Lenovo adds VIA Nano powered IdeaPad S12

June 27, 2009 by LG Nilsson 

Lenovo IdeaPad S12There has been a little bit of confusion about the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 with regards to what’s going on and it turns out the company is planning multiple SKU’s, something we’d overseen. So the delay (we’ve updated the earlier post) is only for the model with the Nvidia ION chipset.

To our surprise, the pre-order page has been updated and now feature a VIA Nano powered version of the IdeaPad S12 and in a way, this might be the most interesting model, of the three. Lenovo has gone for the Nano ULV 2250 which has 1MB of cache (that’s twice of the Atom) and the CPU is clocked at 1,3GHz on an 800MHz bus. Even though the CPU clock is slower, we’d expect this processor to perform better than the Atom N270.

Lenovo hasn’t listed what chipset it will pair up the Nano CPU with, but it will have Chrome9 HC3 graphics. However, as this graphics solution is used by all Nano compatible chipsets from VIA, we can’t even make an educated guess as ato which chipset will be used.

The remaining features seems to be the same as of the Atom models, with 1GB of memory (oddly listed at 667MHz when 800MHz memory would be the right choice for this platform), the same 12.1-inch 1,280×800 display, a 160GB 2.5-inch hard drive, 802.11b/g WiFi and a 6-cell battery.

Hopefully more details will be out soon, but at $449 the VIA Nano SKU is $50 cheaper than the Atom N270 models with the Intel 945GSE chipset. You can find the product pre-order page here

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Comments

  • Any more news on this. I'm interested, but is the ION graphics worth the wait? Are the Chrome graphics any good? I'd use this primarily for a lappie, but also as a travel media player.
  • It depends what you want to do, but take into consideration that the ION chipset has the advantage of being able to offload the CPU for a lot of video related tasks, as long as you're using compatible software.
    As I don't know which chipset the S12 comes with in the VIA Nano SKU, it's hard to say how good it'll be, but VIA has been lagging behind a little bit on the graphics side.
    As we haven't had a chance to test either system it's hard to say, but if you intend to watch HD video (720p or above), then the ION model is most likely going to be worth waiting for.
    I just saw that there's a way to get a discount on the Atom and Nano versions, so the VIA based one is under $400with free shipping http://portablemonkey.com/article/deal-of-the-d...
    The ION version is likely to be a lot more expensive, with rumours suggesting as much as $600, which doesn't really seem worth it compared to what a normal 12-inch notebook costs.
    Also, check out the Samsung N510 which is about to launch, as it's also ION based, but with a slightly higher resolution 11.6-inch display.
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