Lenovo Ideapad leads the field

IDF WAS FULL of Atom-based MIDs and crotchtops, but most of them were about as appealing as a dentist allowing to pick your favorite drill bit. Lenovo had the one exception with the Ideapad U8.

The U8 is by far the most polished and seemingly well thought out device we saw at the show. It is a bit bigger than a large smartphone, you can see how it compares to a business card, but it feels solid and for lack of a better term, right.

U8

The lack of a QWERTY keyboard and the distinct presence of a telephone-like pad gives away the target market for this device, but with a touchscreen, it could do most work in a pinch. The back side has a camera and a rather questionable colour scheme.

Functionality was rather limited at the show, not because of any device limitations, but due to more organic problems. All the U8s at IDF were in Chinese, a language your reporter doesn't speak or read. The people manning the booth also had the same language preference, rather odd for Shanghai I must say. Ditto the literature.

Even with these problems, the U8 seems to be the clear leader of the MID pack, pun intended. Everything else there seemed unappealing, aesthetically questionable, and generally blah in comparison. The U8 was different in a good way, and seems to have added functionality to replace the blandness everyone else was touting. I want one. µ