A review of the lenovo ideapad 3-14
Hello all,
I've got another laptop review for you today. This one in question discusses the Lenovo ideapad 3-14.
More specifically, I'm talking about the model equipped with AMD's ryzen 5 processor. Although I myself returned it, I'd like to list pros and cons as I've done in the past with other laptops I've reviewed.
pros
Cheap, it can be had for around $540.
Good battery life I managed 6 hours of heavy usage.
Quiet, even at the highest fan speed it's fairly quiet.
cons
Inaccurate ram advertisements see below.
Can potentially hard crash.
Processor under extreme heavy loads is unstable.
Internal keyboard could use improvement see below.
Bad speaker placement.
stiff USB ports.
Overall, the laptop in question I'd say would work for casual users. If your going to browse the web, IE mobile banking, shopping etc, some light gaming, this would work out great. Many tabs open in firefox would cause a slight performance hit, though.
I managed to binge watch rerez tv's channel for about 4 hours while browsing the web. The laptop on battery ran cool to the touch, and the fan wasn't all that loud. It's very easy to drown out by other noise.
In regards to audio output, the speaker placement could be better. If you have it placed on your lap is when you will notice the issue the most. The speakers are right under the laptop on the left and right corners, which makes it very easy to muffle the sound.
I wouldn't use the internal headphone input if your the type of person who likes to use internal audio for sound design. You get lots of EMF noise through whatever you plug in. If you must, there is no audio processing installed.
The keyboard is actually really good to type on. Decent sized keys plus isn't all that quiet. Key travel could be slightly better, but it works for what it is.
There were two issues I had with it though. 1, no physical applications key. And two, a couple of the keys developed the tendency to squeak. The space bar, and the enter key.
Inaccurate ram advertisement this was a big one. The page advertised 8, but you really only got the low side of 5 GB ram. Sure it would show up as 8 installed, though over 2 of those gigs were hardware reserved.
The processor itself ran clean and smooth, up until I started trying to use big fx chains. Audio issues and system instability came screaming into the room once I loaded a 14 track production I made a couple years ago that makes most intel processors a little annoyed. Attempts to edit it caused my editor to crash, and even in one instance the machine locked up and hard crashed.
Until then, though, small productions and edits in gold wave worked well enough, though I must stress this machine is not an audio editing workhorse by any means.
On amazon, it's going for around $540. Nothing about the machine is upgradeable, what you get out of the box is what your stuck with.
If your willing to spend some more, the lenovo yoga c740 goes for around $700 $740 on amazon. A review of that from me will be out in the coming weeks.
Take care all, and stay safe.
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