Lenovo's New Laptop Nomenclature, And What It Means

Lenovo is one of those companies that has so many different products and product lines that it's nearly impossible to keep everything straight without a helpful primer. Good news: Here's a helpful primer.

100, 300, 500

In an attempt to simplify its product nomenclature for consumers, Lenovo changed how it labels its various notebook tiers. Now, you'll see 100, 300 and 500 numbering that indicates the level of performance in ascending order. That is, 100-series devices are the lowest end, and 500-series are the highest.

As an example of what you might get moving up from a 100- or 300- notebook, a 500-level machine would use metals for construction instead of plastics, and it might have an Intel RealSense camera and branded speakers. It would also likely have an Intel Core i7 (Skylake) chip in it instead of a Core i5 or lower. (In the past, these systems would have been "G-Series" or "Z-Series" devices.)

One wrinkle in that is Lenovo's Y-series products -- "Y" meaning high performance and gaming-oriented machines -- which will get 700 numbering to set it apart even further from any 100-, 300- or 500-series product. (Lenovo also mentioned to us that the "Y700" name had some "stickiness" in the gaming community, and it didn't want to disrupt that hard won mindshare.)

Further Clarification

But wait, there's more.

In addition to the "hundreds" naming convention, Lenovo has further broken its product lines down with a single "S" that connotes thin and light products. Thus, traditional, everyday devices will be 100, 300 and 500, whereas thin and light Ultrabook-class machines will be 100S, 300S and 500S.

Within each numbered tier, there will be devices at different sizes, too.

Can You Put All That In A Table?

Can we put all that in a table? We sure can. Here you go:

Most of the above systems run Intel Skylake (also known as "Intel 6th-generation Core") CPUs, although there are a few AMD-based systems, and they ship loaded with a version of Windows 10 (except for the Chromebook 100S, which obviously runs Chrome OS).

Stay tuned to Tom's Hardware for additional details and full specifications on Lenovo's new notebooks, desktops, mobile devices and more.

Seth Colaner is the News Director at Tom's Hardware. Follow him on Twitter @SethColaner. Follow us @tomshardware, on Facebook and on Google+.