For a while there, the march of Ultrabooks was comprised almost entirely of halo products: skinny, relatively expensive things designed to help Intel and its OEM partners make a good impression on the general laptop-buying public. But with 110-plus models in the pipeline, they can't all be expensive, right? By now, you may have noticed that Ultrabooks are starting to look a little less uniform: there have been larger ones, heavier ones, some with optical drives, some with discrete graphics.

Next up: cheaper ones. Just in time for back-to-school shopping season, we're seeing a wave of more reasonably priced Ultrabooks, many of them with traditional spinning hard drives and slightly heavier frames. One of these is the Lenovo IdeaPad U310, a machine that brings Core i5, 4GB of RAM and hybrid storage for $799. Oh, and its design is pleasantly reminiscent of the IdeaPad U300s, a higher-end Ultrabook we reviewed late last year. No doubt, then, it'll be a tempting option for people who can't afford to spend $1,000-plus on a laptop. But is it worth it? Let's find out.

Gallery: Lenovo IdeaPad U310 review

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Lenovo IdeaPad U310 review: a reasonably priced Ultrabook for the masses originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Jul 2012 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.