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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. Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. See how we test. 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. Limits:Limit 5 per customer. Offers valid from Lenovo in the US only. Lenovo may increase or decrease these limits, from time to time, for certain offerings.
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 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.
A Sleek, Modern Exterior (at a Cheap Price)
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. 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. The screen is comfortably the worst part of the Lenovo IdeaPad 3. I don’t expect a particularly high-quality screen at the price, but twisted nematic panels are hard to stomach in 2020. An IPS display, even a bad one, would make this a much better laptop for video and gaming. Paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of eMMC storage, it’s nowhere near as fast as the Core i3 and Core i5 processors we’re seeing in devices such as the Asus Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip or Acer Chromebook Spin 714. 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.
Acer, Asus and Lenovo have all announced new Chromebook Plus models, while some other existing Chromebooks are being upgraded to the new designation, and all will be eligible for the same software offers. 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. By the way, the CrXPRT 2 performance benchmark measures things like how fast your Chromebook completes tasks and the Speedometer benchmark captures the responsiveness of the web applications. These benchmarks are good indicators of how a Chromebook will perform under different loads. It should also be noted that because Chromebooks get updated every six weeks, the test results aren’t always going to line up perfectly. Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 Chromebook: Battery life There are just a few other points to mention. The Lenovo IdeaPad 3’s speakers are, you may gave guessed, pretty poor. They have the thin, bass-free sound typical of your average budget laptop. 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.
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The bodywork is mostly plastic, although the lid is an unnamed metal, finished in the two-tone grey Lenovo seems to favour for its Chromebook line these days. There’s no doubt that the Slim 3i 14 is a budget Chromebook but it doesn’t feel horribly cheap and the construction seems perfectly robust. In fact, Lenovo claims it’s certified for military-grade durability, along with resistance to damage from spills and drops. It hasn’t been tested against the full range of tests required for MIL-STD-810H certification, however. If I can live with the ergonomics, I’m more than happy with the screen. The 14in IPS display follows the Chromebook Plus spec with its 1080p resolution but it turns out to be surprisingly capable in other ways. Sure, colour performance isn’t anything to write home about, with an sRGB colour gamut of 61% (that’s equivalent to 43% of DCI-P3) but it goes fairly bright, reaching peaks of 329cd/m 2. Colour and contrast are fine for most purposes, too, although the average Delta E of 4.21 (indicating colour accuracy) is on the high side. Consider plugging in a mouse for home use, but all you right-handers will have to do so on the “wrong” side of the laptop because the Lenovo IdeaPad 3’s USB ports are all on the left. There is the usual trio: one USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0s, but I’d expect to see the slower one on the right hand-side of the Lenovo IdeaPad 3. 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. Intel’s new Core i3-N305 is a peculiar little chip. It’s one of Intel’s Alder Lake-N CPUs, and with its eight cores and speeds of up to 3.8GHz, it feels it belongs in the Core i3 line rather than the barebones “Processor” line of the cheaper, four-core N100. However, those eight cores are Efficiency cores rather than the Performance cores you’ll find in the higher-end 12th and 13th gen Core i3 part, and this has a tangible impact on performance. Basically, I’d say this chip has more in common with the old Pentium Gold CPUs than a modern Core i3.
If you need a Chromebook for simple computing needs, and budget is your primary shopping criteria, the IdeaPad 3 will likely meet your needs. By giving up a high-resolution display, you get enough computing power for basic tasks, plenty of external connectivity, excellent battery life, and a reasonably attractive, well-built chassis. This isn’t anything like a deal-breaker. The old Pentium Gold 7505 was a decent Chromebook processor, giving you noticeably snappier performance than the Pentium Silver and Celeron CPUs often used in budget Chromebooks without ramping up the price too much. And you can say the same about the Core i3-N305. Ah, Chromebooks. What an ever-evolving journey we’ve seen so far. When they first materialized into existence, Chromebooks were a popular option for students due to their durable frames and affordable price points. They were (and still are) designed to be everyday machines. Nowadays, there are even cloud-ready gaming Chromebooks, which are super rad and something I never thought I’d see. While I’ve evaluated all sorts of Chromebooks, from modern 2-in-1s to machines made of recycled material, this time I’m reviewing the IdeaPad Slim 3 Chromebook. Lenovo’s latest offering is definitely a more conservative approach, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. 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. 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.Sound is another area where the IdeaPad Slim 3i does surprisingly well. You’re not going to get the richest tone or immersive surround sound here, but it isn’t horrible weedy, harsh or tinny, and you can watch old concert footage on YouTube or stream a show on Netflix without feeling like you have to plug some headphones in. It performs the basics just fine, thanks to an unusually deep and responsive keyboard and near-silent running. However, the screen is poor and its battery doesn’t get quite close enough to all-day use. But is it still a good value laptop? Before I joined the tech-journalism ranks, I wrote on topics as diverse as Borneo's rain forests, Middle Eastern airlines, and Big Data's role in presidential elections. A graduate of Middlebury College, I also have a master's degree in journalism and French Studies from New York University. READ NEXT: Dell Latitude 7410 Chromebook Enterprise review Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Chromebook review: Performance and battery life 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.
I also appreciate that the IdeaPad 3 uses a USB-C cable for charging. This makes it easier to use a charging cord from another device if you can’t remember where you placed the AC adapter. Many bargain-basement Chromebooks still use proprietary barrel-style charging cables, which can be difficult and expensive to replace if your child loses them. Plenty of Typing Comfort 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. 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. Build quality is fair, if no better than the norm. The keyboard surround will flex a little under the pressure of hard typing, if not enough to ruin the experience, and the inside of the IdeaPad 3 looks a little too much of a mish-mash.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. Battery:These systems do not support batteries that are not genuine Lenovo-made or authorized. Systems will continue to boot, but may not charge unauthorized batteries. Attention: Lenovo has no responsibility for the performance or safety of unauthorized batteries, and provides no warranties for failures or damage arising out of their use. Battery life (and recharge times) will vary based on many factors, including system settings and usage. You won’t want to use this laptop for serious image or video editing, but it is comfortably readable in most lighting aside from direct sunlight and it’s great for everyday work in Google Workspace apps or casual video streaming via Netflix or Disney+. This laptop uses a standard cylindrical plug to charge, which is obvious when you remember there aren’t even any USB-Cs here. A charge takes around two hours, and it goes from flat to 30% in 30 minutes. Should you buy the Lenovo IdeaPad 3?
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