It is well known that we shouldn’t dispute about tastes, but we can all agree that U350 is one of the prettiest laptops that we saw recently. Nothing flashy, simple and elegant design won our hearts. Cover is made out of dark brown plastic and has non-piano-finish surface with intricate carvings. Since almost every other model has piano glossy finish on their cover, this is a nice change. Even the power adapter is designed differently than any other that we saw recently. Despite its looks, cover is also decently rigid so it can protect display from accidents. Area around keyboard has brushed aluminum texture (finish) which also looks interesting, but also makes it easy to maintain.

Display is glare and was resolution of 1366x768, which is optimum for a display of this size. Colors are nice, with viewing angles being slightly above average. IdeaPad U350 is also equipped with ambient light sensor that will automatically adjust display brightness level.

Keyboard is little bit noisier, but for most users bigger problem will be rotated Ctrl and Fn keys. Bending is noticeable but not in amount that will make typing an unpleasant experience. Frequently used keys, Esc and Delete, are strategically located in the corners so you won’t spend time looking for those, especially since those keys are bigger than others.

Above keyboard is located one additional button that can launch OneKey Rescue System. This application is responsible for making image file out of data that you choose (Windows folder, Program Files, personal data etc) and allows easy and fast recovery.

Touch pad supports multi-gesture features: zoom and scroll. It is rather large but its precision is not that great despite good texture. Left touch pad button on our sample was kind of odd, because when it was pressed on its left end, nothing happed as opposite to pressure applied to its middle and right area. In addition, problem was that we pressed left button on its left end we heard a “click” sound but nothing happened. When we applied much more pressure on same location, we did get desired effect. Right touch pad button functioned normally, so our guess is that our sample had faulty touch pad buttons. Despite this, minor, problem, we found touch pad buttons to be softer than we would like them to be, and this feature should be checked before purchase.

Inside this laptop, we found CULV (Consumer Ultra-Low Voltage) Intel Celeron 723 CPU that operates at 1.2GHz. Despite its low frequency, this CPU has more processing power than Atom at 1.67GHz, which makes U350 one little nippy laptop. Thanks to this CPU, IdeaPad U350 will coupe with some task (HD movie reproduction) much better than most netbooks. When it comes to RAM, “more is better” rule can be always applied, but in case of U350, 2GB of DDR3 is perfect amount. Graphics card is well known integrated Intel X4500M with all its limitations when to comes to 3D gaming performances, but absolutely enough for, almost, every other activity.  Thanks to these components IdeaPad U350 does not warm up too much, which is accompanied with relatively low noise levels even during intensive work. Problem were high-pitched noises that can be heard when this laptop is under full load, which is not that pleasant experience. Autonomy is not as good as we expected, especially if we compare it to similarly configured Acer Timeline 4810TG model. On the other hand, Lenovo IdeaPad U350 has lower price tag that obviously, has influenced on autonomy results.

Active protection systems for hard drive are implemented, which is rare feature in this price range. Settings for this feature are also available, so you can set them according to your needs. Speakers are good, but badly positioned, which resulted in poor sound quality. Webcam is good for basic communication purposes, but with questionable picture quality. Connectors have nice layout, with HDMI present as left side. If you like to see an Express card slot you will be disappointed with IdeaPad U350, since it does not have one.

Since IdeaPad U350 can be bought without operating system, this little laptop can be purchased for very acceptable price, but this choice will present user with few problems. First of all, there is no optical drive, so installation should be done from an USB drive. Even this is not such a big problem, but much bigger problem will be drivers and 500MB download from Lenovo site. Drivers for XP and Vista are present on CD in retail package. Even when you download and install drivers, some of the essential control applications, such as BisonCam for webcam, won’t have shortcuts in Start menu.