Lenovo Ideapad 3 14-Inch AMD Ryzen 5 3500u Review 2020 - Techno Hub

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Sunday, November 29, 2020

Lenovo Ideapad 3 14-Inch AMD Ryzen 5 3500u Review 2020

Lenovo Ideapad 3 Review 2020



 
Lenovo is always trying to get those extra sales in this never-ending budget battle, they are always coming up with better specs at low prices.

Lenovo Ideapad 3 is another budget laptop from the company, it is becoming trending in 2020 as one of the best budget laptops.


It is marked as one of the bestsellers at Amazon and BestBuy.


Is this laptop really a budget king? Are there any more options? Is it worth spending $440? Read on to know


Why Trust Us:

All of our reviews are based on real-time testing and market research. We only recommend products that are worth buying for the prices. 

Lenovo Ideapad 3 Amd Ryzen 5 3500u Review
Hours Tested = 26 hours | Market Researched = 12 hours




First, let's talk about the specs, we are reviewing the one which has AMD Ryzen 5 3500u processor, Quad-core APU with 8 threads, and 2.1GHz Clockspeed.

AMD Radeon Vega 8 graphics, 8GB of DDR4 RAM, and 256GB SSD.


External Review 

UNBOXING:

The laptop comes packed inside a typical Lenovo cardboard box.

Inside the box, there are two sections, one containing our friend and the other with a huge charger brick and a user manual.

The unboxing experience is pretty smooth




DESIGN:

Ideapad 3 is made up of a polycarbonate body with a metallic finish, it feels sturdy in hands.

Like many Chromebooks, this laptop is very compact, it is easy to hold.

The outside body has a small "LENOVO" logo at the bottom right corner.

The build quality is definitely lightweight and premium, Lenovo has centered their attention on students and office workers while manufacturing this laptop.

The hinges are silent but the laptop can't be opened with a single hand.


At the back, there are four rubber blocks to prevent the machine from slipping.


WEIGHT:

The weight of this laptop is 3.30 pounds or 1.49 kilograms which makes it easy to carry and handle.

With the power brick, the weight was under 3.5 pounds as compared to other budget laptops like Acer Aspire 5 (3.97 pounds) or Asus Vivobook 15 (3.95 pounds)

KEYBOARD:

The keyboard of Ideapad 3 is good for a longer typing experience, the placement of the keys is perfect.


The keys are stiff but they provide comfortable and responsive feedback. 

There is a little bit of keyboard flex when pressure is exerted on the center of the keyboard.

The power button is on the top right corner.

The best thing we liked about this laptop is that it has a fingerprint scanner hidden inside the power button.

To boot-up the laptop you first have to confirm your fingerprint and then press the power button.

Unlike Acer Aspire 5, the keyboard is not backlit.

TOUCHPAD:

The touchpad of this laptop is regular-sized, it provides responsive feedback even when pressed lightly.

It produces less clicking sound than its competitors.


PORTS:

There are all the ports required.

On its left side, it has a charging port, a charging indicator light, then we have got an HDMI 1.4b port, then we have got two USB 3.1 ports, and a power on/off light in the last.


On the right side, there is our 3.5mm headphone/ microphone jack and an SD card reader.


WEBCAM:

Just like any other laptop, the webcam on the Ideapad 3 can shoot 720p videos at 40 FPS.


Another cherry on the top is the webcam shutter, when you slide the shutter it will cover the lens of the camera.

This feature is useful in many ways, nobody will be able to spy on you through the laptop's webcam.



The overall build (external) quality of Ideapad 3 is excellent, it is compact, lightweight, and sturdy.


Internal Review

DISPLAY:

The Lenovo Ideapad 3 features a 14-inch Full HD (1920x1080) display with little bezels (19.9mm thickness).


The screen brightness is up to 200 nits which is quite impressive at this price point. The color gamut was marked at 45% NTSC.

The laptop's screen will work properly in any normal environment like home, school, or office, so no problem with the display.

We tested the display strength of this laptop by running the trailer of the "DARK" season 1 at Full HD settings as this trailer contains many intense colors scenes.




The Ideapad 3 managed to show all the colors brightly and without any difficulty or screen lag.

As far as the display is concerned, this budget laptop will not bother you.


RAM, ROM, and INSIDE:

The Lenovo Ideapad 3 features 8GB of DDR4 RAM along with 256GB of SSD.

If you want to upgrade your laptop, you just have to unscrew the 10 Philip screws (4 short and 6 long) at the back of the panel.



There are two RAM slots, one of them is taken by a 4GB RAM stick which is soldered into the memory, the other slot is replaceable and can hold up to 8GB of RAM.

This means that the Ideapad 3 is upgradable to 12 gigabytes of RAM (maximum). 


The 256GB SSD can be replaced by any 2240 or 2260 SSD, but we would recommend you to apply a decent SSD.

Buy Crucial 8GB DDR4 RAM for laptop here.

Buy Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB SSD for laptop here. (#1 bestseller at amazon)

As you can see that upgrading the Lenovo Ideapad 3 is a piece of cake.



PERFORMANCE:

Web Performance:

We tested the web surfing strength of this laptop by playing a Youtube HD live stream with 4 to 5 heavy webpages.

To our surprise, it managed to run the video smoothly without any visible lag or stutter.

The webpages loaded very fast.

Gaming Performance:

Gaming on Lenovo Ideapad 3 is a decent experience, we tested its gaming strength by playing the following games

--> PUBG
--> COD
--> Fortnite
--> League of Legend
--> CS:GO
--> Far Cry 4

Although the laptop is not gaming-based, it can still run some high-end games like Fortnite and League of legends at 35 to 42 FPS.



Online competitive games like CS: GO, COD Warzone, and PUBG can run on low settings (720p) at an average FPS of 40.


Other games like Far Cry 4 and GTA 5 ran perfectly smooth without any lag. 

Well, we always say this is the benefit of having an AMD processor in your laptop, you can easily run heavy CPU consuming games.


Multitasking:

The Lenovo Ideapad 3 handles multiple programs efficiently, the CPU usage remains balanced with no lag.

There is no problem with multitasking even when many heavy programs are running in the background which proves again that this laptop is best for office and study purposes.


Benchmarks:

The benchmark scores of this laptop are quite decent. The graphics and the gaming test proved this laptop really has strength.



The overall performance and the benchmark scores of Lenovo Ideapad 3 AMD Ryzen 5 3500u is above average when considering the price.

BATTERY LIFE:

The battery life of this laptop is quite interesting, it hits well above the mark of average budget laptop battery life which is 7 hours and 10 mins. (7hr:10m)

The battery life of the Lenovo Ideapad 3 is an impressive 7 hours and 35 mins (7hr:35m)

On continuous light use, the battery will last up to 7 hours (7hr)

On continuous gaming, the laptop will run till 5 hours and 42 mins (5hr:42m)

This laptop will not bother you when making projects or school assignments.

SYSTEM:

This machine comes with windows 10 preinstalled and all the necessary features are available.




Competitors:

There is only one competitor to this laptop, The Asus Vivobook 15
has the same spec sheet but with a more powerful CPU and better display quality.

Also, the Asus Vivobook 15 has won in the graphical benchmark test. 

Read our full review here.


Bottom Line:

For the price point, you are going to get a really good laptop, we have got an exciting spec sheet like AMD Ryzen 5 3500u processor, 8GB RAM, and 256GB SSD.

The display quality is exceptional for the price point. We were really surprised to run CPU consuming games on a budget laptop like this.

Also, the overall performance was great with no visible lag or excessive heating.

In short, the Lenovo Ideapad 3 14-inch Ryzen 5 3500u deserves this name THE BUDGET KING!

 

 Shop From Your Country's Amazon Store



14 Inches FHD Screen | AMD Ryzen 5 3500u Processor | 8GB RAM | 256GB SSD

 





15.6 Inches | AMD Ryzen 3 3250U Processor | 4GB RAM | 128GB SSD

 



FAQs

Q/. Is the Lenovo Ideapad 3 good?

Ans/.The Lenovo Ideapad 3 is one of the best budget laptops of 2020 featuring a 14-inch full HD display, AMD Ryzen 5 3500u, 8GB of RAM, and 256GB SSD. It has a spec sheet that is found in laptops of higher price points which makes it a pretty decent laptop.

Q/. Is Lenovo Ideapad 3 a Chromebook?

Ans/. No, Lenovo Ideapad 3 is a windows based laptop that comes with AMD Ryzen 5 3500u processor.


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