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日本Lenovo IdeaPad 5 (15″, 2022) – Top 5 Pros and Cons
IdeaPads are some of the best-selling laptops on the market, fulfilling a pretty wide range of niches. They can act as business laptops, and with the recent improvements in hardware performance, there’s hardly anything you can’t do on them, except high-end gaming.
Thankfully, we have the IdeaPad Gaming 3 and the Legions for that. Today we have the IdeaPad 5, which comes in as a more elegant and a bit more premium version of the IdeaPad 3 which also comes with better hardware under the hood, including a discrete GPU from NVIDIA.
Today we present you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 (15″, 2022).
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 (15″, 2022): Full Specs / In-depth Review
4 reasons to BUY the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 (15″, 2022)
1. Design and build quality
The laptop uses quality materials, giving you two options. You can get a fully-aluminum device, which we did, or get an aluminum lid with a plastic base. It’s quite durable, with both the lid and the base being resistant to flex. It weighs 1.77 kg and has a profile of 17.9 mm. The design of the laptop is very appealing, with chamfered glossy edges and a nice matte finish on the base and lid. The chassis has passed several of the MIL-STD-810H durability tests, but which exact ones weren’t specified.
Speaking of it, the lid opens with one hand. It also lifts up the rear of the base, trying to give you a more comfortable angle for typing, however, the angle is too big for you to take any reasonable advantage of it. Still, you get a pretty good keyboard with clicky feedback. The key travel is a bit short, but overall we’re satisfied. The touchpad is covered with Mylar, which is close to mimicking glass, while the accuracy and responsiveness are great too.
2. Battery life
Inside, we find a 57Wh battery pack, which is large enough for this type of device. It lasts for 11 hours and 30 minutes of Web browsing, or 9 hours and 30 minutes of video playback. Now, we conduct the battery tests with the Windows Better performance setting turned on, screen brightness adjusted to 120 nits, and all other programs turned off except for the one we are testing the notebook with.
3. Features
On the top bezel, which is pretty thin BTW, we find an FHD Webcam with a privacy shutter. The base also has a fingerprint reader. There is also a massive grill on top which houses the stereo speaker setup.
4. Performance
CPU benchmarks
There are CPUs from both Intel and AMD, with the Ryzen 5000U-series and the Alder Lake-U and P series. We tested a slightly less powered model, featuring a Core i5-1235U with 10-cores and 12 threads. It scores very well in benchmarks, surpassing the Ryzen 5 5625U that’s also available, as well as the more power-hungry Ryzen 5 5600H.
Results are from the Cinebench R23 CPU test (the higher the score, the better)
Results are from our Photoshop benchmark test (the lower the score, the better)
For graphics, you get the RX Vega integrated units inside the AMD CPUs and the Iris Xe Graphics inside Intel chips. There’s also an MX 550 which is optional. We tested the 80EU version of the Xe Graphics G7, which here doesn’t score as highly as other laptops with the same iGPU. Still, you can take advantage of it in Creator work and other productivity tasks.
Results are from the 3DMark: Time Spy (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the 3DMark: Fire Strike (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the 3DMark: Wild Life benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)
1 reason NOT to buy the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 (15″, 2022)
1. Upgradeability
The unfortunate thing about the IdeaPad 5 is the soldered RAM, of which you get only 16GB. Storage is another story, however, as you get one M.2 PCIe x4 slot along with space for a 2.5-inch SATA drive. Lenovo is cool enough to provide mounting hardware inside the box.
Here is our detailed teardown video, which shows how to take apart and access the slots inside the IdeaPad 5.
How can I get a screen for my Lenovo
The Ryzen 5625u model which is the one I purchased is disappointing. The Ryzen CPU is a lot slower in battery mode then on AC. Apparently, AMD decided to trade performance for better battery life. The screen is a little dimmer than I would like, and colors seem washed out as well. It’s a IPS touch screen but not of good quality. Lenovo like many PC makers focus more of premium products now then middle or low-end models. Finding a good laptop at $600 or less is pretty hard to do without accepting compromises in quality and features.