Lenovo IdeaPad S12 Netbook With nVidia Ion

Just when it seemed like netbooks were doomed to all be the exact same, chassis aside, Asus decided to unveil the Asus Eee PC 1000HE netbook that has been racking up almost nothing but rave reviews, and for good reason. And then Samsung decided to bring out the Samsung N120 netbook, a 10″ netbook with a 100% sized 12″ keyboard, and it’s good. So what else can come out now that would shake up the netbook community? How about one of those damn promised nVidia Ion based netbooks? Here’s where the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 netbook comes into play.

The Lenovo IdeaPad S12 netbook in many respects look like every other netbook out there, except that there’s a couple of important differences. The Lenovo IdeaPad S12 netbook, as the 12 somewhat implies, is a 12.1″ netbook, which is slowly becoming a defacto size now that manufacturers realize that, while good, not everyone wants a 9″ or 10″ netbook. The big advantage that 12″ netbooks brings to the game, aside from a slightly larger LCD (obviously), is that, unless you’re dumb like Dell, you can cram a full-size keyboard into the netbook. So, it’s Lenovo. What’d they do? If you said “full-size” keyboard, then move on to the next piece of the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 netbook puzzle because you’re right.

So, the other big thing that makes the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 netbook, and possibly the more important one (at least to most, but possibly not me) is that’s going to use the nVidia Ion chipset. There’ll actually be two versions, one with and one without (with the price difference being $50: $449/$499).

If you remember from the previous article what the nVidia Ion means is that, finally, netbooks will have a decent video subsystem. No more will netbooks suffer under the worthless Intel integrated solution, instead, they’ll have a decent (still not great, but much better) video system that is also capable of HD decoding. Maybe even light gaming (within limitations of the Intel Atom, of course).

So, of course, this means you’ll be able to use a netbook as an HTPC now, too, which is another bonus (the included HDMI port almost makes it made for that purpose).

What is also interesting about this netbook, Ion aside, is that Lenovo is still claiming six hours of battery life. Of course, that number will likely come down a little once the real world tests come to into play, but that’s pretty considerably battery life for a 12″ netbook, especially one that’s capable of playing HD video without sneezing.

The non-Ion Lenovo IdeaPad S12 netbook should be available next month (June), while the nVidia Ion based version has a release date of “later this summer.”

Expect more information on the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 netbook as the Ion-based version nears release, as well as other Ion based netbooks and nettops.

Thanks to Hot Hardware for the heads up on the Lenovo IdeaPad S12 netbook.

On a side note, it’s taken everyone long enough to start bringing these out. Hurry it up!