Lenovo Skylight – a smartbook that really catches attention

Lenovo was teasing us for a while with plans for a light and compact netbook device called the Skylight. And now, the first official pics and specs finally got out.

As you can see, the Lenovo Skylight looks very nice, with a 10 inch display and decent sized keyboard, plus a very thing and light body. These last attributes were possible mainly because of the hardware inside, based on the ARM Qualcomm Snapdragon chipset and not the standard Intel Atom. That’s why this device is mostly called a smartbook.

Having such a hardware comes with pros and cons. The pros are:

• the system consumes overall less battery, so you could expect from the thing Skylight an autonomy of at least 10 hours ;
• the device offers always-connected access, thus it works like a smartphone in terms of 3G signal, as it can receive messages from social sites, IM, chat when it has the lid closed and is placed on stand-by ;
• the overall system moves pretty fast .

Lenovo Skylight smartbook - thiner and lighter than a 10 inch netbook

However, there are a couple of cons also:

• overall performance level is low when compared to a standard netbook built on the Atom
• it can’t run Windows and has an OS based on Linux
• you don’t really have too many applications besides the ones offered by default
• you get low storage space

Lenovo Skylight runs a special Linux OS based on widgets

In terms of specs, the Lenovo Skylight comes with:

• 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon ARM II processor
• 8 GB flash storage drive but support up to 8 GB mini SD cards and up to 4 GB memory sticks
• 3G and Wi-fi connectivity
• measures 10″ x 7.9″ x 0.7″ and weighs only 1.95 lbs
• more details in here

All in one, the Lenovo Skylight smartbook is an interesting device if you need a more portable mini laptop for online use . Still, for a price starting from $499, is kind of expensive, considering you can do a lot more with a netbook that costs at least 1/3 less.

Still, the Skylight will probably be also offered with subscription plans in US that would bring the price for the device down somehow.

Source: netbooknews.de

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Tags: Lenovo, Lenovo netbooks, smartbook

Last updated: January 5, 2010 | Published: January 5th, 2010 | See the comments or add yours!