It is pretty much common knowledge that when you work directly with manufacturers, they will usually send you their super high-end flagship products to show off what they can do and how far they can go.
But actually, most common comments under pretty much every laptop or gaming laptop review are focused on finding something that's much cheaper instead because not everybody has 1000s of euros or dollars available to spend on a laptop.
Now with all that in mind I decided to just go ahead and buy one of the cheapest laptops that I could find.
Because let's be honest here, I don't think that anyone in their right mind would willfully send me their super-budget model. So I wanted to find a laptop that will cost me around. $500.
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Laptop with AMD Ryzen CPU
That will have some decent and reasonable specs so no old outdated hardware, and that it can be good enough for that blind everyday use now and in the future.
And I thought that this Lenovo ideapad 3,15-inch laptop with AMD Ryzen CPU 2021 would fit this description just perfectly.
It has a quad-core AMD ryzen 3 4300U CPU eight gigabytes of dual-channel memory, a 512 gigabyte SSD, a full HD display and a price tag of 529, Euros, which to be honest sounded like a pretty good value deal.
Until I started testing it so let's see how it performs, how it compares to other laptops, I've tested so far and talked about why you should probably try to spend a little bit more on your next laptop. Let's go.
Design materials, Build Quality
Out of the box, it is a pretty good-looking laptop when it's a light silver brushed aluminum look and a very discreet logo on the side.
The panels are plastic but think it looks very clean and very modern and it's you have no issues fitting in that professional environment.
In terms of size, it's a pretty standard 15-inch laptop, it is, you know, not the smallest one out there but it is thin and light enough to carry around the build quality is not amazing.
As you would expect from an old plastic budget laptop, it feels fine if you just handle it normally, but there is quite a bit of flex in all panels both inside and out.
The hinge feels All right, it doesn't feel like it will break anytime soon, unless you, you know, start throwing the laptop around, you will need to hands open the laptop.
That gets you to what's one of the nicest budget laptop keyboards, I've seen so far.
Keyboard, Touchpad
It does look a bit old school with a large font and no backlight. And it even feels a bit old school with a long travel distance and that clicky feeling, but that makes it extremely pleasant did I bond.
Now I normally use mechanical keyboards and I found this to be easier to get used to than most premium thin laptops, so it is not fancy in any possible way.
But on a budget laptop, I'm happier to find a keyboard that offers that good feedback, and a Numpad than a modern-looking keyboard that is too light to touch the touchpad isn't that bad either.
So don't expect a premium touchpad experience, but I've seen worse so I will give it a pass today.
Connection
Now when it comes to connections, you get
- One HDMI port,
- One USB two type a port
- Two USB three type eight ports on the left side
- And a USB two card reader
- And an audio jack on the right side
So there are no USB type C connections, there is no fundable support, and there is no Ethernet connection which I kind of think it's a bit of a shame as it could easily fit on a laptop of this size.
Overall, I do think three USB Type-A ports are pretty okay for a budget laptop.
Amd Ryzen 3 4300U Performance
Lenovo ideapad 3, 15-inch laptop with AMD Ryzen CPU 2021 -But one of the main reasons I picked this laptop is because it comes with a ryzen 3 4300U processor, it is a four-core four-thread CPU that is surprisingly capable.
It outperforms the Intel ice lake CPUs you'll find in the much more expensive Dell XPS 13, or razor blade stealth.
And I would say performs similarly to an eighth Gen Intel Core i7, and even previous generation ryzen7 CPU so that's enough to handle so photo editing or even some light and video editing.
And if you're considering this laptop, as a school laptop, it will handle most applications you need just fine.
I do think it's worth looking at a 4000 series ryzen 5 if you can afford it. But for a budget system.
This is a completely fine processor, the laptop doesn't have a dedicated GPU but the built-in graphics of these ryzen CPUs are good enough to let you play an occasional game or two in your spare time.
Now of course you can forget about any triple-A titles, but lighter games like Minecraft like League of Legends Overwatch and cs go can be played at least at a casual level.
Panel Performance- How Lenevo ruined an otherwise very good laptop
And just when you think that all this is sounding pretty solid for a budget laptop.
I know who does destroy all those nice and positive things by using the absolute worst display, I've ever tested.
I kind of knew what I was getting into because the specification page of the shop I was buying it from a kind of clearly stated that the panel wouldn't be that bright and that it would offer a poor color gamut.
But didn't expect things to be this bad.
Now, the only good thing about this panel, is that it has 1080p resolution.
It is a TN panel with a peak brightness of 234 minutes.
So that's just about okay for indoor use, but it is completely unusable in any remotely bright environment sRGB color gamut is 55%, meaning that the colors will look quite washed out as it just, you know cannot display all the colors in Leeds, and as a result of that, the color accuracy is pretty bad as well so even though the CPU can handle it.
There is no way you could do any kind of photo or video editing using this screen, but the absolute worst thing is the contrast which comes in at 429 to one, making it by far the worst result, have ever seen.
The display just cannot show black and instead you get that uncomfortable gray color, and it is also completely unable to display any contrast in light areas, either so I'm going to give you a nice example, I wanted to get some white sneakers for myself online and on some pages, you can barely make out the shoe from the white background.
It is just, you know, not there. It disappeared. And on top of that, because it is a TN panel, the viewing angles are terrible.
If you don't look at a panel at that one exact angle brightness and colors will drop off fast. And again, you will not be able to make out anything on the screen anymore.
Now I know that most of the TCP IPS panels and laptops, will cost you around 700, euros aren't particularly great either Lenovo ideapad 3 15-inch laptop with AMD Ryzen CPU 2021.
They will barely offer better color performance, but the other results were usually within reason, and this panel is just so much worse.
And I think that's a great argument to, you know, invest a little bit more in your laptop if you can.
This panel might be able to handle some office use. It might be fine for browsing and a bit of gaming so if this is all you can afford it will be usable.
But if you can add a bit more to your budget, I do recommend getting a laptop with a better panel than this one.
Thermal Performance
It is also a surprisingly quiet laptop coming in at around 36.9 decibels we're stressing both the CPU and integrated graphics, with a comfortable 62 degrees on the CPU while it's running at 3.5. gigahertz.
So thermals are not one of the things you should worry about Lenovo ideapad 3 15-inch laptop with AMD Ryzen CPU 2021.
Speaker, Webcame, Microphone
Now the speakers are surprisingly Okay, you shouldn't expect them to sound fantastic but playing a couple of games or watching Netflix didn't sound that bad.
If you're looking for some reliable and fast external storage and say these are the way to go. It doesn't matter if you're just going to use them to copy some files to work from them for example or to keep your games on, they're just such a useful tool to have.
And I would say the webcam is in that same category so it's nothing exceptional, but it will be good enough for occasional use I do like the little privacy slider and that turns the webcam on and off so there is no need for those silly stickers people usually like to use over there webcams okay so this is a test of the camera, and the microphone on this laptop, and as you can see it is pretty rough, even though I have all these lights around me.
So, I mean, it's going to be fine for a team's meeting or two but don't expect miracles from it, it kind of fits the price range.
Internals, Maintenance, Upgrades
It is very easy to open this laptop up and you can easily clean the fan you can swap the Wi-Fi five chip to a Wi-Fi six model, if you want to, and replace the SSD.
If you need more storage. Half of the memory is replaceable. But the other half is soldered on this tiny PCB in a spot where it looks like they just should have been able to fit a second socket instead.
And there is a spot for a 2.5-inch drive without actually having the connections for it so there is an actual connection on the motherboard itself right here about the battery, but the cable is just not there.
Now, losing the 2.5-inch slot is completely fine in my opinion but only if you put a bigger battery instead. Not like this one.
Battery Life
And the thing is, the battery life isn't that bad at all with close to five hours in the PCMark productivity test and six and a half hours of watching Netflix.
But I don't know imagine how great it could have been if Lenovo just put in a larger battery, instead of this small 35 watt-hour one instead.
Final thought
Lenovo ideapad 3 15-inch laptop with AMD Ryzen CPU 2021 : And that's pretty much all I have to complain about today. I guess if you are buying a cheap laptop, you should expect to settle for some cheap parts.
But I didn't expect this panel to be this bad I mean, the brightness, the contrast the viewing angles are the worst I've seen in a very long time.
And that is all kind of sad because most of the other parts of this laptop, really aren't that bad So, even though it has decent specs that perform well.
It has decent inputs. It has decent battery life.
This poor panel performance just hurts the overall user experience.
So, in my opinion, the only reason you can justify getting this is if you're looking for a very simple productivity laptop and you don't have more to spend.
But for anyone that's looking for a new daily driver for school for office for a bit of light gaming or some creative applications.
I would completely skip this one, and try to spend a little bit more on a machine that has a better panel, you can maybe check out my review of the Acer swift three or the Xiaomi Redmi book for example, which will only cost you a tiny bit more, but they will offer a much better user experience.
Now, that is it for today I hope you enjoyed this review, if you did please share and don't forget to subscribe to the bell icon.