While other manufacturers have been focusing on tablets and phones at this year’s IFA trade show, Lenovo has also chosen to introduce its IdeaPad U300s – one of the first examples of Intel’s Ultrabook concept we’ve seen.

And with the promise of serious processing power in a slender 14.9mm thick chassis, this latest addition to the IdeaPad range is a bona-fide stunner.

It can’t quite match the likes of Samsung’s 9 Series or Apple’s Macbook Air 13in for lust-inducing slenderness, but it’s still utterly gorgeous. That 14.9mm thick chassis weighs in at just 1.3kg, yet, thanks to the all-aluminium construction, feels far from insubstantial.

There’s a little flex when you really tug at the seams, but not much: the base feels taut, and the lid looks to afford the display a considerable amount of protection.

The attention to detail in Lenovo’s design is impressive. Lenovo claims that the U300s is crafted from a single sheet of aluminium, which is then sandblasted and anodised to make it tougher and more scratch-resistant.

Then there’s the noticeable lack of vents in the U300s’ gently curved base: instead, Lenovo keeps the Core i5 and Core i7 processors cool by virtue of a discrete vent on the left-hand edge and maintains cool-running by using a “breathable” keyboard, which allows air to circulate through the gaps between the keys.

Any fears such novelties might affect usability swiftly prove unfounded. The scrabble-tile keyboard has a light, crisp feel, and the glass touchpad beneath it behaved brilliantly during our snatched moments with the U300s. Just like Apple’s Macbooks, the glass gives a lovely smooth, solid feel under the finger, and left- and right-clicks were recognised reliable despite the lack of discrete buttons.

Lenovo has done a great job of giving the U300s a classy, uncluttered look, but there’s still enough connectivity where it matters. There’s a single USB 3 port alongside an HDMI output, and a USB 2 port on the opposite edge.

We didn’t have enough time to give the glossy 13.3in display anything more than a cursory look, but the brightness levels were impressive and colour reproduction was punchy. One thing’s for sure, it looks better than the decidedly average LCD in Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 ultraportable.

The seam-free chassis does of course mean that Lenovo has had to opt for a non-replaceable battery, but the claims of eight hour battery life in MobileMark 2007’s Productivity test give us some hope. In tandem with Lenovo’s excellent RapidCharge technology – which charges the battery to 50% capacity in just 30 minutes – the U300s is looking very promising indeed.

A keen price further bolsters the IdeaPad U300s’ appeal. Models sporting low-voltage 1.6GHz Core i5-2647M and 1.8Ghz Core i7-2677M processors will see the light of day towards the end of October, and our contact suggested a model sporting the low-voltage 1.6GHz Core i5-2647M processor, 4GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD would be available for around 999 Euros, which looks to severely undercut the likes of Samsung’s Series 9 900X3A.

Lenovo looks to be onto a winner with the U300s. With build quality and ergonomics reminiscent of a ThinkPad, and looks that can rival Apple’s best, it heralds an exciting future for Intel’s Ultrabook concept. The ultraportable is dead; long live the Ultrabook.

It’s a new part that’s only been used by Acer up until now, in its netbooks and A-Listed Aspire Revo R3600.

That ambitious claim comes courtesy of Matt Wuebbling, a senior manager in Nvidia’s notebook division, who’ll understandably talk up the chances of his own product in the face of endless scepticism. However, having been hands-on with Lenovo’s latest offering and seeing the Ion in action, we’ve seen plenty of evidence to support his claims.

Our own testing on the Acer Aspire Revo has shown that Blu-ray playback can be handled with barely a whimper from the Ion, as most of the work is shifted onto the GPU – a trick that was repeated by the new S12 – and accomplished far easier than the old Intel integrated parts, which delivered results that were almost always too juddery to be watchable.

Video encoding had been added to the S12’s box of tricks: the ION-powered machine encoded a 1080p movie trailer for smartphone playback in approximately four minutes, with an Atom-powered equivalent struggling through the same task in almost 15 minutes.

It’s clear that the Ideapad will have more power than most of its Atom-equipped netbook rivals, then, and we’re pleased to report that the rest of the package looks just as solid.

Intel’s Atom N270 processor partners with the GeForce 9400M graphics chip and, in a break away from most of its netbook rivals, 2GB of RAM is included rather than one, which should make the operating system that little bit more responsive.

There’s also HSDPA and a 320GB hard disk, so connectivity and storage looks to be about as good as we’ve seen from any netbook, and the native resolution of 1,280 x 800 is larger than most netbooks on the market today.

The chassis felt rock-solid, too, with the wrist-rest showing no flex at all and the back of the screen barely twisting as we tugged at its glossy rear. The keyboard felt just as comfortable as those included with Samsung’s A-Listed NC10 and NC20, and was sat above a responsive trackpad with an excellent pair of buttons.

In fact, Wuebbling’s prediction seems to be coming true: the netbook does seem to be turning into a notebook: this one, for instance, sports Nvidia’s more powerful components, plenty of storage and RAM, a notebook-sized screen resolution and build quality that shames many laptops that cost twice as much.

If Lenovo can provide this specification at a reasonable price – say, near the £326 you’d be paying for a Samsung NC20 – then the Ideapad S12 could be a contender. We’ll let you know when the S12 arrives at the PC Pro Labs and it gets the full review treatment.

As the name suggests it’s a 10in netbook and – yes, you guessed it – it’s got an Intel Atom N270 inside and 1GB of RAM. So far, so very, very familiar.  

First impressions are just a tad underwhelming though. Indeed, the trait most reminiscent of the ThinkPad ranges is the build quality: the IdeaPad does feel reassuringly sturdy. And, at 1.13kg, it’s certainly no porker.  

But, if you’re one of those hoping for a shrunken ThinkPad X200 with a £300 price tag, you’re liable to come away more than a little crestfallen. There’s no embedded 3G – something which comes as a major disappointment given that Lenovo have crammed it into all their other laptops. And, apart from the curious choice of a true 16:9 panel with a 1,024 x 576 resolution, there’s precious little to get even slightly excited about. It’s probably best that we don’t mention the dainty 3-cell battery clipped to its rear….

Expect a full review very soon but, going by what we’ve seen so far, we’re not sure the Samsung NC10 will be giving up its crown anytime soon.