Portable computing is not wanton spending anymore, it’s basically a requirement and requires careful deliberation. With the laptop market chock full of companies and laptop models, it’s difficult to filter through the noise. Even more difficult is finding a laptop that doesn’t break the bank while working without problems. While searching for the best laptops under Rs 50,000 for our recent YouTube video, I found the Ideapad Slim 3, an affordable offering from Lenovo. The Ideapad series has garnered a ton of praise over the years, and this laptop looked impressive enough for me to order it and try it out. But does the Ideapad Slim 3 perform as per expectations and is it actually worth the Rs 45,000 price tag? Well, I have been test-driving the Slim 3 for a few days and this is what I think.

I will be dividing this review into different categories based on the different aspects of this laptop. Depending on what you are looking out for, use the table below to skip to the necessary section.

  • Lenovo Ideapad Slim 3: Specs SheetDesign and Build QualityDisplayPerformanceDaily UsageBenchmarksGaming and ThermalsUpgradabilitySoftware, Bloatware, and Lenovo VantageKeyboard and TrackpadI/O Ports and ConnectivityAudio QualityWebcam and MicrophoneBattery and Charging

Lenovo Ideapad Slim 3: Specs Sheet

Before we begin with the review, you should know about the hardware under the hood. Check out the specifications of the Ideapad Slim 3:

Design and Build Quality

With the clue in the name, it’s obvious that Lenovo has tried to incorporate a design that’s slim, lightweight, and modern at the same time. And for the most part, the laptop succeeds at that. The Ideapad Slim 3 is dominated by design choices that make it clear that you’re getting a work/ casual-use laptop. Even though it has decent gaming performance (more on that later), there are no gamery aspects here that may indicate the same.

The bottom of the laptop follows the same standard design, albeit with a darker and matte shade of grey. It is here the Ideapad Slim 3 has its standard rubber feet, along with a criss-cross singular vent for ventilation. The side profiles of the laptop lend it the same slim look you would expect. While it’s naturally thicker near the display, it starts to sharpen out as your eyes approach the front.

Finally, in portability, the Lenovo Ideapad Slim 3 is actually lightwight at 1.6Kgs. I found myself easily picking up the laptop and going from one place to another to work. The lightweight also helps when the machine is in your lap, and as you feel it’s less of a brick. Fortunately, the 65W round tip charge matches the same aesthetic and is easy to carry around.

The Ideapad Slim 3 is a laptop that does not come with the best build quality but manages to have enough durability and more than enough portability, all in a single machine. Further, working professionals and students can easily lug this laptop around without it standing out or bogging them down.

The display is without a doubt one of the most important aspects of a laptop. You’re going to spend most of your time in front of it, doing your work, watching movies, and more. Unfortunately, the Lenovo Ideapad Slim 3 falls short of this crucial checkbox. To list the numbers, the laptop carries a 15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) display with a 60Hz refresh rate. Sadly, you get a TN panel at this price, even though machines like Asus Vivobook OLED come with much better displays in the same price bracket. The peak brightness of 250 nits is also low for me.

Another problem I had with the laptop was the peak brightness of 250 nits. As someone who likes his display bright, I am used to at least 300 nits of power in the panel that can get me through the day. The Ideapad Slim 3’s display, on the other hand, boasts a brightness that feels low for my liking. I found myself unconsciously hitting the brightness-up button often, even though it was at the maximum setting. This sadly put another dent in my experience.

However, if you’re a daily joe not concerned about any of that, you will be glad to know the display is sharp enough for your day-to-day work. The text appears sharp and legible without problems, and I could go on working long hours. Thankfully, Lenovo has also a special Eye-Care mode that filters out blue light. However, you can always use Windows Night Light for the same purpose.

The Ideapad Slim 3 packs an AMD Ryzen 5500U chip along with Radeon Graphics. You also have a 4+4GB DDR4 RAM combination clocked in at 3200Mhz. However, do note that one module is soldered, so minus points for upgradeability here. To add insult to injury, the laptop only shows the total RAM as 5.8 GB instead of at least close to 7 GB, which is a drawback (More on this below). For storage, you get a 512 GB PCIe 3.0 SSD.

When it comes to my daily workflow, my average usage consists of around 8-10 tabs of Google Chrome with a video playing combined with software like an image editor in the background. While not the heaviest demand, this workflow gives a modest amount of load on the PC and forces it to kick it up just a notch.

The results of my usage of this laptop were a mixed bag. Right off the bat, the Ryzen 5500U inside the Ideapad Slim 3 held its own ground. Multitasking through the browser and various other apps hardly put a strain on this machine. The total utilization stood around at around 15-20%, hence, giving it a lot of room to gallop.

However, the low amount of RAM turned out to be the biggest enemy here. While the CPU had a lot of room to perform even more tasks, the RAM was 90% used and was on the brim. I opened a few more tabs the usage shot up to 95% and that was when I started to encounter lag.

Benchmarks can always come in handy when you want a numerical idea of where your hardware stands compared to others in the market. To give you the data for the Ideapad Slim 3, I decided to run Geekbench 5, Cinebench R23, and Crystal Disk Mark. Here’s what I found.

Geekbench 5

The quick and popular CPU benchmark dished out single and multi-core scores of 1113 and 5326, respectively. This gives the AMD Ryzen 5500U inside the laptop good standing, as it sits below the Intel Core i9-7900X, a desktop-based chip in single-core scores, and beating the Intel Core i7-10850H, a 10th-Gen 6 core performant CPU. While it doesn’t reach the sky-high limits of the best out there, the casual usage test above has proved the CPU can already hold its own without problems.

Cinebench is another popular CPU benchmarking tool that many users rely upon. Running the two single and multi-core tests delivered some impressive results. The single-core score topped out at 1178, which isn’t bad at all. As you can see yourself, the results are right below the i9-9880H, a high-end older chip. The multi-core results follow suit at 6885, which gives the chip below the 880H in multi-tasking but above popular chips like the i7-1165G7.

Since the Lenovo Ideapad Slim 3 houses a PCIe 3.0 SSD, the results of CrystalDiskMark are as fast as one would expect. I got peak read and write speeds of 3047 MB/s and 1655 MB/s. These storage speeds are more than plenty for fast data transfer, and I experienced the same when moving files around the PC or out of it.

While expecting performant gaming from a work-based laptop is a misstep, the Ideapad Slim 3 does have AMD Ryzen 5500U which comes coupled with Radeon Graphics. Integrated graphics while not the best out there, can perform modestly depending on the settings. To test this laptop out, I threw a mix of E-Sport and AAA titles at it. This is how it performed.

Forza Horizon 4

A good example of a modern AAA title, Forza Horizon 4 is an arcade racing game. It is where I started my gaming testing on the Ideapad Slim 3. Even though Forza 4 gave me a memory warning and said the game won’t be playable, it managed to run just fine.

Running on 1920 x 1080P at Low Settings, the laptop rendered around 40 FPS at a steady pace. The GPU use stood at 95% so was sufficiently used. However, even though I average FPS, I did not encounter any stuttering, jitters, or problems of any kind. It was an overall pleasurable experience. To get more frames, I dropped the resolution down to 1600 x 900 and immediately got a jolt to 60 FPS. Even though the resolution had dropped a bit, the extra FPS I got really elevated the experience. As before, the laptop gave no stutter nor lag and it was a fun experience. Rest assured, select AAA titles will be able to run albeit at low settings.

While E-Sport titles like R6 Siege and Apex are well optimized for most systems, they will nevertheless put a strain on a laptop with no discrete graphics. I decided to run both the games to find out if the Ideapad Slim 3 would be able to handle some strategy shooter action and battle Royale.

Starting with R6 Siege which I ran on 1920 x 1080 at High Settings. During my few tests runs between the matches, the 5500U managed to give me around 45-50 FPS at a relatively steady pace. There were times I encountered a few jitters but most of them were outside gunfights. So if you’re a stickler to the FHD resolution, you can get a pretty decent experience. Lowering it down to 1366 x 768 instantly shot up the frames post 60+FPS and even reached 80+ at one point. While I naturally noticed some degraded graphics, Siege is a game based on quick timing so this was a big plus. I can recommend this laptop to Siegers without problems.

Onto the Battle Royale Apex Legends which was subjected to the same settings. Running on FHD but at low, the game gave me 35+ FPS during matches which were a bit less than ideal. Thankfully, there were no stutters. To get more FPS, I toned down the resolution to HD and instantly got 60+ FPS without any stutters. While I’m not an expert in Apex, I had fun playing as Bloodhound and having my teammates reviving me over and over again.

A point to add here is that the thermal performance in this laptop is quite amazing. Even at peak CPU and GPU use, the laptop was kept cool by the singular fan and heat pipe setup. The surface did not feel hot while working and it was an amazing experience overall.

A laptop out of all the machines should have enough future-proofing opportunities. As someone who upgraded his RAM and storage months after buying a laptop, it’s important to me. The Ideapad Slim 3 falls on the average side in this aspect.

Opening up the laptop reveals the fairly modest setup here. You get a singular RAM slot that has been occupied by the 4GB stick that comes pre-installed. You can also see the 512GB SSD storage along with its filled slot here. However, there is no additional SSD slot nor an HDD bay so you must replace the existing hardware here.

Given that most users will likely be using the laptop for casual work and might perform small upgrades, I think the Ideapad Slim 3 offers decent opportunities for expansion here.

The Ideapad Slim 3 comes with a decent amount of software already pre-installed. For starters, you get the McAfee LiveSafe security suite for a malware-free experience. However, this antivirus also has the annoying habit of sending constant pop-ups while the laptop is in mid-use. Given how I really on either MS Defender or these best malware removal software, I disabled it.

You also get Lenovo’s own Vantage software, an all-in-one control center for your Lenovo machine. As was in the case of the Legion Slim 7, I could see the real-time hardware status of the CPU, RAM, and storage at a glance. Vantage also has a built-in system updater so there was no need to wander online for the latest drivers.

Besides performance, Lenovo Vantage houses a wide variety of settings that range between various parts like Battery, Audio, Display and Camera, Input and Accessories, and even the warranty info along with upgrade options. I had quite a good amount of fun exploring the app and it definitely added value to the laptop.

You also get another handful of Lenovo apps like Smart Noise Cancellation, Welcome, Hotkeys, and Voice to name a few, and these all have their own significance. While I’ll be discussing audio below, the laptop does come with Dolby Audio software. To top it all off, the Ideapad Slim 3 also contains the AMD Radeon Software to give you another option to keep an eye on your CPU and Graphics at a glance.

At the end of the day, if you’re going to be working, you’re going to be typing. Thankfully, the Lenovo Ideapad Slim 3 has a good enough keyboard that doesn’t take away from the experience entirely. The key travel of the keyboard itself is fairly small and hence I felt the impact on the plate below quickly. However, that also meant that my typing speed increased a bit as my fingers were moving between the keys with speed.

The keycaps themselves have been shaped in an ergonomic and hence do not feel too small or big. Like other Lenovo laptops, the U-shaped keys remain a tried and tested method and I’m glad the company stuck to it in the Slim 3. While typing or even gaming, I did not fat finger at all and had a pretty decent typing speed in the ballpark of 65-70 WPM. Since I’m primarily a touch-typer, I found this speed impressive for this keyboard. The keyboard is also white and backlit with two levels of brightness so if you’re a fairly fast typer like me, that can continue in the night.

The laptop sadly doesn’t come with a fingerprint sensor which is something a lot of other models in this price range do. This naturally puts a hit on security which is a prime concern in the throes of 2022. Thankfully, you do get a quick mic mute button positioned on the keyboard.

The Lenovo Ideapad Slim 3 comes with a healthy variety of ports that will suit the requirements of almost every user. The left side of the laptop holds the majority of the ports which include the pin-hole power-in, a USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, an HDMI port, USB-C 3.2 Gen 1, and a headphone/mic combo jack. I really loved the inclusion of a Gen 1 Type-C port and it is quickly becoming the modern standard.

The right side of the Ideapad Slim has a USB-A 2.0 port, an SD card reader which is handy, and indicators for headphones and battery charging. The inclusion of indicators is a nice touch while the 2.0 in USB-A should have been avoided.

Speaking of the Internet, the laptop does come with Wi-Fi 5 which gives you fast enough speeds. You also get Bluetooth 5.0 if you’re in the habit of moving files around wirelessly. There is unfortunately no RJ-45 port for a wired Internet connection which might be a damper for folks wanting top-notch speed. However, I understand the reason since Lenovo wanted to keep the overall profile of the laptop Slim. I felt the ports and connectivity combo was quite good in the end.

Audio Quality

The Ideapad Slim 3 comes with a bottom-based dual-speaker audio system. While the speakers are small in size, the laptop does come with Dolby Audio which according to the app has given professional speaker tuning for Lenovo. I decided to test these tuned speakers out with a mix of my favorite YouTube tracks and Spotify songs and the experience was decent.

The speakers retain a decent level of detail on varying audio ranges. Thankfully, they don’t crackle at 100% volume and remain audibly clean. The various ranges remain crisp and without problems. The bass is non-existent but I was expecting that from the start.

Webcam and Microphone

Like almost all laptops under the 50,000 price bracket, the Ideapad Slim 3 comes with a 720P webcam paired with a dual-microphone setup. My use of the webcam involved snapping and recording day-to-day photos and videos and the results were a bit above average. The webcam snaps shots with little to moderate quality.

Since you naturally don’t get a lot of pixels and sensors to shoot with, this is expected. It handles light in an average way, sometimes over or underexposing it. While the webcam certainly cannot be used for any production scenarios, if you’re a user looking for a fairly basic meeting camera, this will serve you well.

The Ideapad Slim 3 comes with a 3 Cell, 45 Wh battery. While not the biggest battery in a laptop, Lenovo promises up to 9 hours of life on a single charge. My daily usage consists of 100% brightness placed on a Balanced performance profile. Combine this with my daily usage above, and you have a laptop that will be under moderate load.

The laptop actually did well at the end of the day. The Ideapad 3 lasted for around 5.5 hours before I had to plug it in to save my work. However, do keep in mind that I was using it on the Balanced profile. You can most likely stretch an additional hour out of it by going towards the most power-efficient plan and toning down the brightness.

Thankfully, like most Lenovo laptops, this one too comes with Lenovo Rapid charge which quickly tops off the battery. You can also carry this lightweight adapter along with you with ease. While I doubt you will be able to reach continuous 9 hours on this system, a decent length of 6.5 hours should be enough to get most folks through the day.

Lenovo Ideapad Slim 3 Review: Should You Buy or Not?

Lenovo Ideapad Slim 3 is a budget-centric work laptop that does a lot of things right. Priced at a modest Rs 45,000, the laptop holds good casual and multi-tasking performance while also keeping something for the casual gamer inside us all. Combine that with a decent speaker, camera, and mic setup, you should have a killer recipe. However, the substandard panel with its horrible viewing angles and low brightness holds the laptop back from becoming what it should have been; a perfect combination.