. On the whole this is a netbook that is light and gives around 4 hours on Linux and about half hour lesser on Windows. I recommend Ubuntu (Xubuntu or Lubuntu preferred to save RAM and power). Audio/video/web cam all are decent and the keyboard and touchpad are awesome. Though for a little extra I'd recommend the Ideapad S400 with the Core i3, has HD 3000 for UMA and some extra stuff like Hyper-threading etc.

I bought this a year back and thought I owe a review for this product. This is a very good but cheap imitation of apple mac air laptops. If you do not run the native windows 8 on this laptop, then you will get into trouble. Windows 7 and Ubuntu is not very well supported. Heats like a frying pan. The touchpad is just a shame. After a year of use it's cheap pieces are coming off. I ran into troubles with the screen and lenovo service is pathetic. They just refused to do anything. If you are ready to shell out ~30k you will be better off with a Dell. I won't recommend anything lenovo.