Gadget review: Pricey performer

Powered by Intel's vision and CULV (Consumer Ultra Low Voltage) processors, the line-up of slim and lightweight laptops have landed. In addition, these laptops feature a longer battery life, no optical drive and a solid state drive — all designed to improve performance and increase battery life, making them true all-day machines

The first unit we got our hands on was the Lenovo IdeaPad U300s in the Clementine Orange shade, which looked excellent and, more importantly, not like yet another rip-off of the Macbook Air. The insides have a deep and matte-black finish which give it a look of minimalistic elegance. Lenovo has shown us how less really is more.

The IdeaPad U300s weighs in at 2.9 pounds (1.31kg) which makes it extremely light, and at a uniform 0.58 inches of thickness, it sheds the bulk too.

The keyboard, in line with other Lenovo machines, is excellent in terms of key spacing and feedback. However, the lack of backlighting is a disappointment, especially since it's starting to become a standard feature on most new portable laptops. The track pad is where the U300s redeems itself — it's of a decent size coupled with two clickable buttons. It supports multitouch gestures, such as two-finger scrolling — although you may sometimes find yourself hitting the track pad by mistake because of its proximity to the keyboard.

Powered by an Intel i7 processor clocking in at 1.8GHz and 4GB of RAM bundled with 256GB SSD, the laptop won't be your primary weapon in video or photo processing, but it will handle your everyday computing tasks perfectly well. It also played high-definition video without any issues and thus isn't an all-work-and-no-play kind of machine.

The screen on the U300s is a 13.3-incher with a disappointing resolution of 1,366x768. While this resolution isn't bad by any means, we're seeing higher resolutions crop up on similar displays for a while now, thereby making Lenovo's decision even more surprising. That aside, the brightness is excellent on the machine with acceptable viewing angles. The display supports Intel's wireless display (Wi-Di) technology — a welcome addition.

The upside of the low-res display is the battery life — with a real life usage of close to six hours, the Lenovo U300S can boast of being one of the best among PCs and may come close to all-day computing.

Here comes the downer though. At Dh6,999 the Lenovo U300s is priced at the highest end of portable machines. Granted, the design, battery life and performance are stellar, but the machine also has a standard level display and missing SD card and backlight keyboard capabilities. This might be one of the better Ultrabooks on the market as of now, but with more coming in early next year, let's see how well the U300s stands up against them and consequently justifies its price tag.

Bhavishya Kanjhan is a digital marketing professional and an early adopter of all things digital. Follow his tweets on @bhavishya