Last week, we gave you our thoughts about the 15-inch version of the device we are checking out today. It is the Lenovo Ideapad C340 and the larger version had some issues, to be honest. It was too heavy for its size and purpose, got warmer than anticipated and its display wasn’t the best, whatsoever.
Stay with us to see whether going for the 14-inch option is a better deal – not only price-wise but also on the usability spectrum. Let’s start by saying that it comes in configurations of both Intel and AMD processors. Of course, they are the Whiskey Lake and the Ryzen 3-series – the latest by the time of writing this review (sorry if you are reading that in the future, perhaps you’re laughing right now).
You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/lenovo-ideapad-c340-14/
Contents
Specs Sheet
Lenovo ideapad C340 (14″) - Specs
All Lenovo ideapad C340 (14″) configurations
What’s in the box?
The packaging features a 65W power brick as well as an optional Lenovo Pen, to complement the touchscreen of your laptop.
Design and construction
Its body is made out of a plastic material plus aluminum for the lid. We mentioned, that the larger version was not one of the fittest, however, we would deem the 14-incher a pretty usable, weighing 1.65 kg and being 17.9mm thick.
Perhaps expectedly, the lid cannot be opened with a single hand – in fact, it has a pretty though magnets that keep it closed, and later on they help it stay in the “tablet mode”. By the way, the laptop doesn’t use the fancy hinges seen on the 900-series Yoga devices, but ones that are closer in design to the Yoga 730.
Moving on to the base of the laptop. Here we find a keyboard that has a backlight but also has a little shorter travel than we would like. Its tactile feedback is reasonable. On the bright side, its keycaps are big with the exception of the “up” and “down” arrow keys and the touchpad is accurate and fast. The Ideapad C340 (14″) is equipped with a fingerprint reader as well.
The ventilation of this laptop happens through the bottom plate cut-outs, while the hot air comes back at the back of the device. Additionally, its speakers are placed on the bottom two sides of the bottom plate.
Ports
On the left side, there is the power plug, as well as an HDMI connector, a USB Type-C 3.1 (Gen. 1) port and a headphone jack. On the other side, there are two USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) ports, an SD card reader and the terribly non-tactile power on/off button.
Display quality
Lenovo Ideapad C340 14 has a Full HD IPS touchscreen display, model number Chi Mei N140HAC-EAC (CNM14D4). Its diagonal is 14″ (35.56 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 157 ppi, their pitch – 0.161 x 0.161 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 56 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels).
Its viewing angles are comfortable. We have provided images at 45 degrees to evaluate quality.
The maximum measured brightness is 223 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 208 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 12%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6360K (average) – only slightly warmer than the 6500K optimum for sRGB, which is not bad. The average color temperature through the grey scale before profiling is 6300K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. The illustration below shows how matters are for operational brightness levels (approximately 140 nits) – in this particular case at 88% Brightness (White level = 140 cd/m2, Black level = 0.14 cd/m2).
Values of dE2000 over 4.0 should not occur, and this parameter is one of the first you should check if you intend to use the laptop for color-sensitive work (a maximum tolerance of 2.0 ). The contrast ratio is very good – 1010:1.
To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction to the sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the CIE 1976 Uniform Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.
Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in professional cameras, monitors, etc for printing. Colors inside the black triangle are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy of a mainstream notebook.
Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day.
The yellow dotted line shows Lenovo Ideapad C340 14’s color gamut coverage.
Its display covers just 54% of the sRGB/ITU-R BT.709 (web/HDTV standard) in CIE1976.
Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.
We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange, etc. You can check out the results at factory condition and also, with the “Design and Gaming” profile.
Below you can compare the scores of Lenovo Ideapad C340 14 with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).
The next figure shows how well the display can reproduce dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.
The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is with the “Gaming and Web Design” profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the viewing angle, and the surrounding light conditions.
Response time (Gaming capabilities)
We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black” method from 10% to 90% and vice versa.
We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 26 ms
Health impact – PWM / Blue Light
PWM (Screen flickering)
Pulse-width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these light impulses, the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.
Lenovo Ideapad C340 14 uses PWM to adjust its brightness level up to 56 nits. Additionally, it does so by using a very high frequency, which means it is relatively safe to your eyes.
Blue light emissions
Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light.
Conclusions
Lenovo Ideapad C340 (14″) has a Full HD IPS touchscreen display with moderate maximum brightness, comfortable viewing angles, and good contrast ratio. It uses PWM but with high frequencies, hence it is harmless, and as the main disadvantage we consider the narrow color coverage.
Buy our profiles
Since our profiles are tailored for each display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Lenovo Ideapad C340 14 configurations with 14.0″ Chi Mei N140HCA-EAC (CMN14D4) (FHD, 1920 × 1080) IPS panel.
*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.
In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to produce the most objective reviews possible.
Office Work
Office Work should be used mostly by users who spend most of the time looking at pieces of text, tables or just surfing. This profile aims to deliver better distinctness and clarity by keeping a flat gamma curve (2.20), native color temperature and perceptually accurate colors.
Design and Gaming
This profile is aimed at designers who work with colors professionally, and for games and movies as well. Design and Gaming takes display panels to their limits, making them as accurate as possible in the sRGB IEC61966-2-1 standard for Web and HDTV, at white point D65.
Sound
Lenovo Ideapad C340 (14″)’s speakers sound relatively loud and have good sound quality. Low, mid and high frequencies are clear of deviations.
Drivers
All of the drivers for the Lenovo Ideapad C340 (14″) can be downloaded from here: https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/ideapad-c-series-laptops/c340-14iwl/downloads
Battery
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. This laptop has a 45Wh battery pack.
We were able to extract more than 10 hours and a half of video playback from it, which is fairly reasonable.
In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.
For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.
We use F1 2017’s built-in benchmark on loop in order to simulate real-life gaming.
CPU options
Ok, so there are two versions of the laptop – an Intel one, like the one we got, and an AMD one. As the first one features the latest ULV CPUs up to date – the Whiskey Lake line up of Intel, the latter one goes for the 3000-series Ryzen CPUs of AMD.
Results are from the Cinebench 15 CPU test (the higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Fritz chess benchmark (the higher the score, the better)
Results are from our Photoshop benchmark test (the lower the score, the better)
GPU options
In terms of graphics cards, there are the well known integrated ones, as well as the GeForce MX230.
Results are from the 3DMark: Fire Strike (Graphics) benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Heaven 3.0 benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Heaven 4.0 benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Results are from the Unigine Superposition benchmark (higher the score, the better)
Gaming tests
| CS:GO | HD 1080p, Low (Check settings) | HD 1080p, Medium (Check settings) | HD 1080p, MAX (Check settings) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average FPS | 51 fps | 30 fps | – fps |
| DOTA 2 | HD 1080p, Low (Check settings) | HD 1080p, Normal (Check settings) | HD 1080p, High (Check settings) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average FPS | 76 fps | 36 fps | 18 fps |
| Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5) | HD 768p, Normal (Check settings) | HD 768p, High (Check settings) | HD 768p, Very High (Check settings) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average FPS | 33 fps | – fps | – fps |
Temperatures and comfort
Max CPU load
In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.
Average core frequency (base frequency + X); CPU temp.
| Intel Core i5-8265U (15W TDP) | 0:02 – 0:10 sec | 0:15 – 0:30 sec | 10:00 – 15:00 min |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lenovo Ideapad C340 (14″) | 3.19 GHz (B+99%)@ 90°C | 2.33 GHz (B+46%)@ 84°C | 1.94 GHz (B+21%)@ 60°C |
| Lenovo ThinkBook 13s | 2.76 GHz (B+73%)@ 75°C | 2.74 GHz (B+71%)@ 84°C | 2.11 GHz (B+32%)@ 74°C |
| Lenovo Ideapad C340 (15″) | 3.16 GHz (B+98%)@ 82°C | 3.12 GHz (B+95%)@ 94°C | 1.95 GHz (B+22%)@ 60°C |
| HP ProBook 450 G6 | 2.69 GHz (B+59%)@ 64°C | 2.53 GHz (B+60%)@ 68°C | 2.09 GHz (B+31%)@ 71°C |
| ASUS VivoBook S15 S530 | 2.99 GHz (B+87%) @ 77°C | 2.99 GHz (B+87%) @ 87°C | 2.29 GHz (B+62%) @ 71°C |
| Acer Swift 3 (SF314-56G) | 2.67 GHz (B+67%)@ 93°C | 2.16 GHz (B+35%)@ 86°C | 1.66 GHz (B+4%)@ 71°C |
In a similar fashion to the Ideapad C340 (15″), the 14-inch version cuts the clock speeds down to 1.94 GHz at the end of the video. However, it drops the frequencies way earlier than its bigger brother, as only the first part of our stress test was running above 3.00 GHz. As soon as it has reached 90C, the frequencies did take a blow, and interestingly, the laptop didn’t exceed 60C at the end of the torture run.
Verdict
Lenovo Ideapad C340 (14″) is perhaps one of the best-valued convertibles on the market. Especially, when you consider the fact that it comes with a Lenovo Pen (optional). What else should you expect – it performs good, but as soon as it reaches its T-junction of 90C, there is some heavy throttling going on (still it maintains frequencies above the base one).
However, performance is not actually what would you seek in this device – after all, it is a 2-in-1, so one would expect that the artists would be the biggest target group for this device. Well, sadly, the display is not that fabulous. Don’t get us wrong, though – it (Chi Mei N140HAC-EAC) does have comfortable viewing angles, a good contrast ratio and while it uses PWM to adjust its brightness, it does so only up until 57 nits and with a high frequency, making it not that harmful at all. Additionally, if you have particularly sensitive eyes, you can install our Health-Guard profile, which will eliminate the issue.
Then comes the narrow color coverage. For a convertible, its colors don’t really pop up, and moreover, they are not really accurate. When you add that to the poor maximum brightness you get a pretty budget experience (still better than a TN panel, though).
On the bright side, the Ideapad C340 (14″) has a very good battery life – we were able to get up to 10 hours and a half of web browsing. While the battery capacity figures are not very impressive, we are happy with the results we got from it.
At the end of the day, should you buy this device? Well, for the price Lenovo is asking for, we don’t think you can get anything extremely better than that. Especially if you want or need the versatility of the touchscreen. If you are willing to spend a little bit more, check out the Yoga 730, which is a pretty decent convertible.
Pros
- Good performance in short tasks
- Backlit keyboard
- Its IPS panel has comfortable viewing angles and good contrast ratio (Chi Mei N140HAC-EAC)
- Lenovo Active Pen inside the box (optional)
- Good battery life
Cons
- Heats up pretty fast
- Covers only 54% of sRGB (Chi Mei N140HAC-EAC)
- It has a low maximum brightness (Chi Mei N140HAC-EAC)
You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/lenovo-ideapad-c340-14/
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