Lenovo U330 Touch First Impressions

[Hyrikan]

Sup' Guys,

 

since I finished school 3 months ago and will now start to study at University I recently searched for a new laptop for this purpose.

My requirements were basically a small (13,3 inch or smaller), relatively light-weight Ultrabook with a reasonably long batttery life - because I'm going to study Chemistry I wanted a touchscreen, so that I can draw molecules etc. by hand (there are programs like Chemsketch, but they suck if you have to do something quick).

 

I did some serious research on the topic (basically since I left school) and was originally looking at a transformer style ultrabook. But after Haswell launched and it became clear how much it improved battery life on laptops I was looking for a Haswell-based Ultrabook. It turned out, that nearly no touch-ultrabooks were released with the new architecture. Two weeks ago I finally found the Lenovo U330 Touch, which isn't a transformer, but still has a touchscreen, and is Haswell based. So I took the risk of buying a completly new product with no "big" reviews and I hope I can give you a decent overview of the product.

 

 

First of all: Specs

 

Processor - I5-4200U (2x1,6GHz Turbo 2,6GHz)

GPU - Integrated Intel HD 4400

RAM - 8GB

Storage - 500GB Seagate Momentus XT --- NOTE: I changed the Momentus XT for a Samsung 840 EVO, so keep that in mind if I talk about responsiveness etc.

Display - 13,3 Inch 1366x768 Multitouch Display (I can't find out if it's an IPS-panel, but the viewing angels look quite good, so it might be one)

Weight - 1,7kg

 

First Impression

 

The Laptop comes in a solid packaging, everything is managed quite well so I wouldn't worry much about any damage in shippping. Between keyboard and display you find the usual protection sheet, which I recommend to keep - it really helps to prevent the keys to "stain" the display. Furthermore there are plastic strips on the hinge and the side of the laptop.

Included in the packaging is the power brick (reasonably small and reasonably long cable) and the usual manual.

The laptop itself looks outstanding: The body is full made out of brushed aluminum and feels really solid. The backplate screws in with 12 screws that are removable with a standard philips head. I don't expect any problems with the "outer" parts of the U330, everything feels solid and seems to be put together very well.

I/O-wise the U330 has a pretty standard amount of ports:

On the left side you find: HDMI-Out, USB3.0, and a combined microphone/headphone-jack.

On the right side you find: Power-In (some kind of propietary Lenovo port), 2 USB2.0 ports and a SD-Card reader, as well as power and battery indicators.

The back and front are completly clear, since the ventilation is hidden on the bottom of the unit as well as between the hinge and the display.

 

Changing the Harddrive

 

Since I'm running a SSD in my main rig I didn't want to miss the snappiness and speed it gives me in my laptop and therefore decided to change the SSHD that's build in to a 256GB Samsung 840Evo. Changing the drive was as easy as it gets - just undo the 12 screws at the back (standard philps head) and you have the motherboard in front of you - easy access to the harddrive, the fan (can be useful for cleaning in the future) and the RAM. I used Samsung's migration software, put the SSD in and the laptop was up and running again.

 

 

Experience

 

The overall experience with this machine over the last week has been great. Windows8 is a blast when it comes to boot up times (9 seconds for a complete boot-up, 2 seconds for wake up from sleep) and the responsiveness while running is really good. Note: If installed classic start, so I don't use ModernUI that much, but I don't mind it either

The needs I have for this machine (which is basically running office, chemsketch, browsing the web and play movies) are fullfilled perfectly, I never encountered any lag whatsoever.

Having used a touchscreen on an Ultrabook for only a week now, I already don't want to miss it anymore. It adds so much functionality to the device, especially when it comes to take notes in a University lesson. It's so much easier to draw something by hand, than trying to do it with a mouse.

Another thing I want to point out is that the laptop is incredibly quiet with a SSD. If you don't watch a video or do other "heavy" work it cools itself completly passive so that you don't hear any noise. And even when the fan speed up it's not super loud and especially hasn't got a annoying tone to it.

Overall I'm very satisfied with the power the U330 provides me, I don't need it to do any heavy work (I have two quite capable desktops in my flat), so I have to admit I didn't stress it, but I'm of the opinion that's not the usecase for a product like this.

 

Components

 

Display:

I have mixed feelings towards the display. It's certainly one of the better panels I've encountered on laptops - the viewing angle is great, the colors are fairly accurate and the touchscreen is very precise. The things that bother me are that it's a glossy panel, so you can definetly see reflection if the screens shows something black, and that the brightness could be a bit higher. It's not like you can't see anything in the sun, but a few cd/m² more would help with reading texts outside on a summer day.

 

Keyboard:

I think the keyboard is one of the absolute positive points of the U330. It's obviously not nearly as good as the keyboards I use day by day (a Razer BlackWidow and a CMStorm QuickFire (MX Browns), but I could type on it without doing a massive amount of mistakes. Despite the small formfactor lenovo managed to put keys with standard width on the notebook. The only real difference to a "normal" keyboard is the short back button, which I personally don't mind, but might be a problem for people with smaller hands. (Sup' Linus? xP)

 

Battery:

The U330 uses a non replacable Lithium-polymere battery with a capacity of 45 Whrs. It the announced battery life is 10hrs in idle and 6hrs under load. In the week I've been using the laptop now I find this numbers quite accurate - maybe the idle time is a bit higher and the load time a bit lower, but not that much that it couldn't be in the margin of error).

From a usability perspective I can tell you that it last for my average university day without a need to recharge, but I'm not quite sure if it will a year down the road (taking in account that batteries degrade over time etc.).

 

Conclusion

 

The Lenovo U330 Touch is definetely one of the best tech-purchases I've mad in a while. It fits my usecase perfectly and I don't miss that it can't transform into a tablet at all. It's fast enough to do every basic work, the integrated graphics has no problem with playing back Full-HD videos. For the price point it comes in (I payed 699€ in Germany) it's a very interesting product to look at if you are searching for an Ultrabook for university or school.

I would definitely recommend the U330 Touch.

 

Hope this review can help you guys, pictures will follow as soon as it gets day again here - lighting sucks at the moment, so be sure to check the thread out again if you want to see the product.

[Chatzev]

Thanks for this review! I guess I will keep this in consideration when I purchase my sister a new laptop.

[Emperor_Piehead]

If it wasn't 1366x768 I would consider it for my next laptop. Great review 

[Hyrikan]

If it wasn't 1366x768 I would consider it for my next laptop. Great review 

I heard it will come out in FullHD soon. I just hadn't the time to wait for it. And I personally don't mind the "low" resolution, since it's a pure school laptop.

[Emperor_Piehead]

I heard it will come out in FullHD soon. I just hadn't the time to wait for it. And I personally don't mind the "low" resolution, since it's a pure school laptop.

I have a 2560x1440 monitor so 1366x768 looks a bit on the garbage side for me. I've been eyeing the lenovo yoga 2 for my next laptop when it comes out. If I had the money I might jump for the model with the 3200x1800 screen.

[Hyrikan]

I run 4 FullHD monitors on my personal rig and have a father with 2 4K monitors, so yeah i'm used to high resolutions xP. I just don't mind the low resolution on a tiny display like this, but this comes down to personal preferences i guess.

[trylo]

What about the 8GB of cache? I just bought this laptop with FHD screen, I'm going to change the HDD to SSD and I'm wondering if the 8GB of cache is on msata? Do you take that out?

Also I must say the fan is rather loud in my opinion (I have the i7 version), I wonder if I should return it...

[flibberdipper]

Cool. Kinda interesting. But that screen would drive me nuts.

[trylo]

Cool. Kinda interesting. But that screen would drive me nuts.

Yeah, I gave it back and bought Yoga 2 Pro