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日本Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 (15″, 2021) – Top 5 Pros and Cons
Like it or not, the IdeaPad Gaming 3 series has been at the forefront of entry-level gaming, offering a good base platform for pure gaming and sometimes even something more. In the past have stumbled upon models with decent color coverage and accuracy to allow it to be used for professional work, making the device an even better offering for more and more people.
It seems that we were a little bit late to the party, as we’ve only recently had the pleasure to review the Zen 3-based IdeaPad Gaming 3, which offers Ryzen 5000H-series processors along with a multitude of entry-level and mid-range GPUs from NVIDIA.
Today we are presenting you with LaptopMedia’s top 5 picks about the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 (15″, 2021).
Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 (15″, 2021): Full Specs / In-depth Review
3 reasons to BUY the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 (15″, 2021)
1. Input devices
As always, the IdeaPad provides a quality keyboard, with a backlight. It actually is the same unit as the Legion 5, which means a NumPad, tons of key travel, and clicky feedback. The touchpad area is large enough for proper use, and while it isn’t anything to write home about, 99% of the time you’ll find it good enough.
2. Upgradeability
The device brings decent upgradeability, with two SODIMM RAM slots that support DDR4 RAM, along with two M.2 PCIe x4 slots. We’re not done, as there’s also space for a 2.5-inch SSD and you actually get mounting accessories inside the box, so you don’t have to worry about looking for some.
Here is our detailed teardown video, which shows how to access both the RAM and storage slots.
3. Performance
While we are a little bit late with our review, the components of the device are still relevant in 2022, as the Ryzen 5000H-series was amazing last year, and is still great this year. The device that we reviewed comes with the budget king, the Ryzen 5 5600H, along with the RTX 3050, which has a TGP of 85W. Nevertheless, we see good performance from both of them, with the Ryzen chip surpassing its competition from Intel, mainly the Core i5-11400H and the i5-11300H. Here are some tests results of the IdeaPad Gaming 3 (15″, 2021) going against other budget gaming notebooks from other competing brands.
CPU benchmarks
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)
GPU benchmarks
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 Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)
2 reasons NOT to buy the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 (15″, 2021)
1. Battery life
The laptop’s main fault comes from its power management. First, we have to mention the small 45Wh battery pack, which doesn’t fit the H-series CPU, regardless of the good efficiency of the Zen 3 architecture. Due to that, the laptop lasts for only 6 hours and 19 minutes of Web browsing, or 5 hours and 23 minutes of video playback.
Next is the power management during prolonged tasks, as Lenovo for some reason has decided to discharge the battery while under a heavier load, thus draining battery life even if you’re plugged in. Here you can see how quickly the battery drains after just 2 minutes of benchmarking, while plugged into the wall using the Lenovo provided 135W power brick.
2. I/O
The I/O consists of two USB Type-A 3.2 (Gen. 1) ports, a single USB Type-C 3.2 (Gen. 1) port, which only does data transfer, a LAN port, an HDMI 2.0 connector, and a 3.5 mm audio jack. An SD card of any kind is lacking.
