Lenovo to ship the first Ion netbook

The latest netbook from Lenovo will pack more graphical muscle than the current competition in the form of NVidia’s Ion GPU.

Lenovo announced that the S12 will be the first netbook to ship with the Ion graphics processor. NVidia claims that the Ion can transcode graphics and video 10 times faster than Intel’s GSE945 processor, which appears in many netbooks. The extra power will allow the S12 to play 1080p high-definition video without hiccups.

The S12 also joins a budding category of 12-inch netbooks. Dell’s Inspiron Mini 12 is available now, and 12-inch models are coming soon from Asus and Acer. The larger form factor allows for a full-size keyboard.

As for other specs, the S12 is pretty standard. There’s a 1.6 GHz Intel Atom N270 processor, 1 GB of DDR2 RAM, hard drives of 160 GB, 250 GB or 320 GB, an optional six-cell battery, Bluetooth and the usual jacks and ports. HDMI output is also included.

The S12 will ship in June for a starting price of $449, but not with the Ion included. That version will come later this summer. I’m guessing a 6-cell Ion-powered netbook will cost more than $500, further obscuring the line between netbooks and small full-powered notebooks. Pretty soon, the only thing distinguishing Windows netbooks from their more powerful relatives will be the 1 GB RAM limit Microsoft imposes on them.