Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Chromebook 14inch FHD Laptop (MediaTek MT8183, 4 GB RAM, 64GB eMMC, ARM Mali-G72 MP3 Graphics, Chrome OS) – Abyss Blue

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Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Chromebook 14inch FHD Laptop (MediaTek MT8183, 4 GB RAM, 64GB eMMC, ARM Mali-G72 MP3 Graphics, Chrome OS) – Abyss Blue

Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Chromebook 14inch FHD Laptop (MediaTek MT8183, 4 GB RAM, 64GB eMMC, ARM Mali-G72 MP3 Graphics, Chrome OS) – Abyss Blue

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READ NEXT: Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise review Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Chromebook review: Performance and battery life The Lenovo IdeaPad 3 won’t last through a full day of work but if you just need it to hang on through an afternoon working in a cafe, no problem.

LENOVO Chromebooks - Cheap LENOVO Chromebook Deals | Currys LENOVO Chromebooks - Cheap LENOVO Chromebook Deals | Currys

The Lenovo IdeaPad 3 has an Intel Core-series processor, one more powerful than the typical Windows 10 S laptop. So why is Windows 10 S even here? The laptop has limited RAM and storage, and the restricted software is a heads-up of who it’s meant for. First impressions of the keyboard and touchpad aren’t great. There’s something a bit cheap-looking and toy-like about the IdeaPad 3’s square chiclet keys – we’re a long way away from the classy, sculpted keytops found on Lenovo’s business-grade ThinkPad laptops.

Surprisingly Deep Connectivity

You don’t necessarily need to upgrade, however. Over a day or so of light use, including web browsing with a handful of tabs open at once, I found the IdeaPad 3 to be mostly free of sluggishness. It also took only around 10 seconds to boot up. I did encounter a significant slowdown when I was transferring a multi-gigabyte file from an external drive, but the system never froze up completely.

Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Chromebook (11in) review: Now cheaper than Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Chromebook (11in) review: Now cheaper than

However, give it a little time and the IdeaPad 3 Chromebook turns out to be surprisingly useable. The flat keys don’t have much travel, but they do have a light and fairly crisp action with no wobbles or flexing in the middle. This line-up had me wondering why the IdeaPad 3 comes with Windows 10 S instead of full Windows. A Core i3-1005G1 is much more powerful than the kind of Intel Pentium Gold processor that usually gets the cut-down OS. As ever, there’s nothing wrong with a Core i3. Want the numbers? My SpyderX Pro says it covers just 55.4% of sRGB, 38.2% of Adobe RGB and 39.3% of DCI P3, which means it offers dreadfully poor colour accuracy. Maximum brightness is also way below the average at 223 nits, resulting in a poor 706:1 contrast. TN screens almost always offer dramatically worse image quality than an IPS LCD, the type used by almost all pricier laptops and the majority of phones and tables. The Lenovo IdeaPad 3’s colour saturation is very weak, contrast is low and the effects of the panel’s contrast shift are obvious. I would be happy doing 90% of my work on the Lenovo Ideapad 3 were it not for one thing: the low-quality screen.According to PC Mark 10’s battery tests, it lasts for five hours and 28 minutes of basic office productivity work. Using it to write a document outdoors, which all but mandates maximum display brightness, and it lasts around six hours. That may seem impressive until you remember the screen itself is pretty dim. So, is the IdeaPad 3 Chromebook 11 the Chrome OS bargain of the century or a cut-price duffer we should warn you of? Inevitably, the truth lies somewhere in-between. This might be a super-cheap Chromebook, but you don’t have to spend a whole lot more to find some competition. How about Photoshop? It will run OK for the basics, but 4GB RAM is not enough if you want to start working on big layered images. Photoshop is a RAM hog, and when it runs out you will start to see significant slow-down and potentially some crashes.

Lenovo IdeaPad 3 11.6 Inch HD Chromebook - (Intel Celeron, 4 Lenovo IdeaPad 3 11.6 Inch HD Chromebook - (Intel Celeron, 4

A propensity to wander also means that Chromebooks need solid Wi-Fi, since they may be far from a wireless base station. While I didn’t experience any random disconnects or slowdowns while testing the IdeaPad 3 connected to a Netgear Nighthawk router, it is unfortunate that the laptop uses the older 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. This offers adequate speed and reliability today, but the next-generation 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) standard provides better future-proofing. It runs Windows 10 S, which means you’re restricted to Windows Store apps unless you switch it to full Windows 10. You can do this for free in a matter of seconds, although will see some performance compromises. The Lenovo IdeaPad 3’s matte finish means it can actually be used outdoors on a sunny day reasonably comfortably. Watching a cached Netflix movie won’t be much fun, but text editing look OK, thanks to the very high contrast involved. Yes, it’ll look dim, but you can make the text out. Now for the big surprise. Where other ultra-budget Chromebooks stuff in dated Celeron N3350 and N4000 processors, the IdeaPad 3 has a 2019-vintage N4020 running at up to 2.8GHz.The scores in the Android Geekbench 5 benchmark are a little higher than the Celeron N4000-based Chromebooks, too, though not up there with the faster Pentium and Core i3 models. All told, the IdeaPad 3 feels a little snappier than some of its rivals in day-to-day browsing and general use. The Lenovo IdeaPad 3 keyboard also suggest this laptop is meant more for work than play. While there’s a certain hollow sound to key presses ringing through the plastic shell, if you type hard, this is actually a lovely keyboard for long-form typing. You have the metal-effect plastic base, mid-grey keyboard keys, a textured plastic hinge and a cheap-looking screen. Lenovo has made some great-looking mid-price laptops over the years, but this cheaper one won’t convince too many eyes – it’s anything but a budget model close-up. That metal effect illusion works best from a distance. Again, it's very likely that the dim, low-resolution screen played a big part in the IdeaPad 3's strong showing here. A Bargain Chromebook

Lenovo Chromebooks | Argos Lenovo Chromebooks | Argos

Yet, somehow, it’s actually quite acceptable for everyday use. As long as you don’t try and use it outside, or under particularly intense lighting, the screen is perfectly workable – movies and games played via Google’s Stadia streaming games service actually don’t look too bad at all. This is given a helping hand by the 4GB of RAM that’s installed. This might seem low compared to Windows PCs, and I’d certainly advise against buying the latter if it only had 4GB, but ChromeOS is a lightweight operating system and functions happily within these constraints. In fact, all the tasks I needed to complete on the IdeaPad were done with no fuss and nary a crash in sight. It’s a solid device that gets the job done.You don’t get a graphics card, just the integrated graphics that is part of the Core i3 processor. There was little point in subjecting the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 to our usual gaming tests, but I did try out Skyrim to see if it would run. When it comes to battery life, however, the IdeaPad 3’s advantage is apparent. No other Chromebook we’ve tested recently comes close to its result on our video battery rundown test, which involves playing a locally stored video at 50 percent screen brightness with Wi-Fi turned off until the laptop dies. Lenovo says its IdeaPad laptops are made for “thin and light” portable use. But it hasn’t followed this up with a particularly large battery. Putting it through the normal benchmark tests, the Chromebook posted the following scores; Jetstream 2 – 58.31, Basemark 3.0 – 340.71, Geekbench 5 (Android version) – single-core 447, multi-core 855. This puts it miles behind the likes of the premium In terms of the physical design, Lenovo has made the best of a limited budget. The all-plastic construction feels cheap, but there’s a nice two-tone textured effect on the lid, which itself isn’t as weak and flexible as on some budget Chromebooks. Bar the massive bezel below the screen, it’s not a bad-looking device.



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