The LG S1 is a premium notebook with a plastic film protecting finish all over it, while the magnetic lid is a deep black/blue metallic color (piano black). Inside, there is a white base made of a material that is much nicer than iBooks. LG won the 2006 Red Dot design award for the S1 and by looking at it you can easily notice it deserves that. LG used a variety of high grade materials in the construction of the S1: only magnesium and aluminum and no plastic. Storage is handled by a Hitachi Travelstar 5K100 100 GB HDD and the extremely capable LG GSA-4082 Dual Layer DVD-RW drive with Lightscribe, while ATI’s Mobility RADEON X1600 is the best video adapter available on this range of laptops.

The high price is also based on Intel’s top of the line core logic chip, which is by far the best mobile core logic chip available right now.The 3 watt stereo speakers are enhanced by SRS Labs audio technologies (TruSurround XT and WOW XT), providing a better sound than any other laptop on the market. The high tech power of this laptop consumes allot of battery life so that just by browsing the Internet you’ll get only 2 hours without plugging-in. Other than this, the S1 has some interesting features: Biometric security is present in the form of a Trusted Platform Module and a finger print scanner; Cardbus-sized remote control for media playback.

LG’s ‘Intelligent Update’ utility comes in the package and connects to the Internet for LG and Microsoft updates (including Norton Antivirus). The white keyboard looks exactly like a desktop one, even with a numeric keypad. However, there are quite a few (but unique, for example the fan can be adjusted: automatic, cool and quiet) function keys of which you can get visual feedback as you enable/disable them on the Onscreen Display Manager. If you do not like a hot notebook, leave the setting to ‘cool’ or, if fan noise irritates you, leave the fan setting on ‘quiet’.

LG S1 Specifications