Usage & Testing
I have been using the U260 as my main laptop for about 3 weeks now. A laptop for me is not a desktop replacement, but more of a laptop I take with me if I’m out of the office say at Starbucks or Panera. Let’s talk about the screen first, it is a 720p (1366 x 768) resolution, 16:9 aspect ratio, LED-backlit screen which looks very clear and the matte finish results in very little glare if you are using the U260 outside. The resolution works well for a display this size and looking at websites and having multiple Windows open at once is not an issue. Viewing angles are also very good, but I wouldn’t expect this to be a laptop a group of friends sit in front of.
The keyboard on the U260 is very comfortable, but coming from using a ThinkPad Edge to the U260 it took me a couple of days to get comfortable using the U260 keyboard. Also as I said earlier in the review the lack of any backlighting for the keyboard was a big disappointment for me. The glass touchpad is just awesome though, it is extremely comfortable and smooth, probably the best touchpad that I have ever used.
Battery life is always a concern when talking about laptops and the U260 falls a little short here. In all of my testing I was really only able to get 3 hours out of it doing normal tasks. This means if you have a long flight hope you get a seat near an outlet or bring some other type of entertainment with you.
I’ve used the U260 for pretty much everything, writing reviews, Facebook, twitter, general web surfing and even watching HD content. It held its own even when I had multiple applications open running at once. Obviously this is not a system you will be playing games on so don’t expect it to run any current games. To test out overall performance of the system I ran 2 tests, PCMark Vantage and GeekBench. Here are the results from those tests.
