Think Ultrabooks are too expensive? Check out Lenovo's IdeaPad U310 and U410, which start at a reasonable $749 and offer up to 8 hours of battery life. Plus, both Ivy Bridge-powered notebooks come in eye-catching colors like Spearmint and Cherry Blossom, which should appeal to the back-to-school crowd.
The 13-inch U310s weighs 3.8 pounds and measures .7 inches thick and comes with integrated graphics. The $799 4.2-pound, .83-inch U410 has optional Nvidia GeForce 610M graphics for those looking for some gaming muscle. Unlike the U300s, Lenovo includes a full-size SD Card reader this time around on both models, along with two USB 3.0 ports , HDMI, and headphone and mic jacks. The U310s has an additional USB 2.0 port, while the U410s has two.
The retail versions of the U310 and U410 will come with 32GB of SSD cache, which will enable fast resume time, while Lenovo's RapidBoot technology allows for fast boots into Windows 7. Smart Updatecan update everything from your inbox to Tweetdeck while you're notebooko is asleep.
If you want something even cheaper, the U310 will start at $699 online with a second-generation Core processor instead of a third-gen chip and a traditional hard drive instead of an SSD cache. The equivalent entry-level U410 will costs $749. At that point you won't be able to call the systems Ultrabooks, but bargain hunters probably won't mind.
