Lenovo S21e-20 Pro Reviews

The Lenovo 21e-20 is a solid budget ultraportable laptop, but its middling performance and battery life in our tests mean that it's best suited to those with very modest computing needs.

Netbooks fell out of fashion for a reason—there's only so much you can do with them, and there are better-performing laptops on the market now that are just as portable, to say nothing of tablets or hybrid tablet/laptop designs. But there are advantages to netbooks: Solid battery life, compact size, an actual computer processor instead of one designed for mobile devices, and (unlike most tablets) a full version of Windows 8.1. Plus it's under $200. That's nothing to scoff at. The Lenovo S21e isn't the best device we've looked at, but it fills a very particular niche and it fills it well. If you're on a very tight budget or just looking for a solid travel companion, maybe it's worth taking a trip back to 2008 and rediscovering the netbook craze once more.

With the Lenovo S21e, you need to be sure your biggest requirement in a laptop is a small size and a small price tag. If both of those things matter most, any other complaints about the system will fall to the wayside, as you'll understand that with such requirements it is necessary to make sacrifices elsewhere. The S21e isn't going to work as a gaming system, as a way to render videos or perform other intensive tasks. It will, however, take up little room in your bag, will let you surf the web as often as you'd like, and probably be less of a financial burden than your last car payment.

No, it's no MacBook Air (we got carried away there), but it's an ultra-affordable ultraportable productivity partner that deserves the same four stars as the Stream. And it just might fool your seatmate on the plane or train into asking, "Is that the new ThinkPad?"