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Our verdict
The Lenovo Ideapad 710S is a lightweight 13-inch notebook with a great display and solid performance at a good price.
To the
Thin and light design; Bright, vivid display; Decent multitasking performance; Strong audio
Against
Confusing keyboard layout;Annoying bloatware;Slow SSD
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The thin and light Lenovo Ideapad 710S offers a lot for just $799. The ultraportable laptop features a zippy Core i5 processor, powerful sound, and a bright, vibrant 13.3-inch display that helps it stand out from the crowd Stand out from the crowd. While its keyboard layout may confuse some users at first and we at Lenovo would rather dismiss it with the bloatware, the Ideapad 710S is a serious contender for your next ultraportable notebook.
draft
The Lenovo Ideapad 710S is a sleek silver ultraportable with a magnesium-aluminum chassis. The display's left and right bezels are quite thin, but the top bezel is twice as thick because it houses the notebook's webcam.
The Lenovo Ideapad 710S only weighs 2.4 pounds, which is less than that
Asus ZenBook UX303UA
(3.4 pounds), the late 2015 nontouch
Dell XPS 13
(2.7 pounds) and the
Acer Aspire S13
(2.9 pounds). With a thickness of 0.55 inches, it is thinner than the Asus ZenBook UX303UA (0.8 inches) and similar to the Acer Aspire S 13 (0.57 inches). The XPS 13 is 0.3 to 0.6 inches thick.
ports
As thin as the Ideapad 710S is, it offers decent connectivity. There is a USB 3.0 port and a headphone jack on the left side, while on the right side there is a second USB 3.0 port, an SD card reader and a mini -HDMI port.
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The 13.3-inch 1080p display on the Lenovo Ideapad 710S is sharp and offers great colors. When I streamed a Suicide Squad trailer onto the notebook, I was mesmerized by the small cracks in Killer Croc's scales and the details of El Diablos Tattoos. The electric green of the Joker's hair appeared vividly onscreen; dark corners of Gotham rendered with accurate, jet black tones; and flames shot from El Diablo with a rich, orange glow.
According to our colorimeter, the 710S's screen produces 110 percent of the sRGB spectrum. That's more than the Aspire S 13 (107 percent), the Dell XPS 13 (92 percent), and the ultraportable average (89 percent), but slightly less than the Asus ZenBook UX303UA (116 percent).
The Ideapad 710S reproduces colors accurately, according to its score of 0.95 in the Delta-E test (zero is perfect). That's better than the ZenBook UX303UA (4.3), the XPS 13 (8.2) and the Category average (3.7) and similar to the Aspire S 13 (0.98).
MORE:
Best Lenovo Laptops
The Ideapad 710S's display can get exceptionally bright, emitting up to 326 cd/m² (a measure of brightness). This is similar to the Aspire S 13 (327 cd/m²) and the ZenBook UX303UA (322 cd/m²) and brighter than the Dell XPS 13 (318 nits) and the class average (303 nits). This allows for excellent viewing angles as colors remain strong at 45 degrees left and right.
keyboard and touchpad
The 710S's backlit keyboard offers a comfortable typing experience, but its layout has a learning curve. Its keys only offer 1.35 millimeters of travel (less than the 1.5 to 2mm we're hoping to see), and the keys aren't that clicky as I'd like, but I was still typing at 80 words per minute, which is about my average.
Lenovo reduced the right Shift key to the size of a regular letter key and placed it to the right of the up key, in a spot that confused my typist's hands for a while. Also, the directional keys are the same size as the letter keys - another twist on this irregular keyboard. I got myself used to these peculiarities during testing, but the selection still baffles me.
The Ideapad 710S's 4.1 x 2.7-inch buttonless touchpad accurately registered my fingers as I navigated the desktop. It quickly recognized Chrome's two-finger scrolling and three-finger Windows navigation gestures.
Audio
The Ideapad 710S may be thin, but it filled our large conference room with a powerful rendition of Radiohead's "Burn the Witch". The track's underlying bass sounded strong, Thom Yorke's vocals came through clearly, and violin strings were sweetly rendered.
Lenovo's preinstalled Dolby Audio Enhancer offers a range of presets - including Dynamic, Movie, and Game - but I found the default Music option offered the best balance.
perfomance
Equipped with a Core i5-6200U processor and 8GB of RAM, the Lenovo Ideapad 710S supports productive multitasking. When I split my screen between 17 Chrome tabs - including Slack, a Google Doc and TweetDeck - and a YouTube streaming video, it switched I switched between tabs and scrolled through articles without lag. I only noticed a slowdown after adding an 18th tab, a simple blog post that wouldn't ask for much on its own.
In the Geekbench 3 general performance test, the Ideapad 710S scored a decent 6180, slightly beating the average ultraportable notebook (5101). The Core i5-6200U-powered Aspire S 13 (6331), ZenBook UX303UA (6290) and XPS 13 ( 6.391) achieve slightly better grades.
MORE:
Best Ultrabooks (Thin and Light Windows Laptops)
The Ideapad 710S's 128GB SSD is slower than the competition, duplicating 4.97GB of multimedia files in 45 seconds at a speed of 113.1MB/s. Class average (145.47MB/s) as well as the SSDs of the Aspire S 13 (167.61 MBit/s), the ZenBook UX303UA (159.04 MBit/s) and the XPS 13 (231.33 MBit/s) copied faster.
The Ideapad 710S earned a decent time in our OpenOffice macro test, matching 20,000 names to addresses in 4 minutes and 30 seconds. That's a shorter time than the class average (7:13), slightly faster than the XPS 13 (4: 34) and just behind the Aspire S 13 and the ZenBook UX303UA (both 4:29).
Despite only having integrated Intel HD 520 graphics, the Ideapad 710S delivered enough torque to play rounds of the casual games Asphalt 8 and Candy Crush Soda Saga. In the 3DMark Ice Storm Unlimited graphics test, the Ideapad scored 53,769 points, which the XPS 13 (49,394) and the ultraportable average (46,260), while the Aspire S 13 (63,280) and ZenBook UX303UA (63,849) scored higher.
battery life
The Lenovo Ideapad 710S offers decent endurance, but the competition offers more. The Ideapad lasted 7 hours and 25 minutes in the Laptop Mag Battery Test; that's below the ultraportable average (7:53). Aspire S 13 (9:08) , ZenBook UX303UA (8:27) and XPS 13 (11:54) last longer.
MORE:
Laptops with the longest battery life
cam
The Lenovo Ideapad 710S's 0.9-megapixel webcam captured grainy, blurry selfies of me in our office. The photos appear spotty and lack detail, but the red wall with our company's Purch logo and the blue of my shirt are accurately rendered.
heat
When using it on your lap, you can feel a little warmth from the Ideapad 710S. After streaming 15 minutes of HD video on the notebook, our heat gun measured its underside to 94 degrees Fahrenheit, which is just below our 95-degree comfort threshold touchpad (79.5 degrees) and keyboard (87.5 degrees) did not exceed our limits.
software
Lenovo packed the Ideapad 710S with many of its own system management utilities - so many that they are divided into two groups in the Start menu. These include REACHit for sending files between devices, Lenovo Companion for running system diagnostics, OneKey Recovery for backups, and Lenovo Settings to access settings.
The Lenovo Photo Master image management application includes photo adjustment features, such as. For more information on why you might want to erase and reload Windows after purchasing a computer, see
Read our post on the falls of bloatware
.
Lenovo offers a one-year hardware warranty as standard. See how Lenovo does it in our
Report on the best and worst brands
and
Technical support showdown
.
setting options
Lenovo sells the Ideapad 710S in three models, starting with the $799 entry-level configuration, which offers a Core i5-6200U processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 128GB SSD drive. For $1,199, you get that Notebook with a Core i7-6560U processor, 8GB of RAM, Intel Iris 540 graphics and a 512GB SSD. The top-of-the-range $1,399 model is currently available for $1,199 and features a Core i7-6560U processor , 16 GB RAM, Intel Iris 540 graphics and a 512 GB SSD.
bottom line
The Lenovo Ideapad 710S is an ultraportable notebook worthy of gracing your bag. It's thinner and lighter than the competition, while offering enough speed and sound to enliven both your workflow and your next jam session. Unfortunately, it is Lenovo's keyboard layout takes some getting used to and the notebook's battery life is a bit below average. But overall, the Ideapad 710S is a very strong lightweight notebook.
For $50 less than the 710S, you can get the Acer Aspire S 13, which offers comparable performance and over an hour of extra battery life. The Asus ZenBook UX303UA offers a better keyboard for a similar price but is a full pound heavier. The Dell XPS 13 remains our top ultraportable, thanks to its borderless display and close to 12 hours of battery life, but it costs $100 more than the Lenovo for a comparable configuration.
All in all, the Ideapad 710S is a reliable 13.3-inch notebook that should definitely be considered if you value lightness and a great display.
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Lenovo IdeaPad 710S specifications
Bluetooth
Bluetooth 4.0
brand
Lenovo
CPU
2.3GHz Intel Core i5-6200U processor
card slots
4-1 card reader
corporate website
http://shop.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/700-series/710s/
screen size
13.3
graphic card
Intel HD Graphics 520
disk size
128GB SSD
disk type
PCIe SSD
native resolution
1920x1080
operating system
Windows 10 Home
Connections (except USB)
USB 3.0, headphone/microphone, mini HDMI
R.A.M.
8GB
size
12.09 x 8.42 x 0.55 inches
touchpad size
4.1 x 2.7 inches
video memory
Divided
Warranty/Support
A year
Weight
2.4 pounds
Wireless Internet access
802.11ac
WiFi model
Lenovo AC Wireless (2x2)
Fewer
