Anyone Have A E-450 Netbook? I Have A Few Questions

[Coatsy]

I've read a couple of threads on here about E-450 Netbooks so I figure I'd ask my questions here in hope of a few helpful replies if you'd be so kind.

I'm thinking about buying a Lenovo IdeaPad S205 11.6 inch Netbook (AMD E450)

This one - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lenovo-IdeaPad-S205-11-6-Netbook/dp/tech-data/B005TPRWNY/ref=de_a_smtd

I currently have a ATI Radeon HD 5450 in my current PC and was wondering how it would compare to the HD 6310 GPU in the E-450

I found a review on this site that mentioned that the E-350 Compared to the Radeon HD 5450 the 6310 offers between 66 - 69% of its performance in our GPU bound tests. Anyone know how the E-450 compares? I assume a bit better?

TBH as long as it can play 720p - 1080p mkv files I'll be very pleased.

HDIMI Port - I'd like to hook this netbook up to my Amplifier, with my current Radeon HD 5450 graphics card the surround sound works through the HDMI port, does it work the same with this netbook?

If the answer is no, the netbook mentioned it has SPDIF digital audio support from the line out jack, can I get the surround sound hooked up to my amp via that connection? Or will I have to settle for lower quality sound?

Last question I'd like to install a really fast SSD, can this netbook support the OCZ 60GB Agility 3?

The speeds look impressive Read 525MB/s & Write 475MB/s although I've read some poor reviews about them recently, if you agree with the bad reviews can you recommend another fast, reliable SSD for this netbook.

Thanks for your time folks

 

[zCypher]

Check to see if the laptop can support SATA3. I have the Lenovo x120e (11.6", E350) and I have the ADATA S510 SSD, however the laptop only supports SATA2 so I get approx 280MB/s where the drive is capable of 500+. Not really a big deal since it's still way faster than the HDD that came with it.

The E350 APU is alright. Don't expect it to be blazing fast. It will do fine if you do some light web browsing, instant messaging, social media, a little bit of MS Office etc stuff like that. I picked mine up for CDN$377 so for that price I'm pleased with it. A CDN$600+ laptop should not have E350 (or E450) performance IMO.

I should stay on track though, apples to apples. As a netbook, it's pretty friggin awesome. I've never seen an IdeaPad in action though, only Thinkpads. So I can't really be sure of how that particular Lenovo would pan out, but I have had nothing but good experiences with their laptops.

PS, if you can swing it, I highly recommend going for a 120GB SSD rather than 60GB. I used a 60GB in my main PC for a while, and I was glad to have a couple 1TB HDD in there as well. 120GB at least gives you a bit of room.

 

[Coatsy]

Check to see if the laptop can support SATA3. I have the Lenovo x120e (11.6", E350) and I have the ADATA S510 SSD, however the laptop only supports SATA2 so I get approx 280MB/s where the drive is capable of 500+. Not really a big deal since it's still way faster than the HDD that came with it.

Thanks man for such a detailed post, much appreciated.

I did a bit of searching online and I can find nothing conclusive on whether the E-450 support SATA3. I found one site where someone posted this in the comments section here

http://www.netbooklive.com/top-gaming-netbooks-and-mini-laptops-the-best-picks-10467

While the Asus 1215B with E-350 seems to be the only one providing USB 3.0, which requires the AMD Hudson FCH M3 board for inclusion of the native controller. Though is more common and easier to find than any Intel ATOM system with USB 3.0 at this time.

USB 3.0 controllers are still too pricey for easy integration and Intel is behind AMD on pushing them out. The Intel NM10 only has 2.0 Controller and needs a 3.0 Controller added in order to provide USB 3.0 port.

The AMD Fusion SATA Controller also supports SATA 3 (6Gbps), while Intel's NM10 still only supports up to SATA II. For those wishing to know what they can upgrade to if they install a SSD in the premium netbook range systems.

Does your E-350 have a 3.0 USB port? There is no mention of any 3.0 USB ports on the E-450 sadly, that would be a welcome feature.

The E350 APU is alright. Don't expect it to be blazing fast. It will do fine if you do some light web browsing, instant messaging, social media, a little bit of MS Office etc stuff like that. I picked mine up for CDN$377 so for that price I'm pleased with it. A CDN$600+ laptop should not have E350 (or E450) performance IMO.

I should stay on track though, apples to apples. As a netbook, it's pretty friggin awesome. I've never seen an IdeaPad in action though, only Thinkpads. So I can't really be sure of how that particular Lenovo would pan out, but I have had nothing but good experiences with their laptops.

PS, if you can swing it, I highly recommend going for a 120GB SSD rather than 60GB. I used a 60GB in my main PC for a while, and I was glad to have a couple 1TB HDD in there as well. 120GB at least gives you a bit of room.

I'm embarrassed to say I'm currently using an old laptop with a 2GHz Celeron processor with 1GB of RAM so I hope I'll notice a big difference if I purchase the E-450 and upgrade to an SSD and increase the RAM to 8GB

Thanks for the tip, I'll definitely consider a bigger SSD

What is the battery life like with the E-450? I've read anything from 5 hours to 8.5 hours, I've also read that installed a SSD can add up to an hour to battery life with notebooks

 

[Coatsy]

Also found this that might suggest the E-450 can support SATA3

Below is a list of RAM guaranteed to match your system.

http://www.microusb.co.uk/laptop/lenovo/lenovo-ideapad-s205

 

[trollspotter]

I did a bit of searching online and I can find nothing conclusive on whether the E-450 support SATA3. I found one site where someone posted this in the comments section here

http://www.netbooklive.com/top-gaming-netbooks-and-mini-laptops-the-best-picks-10467

From my experience with my HP dm1 (E-350, 3GB RAM) I can tell you that the SATA3 support will be specific to each laptop. My dm1 has SATA3 but no USB 3.0, whereas others like x120e do not have SATA3. I was running a Crucial M4 64GB in there and was getting faster boot speeds than my friends i720qm Asus gaming laptop with a regular hard drive. I did reach 490 MB/s read and 95 MB/s write, but it may have been overkill for the little netbook. Sandisk Ultra 120GB at $135 or Samsung 470 128gb for $175 look like the best bargains and a good match for these laptops. I would recommend the Samsung if you can afford it.

 

[zCypher]

Mine doesn't have USB 3.0. Depends on the laptop though, it's not a limitation of the E350 or E450, nor would SATA3. My laptop doesn't have SATA3, but in my opinion you won't notice the difference between SATA2 and SATA3 in a netbook that has an E350 or E450. For example, with my Lenovo x120e that only takes advantage of SATA2 - I can boot the whole system insanely fast, but when I try to launch Firefox for the first time, it can actually take over 5 seconds (my desktop PC with similar SSD drive does it in 2 sec or less). If I try to load a website and open a new tab at the same time on E350, it lags until the first tab is pretty much done loading (and this is with 8GB RAM).

I have another desktop PC with a 60GB SATA2 drive and it loads Firefox almost as fast as my main PC, still way faster than the laptop. I know this may be one of those things that make you go "Duh, it's a laptop".

So when choosing an SSD for an E350 or E450 system, I'd say you don't want to care about SATA2 vs SATA3 so much. Get the cheapest, biggest most reliable one you can find. SSD with bigger capacity will be faster than the identical smaller drive because the internal SSD NAND chips act sort of like a RAID array, or so I've heard.

Having said all that, the E450 may be noticeably faster than the E350. I really have no idea.

 

[Coatsy]

Thanks a lot guys, I appreciate your advice and help!

 

[Tushaar]

I guess I'm a little late to this thread, but I'm planning to buy the Lenovo x120e (E-350) and I was wondering if anyone here can answer a few questions?

The primary use I put my laptops to is heavy surfing (10-15 tabs open) and maybe a couple of Word docs open alongside. Maximum, I'll have both Firefox and Chrome running alongside with Chrome having around 10-15 tabs and Firefox with 1-2 tabs.

Will the E-350 processor be able to handle this with 4 GB RAM? My Core 2 Duo T7200 manages it just fine (though it runs quite hot) with 3GB RAM. Any thoughts/experience with this would be greatly appreciated since I plan to buy it in a day or two.