Top 5 reasons to BUY or NOT to buy the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 (17″, 2021)
The niche that the IdeaPad 3 fills is now more important than ever. The need for a budget-conscious laptop has skyrocketed with the world being in the state that it is. The newest generation IdeaPad 3 laptops offer the Ryzen 5000 U-series chips, albeit the ones that are built on the Zen 2 architecture.
However, they still offer plenty of performance for day-to-day activities, as well as the occasional heavy workloads. The IdeaPad 3 (17″, 2021) offers a lot of bank for the buck, with its 17.3-inch screen and is one of the more interesting IdeaPad 3 laptops.
Today, we present you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 (17″, 2021).
Lenovo IdeaPad 3 (17″, 2021): Full Specs / In-depth Review
4 reasons to BUY the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 (17″, 2021)
1. Upgradeability
The laptop offers decent, but not perfect upgradeability. For example, half the RAM is soldered onto the motherboard, with there being only one SODIMM slot for future expansion. Storage-wise, you get one M.2 PCIe x4 drive, along with an optional 2.6-inch SATA drive bay, depending on which battery you go for.
Here is our detailed teardown video, which shows how to access the laptop’s internal components, including the RAM and SSD slots.
2. Display
The laptop offers two display options, each with a 17.3-inch diagonal. The first laptop offers a 1600x900p resolution and uses a TN panel, which offers narrow viewing angles and poor color reproduction. The second option increases the resolution to Full HD and uses an IPS panel. Our laptop had the latter option, and it showed comfortable viewing angles, a maximum brightness of 327 nits in the middle of the screen, 321 nits as an average for the entire display area, and a maximum deviation of 8%. The contrast ratio is good – 1150:1.
The display also covers 97% of the sRGB color gamut, making a good case for being a budget creator laptop.
The display solidifies its case by delivering great color accuracy once we applied our Design and Gaming profile applied, bringing down the dE value to 1.1.
Here are the results of our color accuracy test with both the factory settings (left) and with our Design and Gaming profile applied (right).
Buy our profiles
Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for MSI Katana GF76 configurations with 17.3″ FHD IPS AUO B173HAN04.3 (AUO439D).
*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at [email protected].
Read more about the profiles HERE.
En plus de recevoir des profils efficaces et respectueux de la santé, en achetant les produits de LaptopMedia, vous soutenez également le développement de nos laboratoires, où nous testons des appareils afin de produire les critiques les plus objectives possibles.
Travail de bureau
Office Work devrait être utilisé principalement par les utilisateurs qui passent la plupart de leur temps à regarder des textes, des tableaux ou simplement à naviguer. Ce profil vise à offrir une meilleure distinction et clarté en maintenant une courbe gamma plate (2.20), une température de couleur native et des couleurs fidèles à la perception.
Design et Gaming
Ce profil s'adresse aux designers qui travaillent avec les couleurs de manière professionnelle, ainsi qu'aux jeux et aux films. Design and Gaming pousse les dalles d'affichage à leurs limites, les rendant aussi précises que possible dans la norme sRGB IEC61966-2-1 pour le Web et la TVHD, au point blanc D65.
Health-Guard
Health-Guard élimine la Modulation de Largeur d'Impulsion (PWM) nocive et réduit la lumière bleue négative qui affecte nos yeux et notre corps. Comme il est adapté à chaque dalle, il parvient à conserver des couleurs fidèles à la perception. Health-Guard simule le papier, ce qui réduit considérablement la pression sur les yeux.
Obtenez les 3 profils avec 33% de réduction
3. Battery life
The laptop comes with the choice between two different battery units, either 38Wh or 45Wh. Our laptop came equipped with the 45Wh battery unit, and it performed quite well, lasting for 9 hours and a half of Web browsing, 9 hours and 3 minutes of video playback, and two hours and five minutes of gaming. Now, we conduct the battery tests with 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.
4. Performance
The laptop offers adequate performance, with its Ryzen 5 5500U, which is a nice middle ground between the Ryzen 3 5300U and the Ryzen 7 5700U. Here you can compare the benchmark scores of our laptop, as it goes against several of its competitors.
CPU benchmarks
Les résultats proviennent du test CPU Cinebench R23 (plus le score est élevé, mieux c'est).
GPU benchmarks
Les résultats proviennent de 3DMark Time Spy (Graphics). Un score plus élevé est meilleur.
Les résultats proviennent du benchmark 3DMark Fire Strike (Graphics) (un score plus élevé est meilleur)
Les résultats proviennent du benchmark Unigine Superposition (un score plus élevé est meilleur)
1 reason NOT to buy the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 (17″, 2021)
1. Design and build quality
The laptop is built entirely from plastic, which is totally understandable, considering the price of it. However, we would have liked it if Lenovo had put more effort into making it sturdier. When you are the brand that created the ThinkPad laptops, which annually show the world that you don’t need fancy materials on laptops to make them rigid and tough, you need to apply the same effort for your other, less expensive laptops, which make the largest chunks of your revenue.
Both the lid and the base are bendy, and the lid cannot be opened with a single hand. However, it sports portable dimensions especially for a 17.3-inch device, weighing only 2.10 kg, while being 19.9 mm tall.
All Lenovo IdeaPad 3 (17″, 2021) configurations:
Author: Severin Kolakov
![[Août 2026] Amazon France : le top 10 des ordinateurs portables les plus vendus – Le modèle HP 15, à petit prix, domine en volume tandis qu’Apple s’accapare plus de la moitié du chiffre d’affaires](https://laptopmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Best-Selling-Laptops-FR-Top-10-400x225.jpg)
![[Août 2026] Amazon France : le top 7 des ordinateurs portables de jeu les plus vendus – L’ASUS V16 s’empare de la première place en doublant les ventes de tous ses concurrents](https://laptopmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/Best-Selling-Gaming-Laptops-FR-Top-10-400x225.jpg)
![[Juillet 2026] Amazon Global : les 10 ordinateurs portables les plus vendus – L’Apple MacBook Neo domine le classement tandis que les ordinateurs portables d’entrée de gamme et haut de gamme se partagent le marché](https://laptopmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Best-Selling-Laptops-GLOBAL-Top-10-400x225.jpg)
![[Juillet 2026] Amazon Global : le top 10 des ordinateurs portables de jeu les plus vendus – L’ASUS ROG Strix G16 domine le marché mondial avec des ventes record](https://laptopmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Best-Selling-Gaming-Laptops-GLOBAL-Top-10-400x225.jpg)
![[Juillet 2026] Classement mondial des cartes graphiques pour ordinateurs portables les plus vendues sur Amazon : la RTX 5060 domine le segment haut de gamme, tandis qu’Intel reste en tête du segment économique](https://laptopmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Best-Selling-GPUs-GLOBAL-Top-10-400x225.jpg)
