Lenovo Ideapad L340 Gaming (17″) review – a crossbreed between an Ideapad and a Legion

Another day, another Lenovo Ideapad L340 on board… We promise – this is the last one for now. More specifically, it is the Ideapad L340 Gaming (17″) – the bigger brother of a laptop we showed you yesterday.

As we say that, we really, really hope that the larger device will introduce something better and more compelling than what we saw with the 15-inch version. When you present to the public a laptop that comes in two variants, there are basically two options in front of you. The first one is to make basically the same notebook, slightly enlarged, with the same internal components and a relatively similar price. On the other side, you can go for better cooling, stack more upgradability options inside and strengthen the chassis.

Clearly, Lenovo has gone for the first of the two options, as we see the only improvement in the display department, where the IPS Full HD panel is going to be the most popular choice. Additionally, there are the Coffee Lake Core i5 and Core i7 that boost its performance, while on the GPU side it comes with either the GeForce GTX 1050 (3GB GDDR5) or the newer GTX 1650 (4GB GDDR5).

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/lenovo-ideapad-l340-17%e2%80%b3-gaming-l340-17irh/

Contents


Specs Sheet

Lenovo IdeaPad L340 (17″) Gaming - Specs

  • LG LP173WF4-SPF6 (LGD05B9)
  • Color accuracy  5.0  3.4
  • HDD/SSD
  • up to 2000GB SSD + up to 2000GB HDD
  • RAM
  • up to 32GB
  • OS
  • Windows 10 Home, No OS, Windows 10 Pro
  • Battery
  • 45Wh, 3-cell, 45Wh
  • Dimensions
  • 413 x 285 x 25.3 mm (16.26" x 11.22" x 1.00")
  • Weight
  • 2.78 kg (6.1 lbs)
  • Ports and connectivity
  • 1x USB Type-C
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • 2x USB Type-A
  • 3.2 Gen 1 (5 Gbps)
  • HDMI
  • 2.0
  • Card reader
  • Ethernet LAN
  • 10, 100, 1000 Mbit/s
  • Wi-Fi
  • 802.11ac
  • Bluetooth
  • 4.2
  • Audio jack
  • 3.5 mm combo
  • Features
  • Fingerprint reader
  • Web camera
  • HD 720p with privacy shutter
  • Backlit keyboard
  • Microphone
  • Speakers
  • 2x 1.5W, Dolby Audio
  • Optical drive
  • Security Lock slot

What’s in the box?

Inside the black retail package of this laptop, you are going to find the mandatory paper manuals as well as the Ideapad L340 Gaming (17″) and a 135W charging adapter to power the beast.


Design and construction

The build quality and the looks of this laptop completely match its price tag. In fact, if it wasn’t for the budget build materials (plastic all around) it would actually look pretty nice. You are definitely going to be undercover when gaming on this laptop in a cafe for example… if you remove the NVIDIA GTX stickers of course. In terms of measurements, it is pretty similar to the HP Pavilion Gaming 17 (2019) which it competes directly with.

WidthLengthHeightWeight
Lenovo Ideapad L340 Gaming (17″)413 mm (16.26″)285 mm (11.22″)25.3 mm (1.00″)2.78 kg (6.1 lbs)
HP Pavilion Gaming 17 (2019)405 mm (15.94″)282 mm (11.10″)25.4 mm (1.00″)2.75 kg (6.1 lbs)

Weirdly, you won’t be able to open the huge screen of this laptop with a single hand. However, it is a lot more susceptible to bend than the lid on the 15-inch L340 Gaming and it also features a physical shutter on its camera.

Then on the base, there is a backlit keyboard that is blue in color, which is something fresh and matches the blue Lenovo logo on top of the lid. As far as the experience when typing and during gaming – well… it is not the most comfortable of them all, but it does the job with its respectable travel and clickiness. Its touchpad, however, is terrible – just buy an external mouse for 5 bucks – it will do a better job.

Expectedly, as with the non-Gaming and the 15-inch L340 Gaming Ideapad, this one has its speakers on the side of the bottom panel. Additionally, it draws cold air from some grills at the bottom and exhausts it from in between the base and the display.

Ports

I/O-wise it all starts with the special Lenovo charging plug, an RJ-45 connector, an HDMI port, followed by two USB Type-A 3.1 (Gen. 1) ports, an audio jack and a USB Type-C 3.1 (Gen. 1) – unfortunately for left-handers, all of them are placed on the left.


Disassembly and upgrade options

After consulting with Lenovo’s official maintenance guide, we are pretty confident that the insides of the 17-inch version of the Ideapad L340 Gaming are exactly the same as those of the 15-inch variation, meaning that the disassembly process is going to be the same. The only difference we found is that the bigger version has two more screws securing the bottom plate to up the tally to 13 of Phillips type.


Display quality

Lenovo Ideapad L340 Gaming (17) has a Full HD IPS panel, made by LG with a model number LP173WF4-SPF6 (LGD05B9). Its diagonal is 17.3″ (43.94 cm), and the resolution 1920 х 1080 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:9, and we are looking at a pixel density of – 127 ppi, and a pitch of 0.2 х 0.2 mm. The screen turns into Retina when viewed at distance equal to or greater than 69cm (27″) (from this distance one’s eye stops differentiating the separate pixels, and it is normal for looking at a laptop).

Viewing angles are comfortable. We offer images at 45° to evaluate image quality.

The measured maximum brightness of 337 nits in the middle of the screen and 317 nits as an average for the whole area, with a maximum deviation of 9%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen is 6900K – slightly colder than the optimal for the sRGB standard of 6500K.
In the illustration below you can see how the display performs from a uniformity perspective. In other words, the leakage of light from the light source.

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. The contrast ratio is fine – 1070:1.

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 L340 Gaming (17)’s color gamut coverage.

Its display covers only 84% 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 L340 Gaming (17) with the default settings (left), and with the “Gaming and Web design” profile (right).

The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really 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 = 22 ms.


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 L340 Gaming (17)’s display doesn’t use PWM for brightness adjustment at any level. This means it is comfortable for long working periods, without presenting any harm to your eyes in this aspect.

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.

Conclusion

Lenovo Ideapad L340 Gaming (17)’s Full HD IPS panel has a good contrast ratio and comfortable viewing angles. Also, we were happy to see the lack of PWM for adjusting the brightness of this screen.

Buy our profiles

Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its respective profile package are meant for Lenovo Ideapad L340 Gaming (17) configurations with 17.3″ FHD IPS LG LP173WF4-SPF6 (LGD05B9).

*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.

Health-Guard

Health-Guard eliminates the harmful Pulse-Width Modulation (PWM) and reduces the negative Blue Light which affects our eyes and body. Since it’s custom tailored for every panel, it manages to keep the colors perceptually accurate. Health-Guard simulates paper so the pressure on the eyes is greatly reduced.

Get all 3 profiles with 33% discount


Sound

Lenovo Ideapad L340 Gaming (17) has decently sounding speakers. Its low, mid and high tones are clear of deviations.


Drivers

All drivers and utilities for the Lenovo Ideapad L340 Gaming (17″) can be downloaded from here: https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/products/laptops-and-netbooks/ideapad-l-series-laptop/l340-17irh-gaming/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. Despite being larger in size, the Ideapad L340 Gaming (17″) has exactly the same 45Wh battery unit as its smaller brother.

Obviously, this means the battery life would be shorter – around 5 hours of Web browsing and video playback.

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for automatic web browsing through over 70 websites.


CPU options

Your processor options here are the quad-core Core i5-9300H and the hexa-core Core i7-9750H.


GPU options

Similarly to the smaller laptop – you can pick from the GTX 1050 or the newer GTX 1650.


Gaming tests

GTA-V-benchmarks

Grand Theft Auto V (GTA 5)Full HD, Normal (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average88 fps61 fps35 fps

Far Cry 5Full HD, Normal (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Ultra (Check settings)
Average45 fps41 fps39 fps

rise-of-the-tomb-raider

Rise of the Tomb Raider (2016)Full HD, Lowest (Check settings)Full HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average82 fps58 fps27 fps

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon WildlandsFull HD, Medium (Check settings)Full HD, High (Check settings)Full HD, Very High (Check settings)
Average42 fps38 fps33 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 i5-9300H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
Lenovo Ideapad L340 Gaming (17″)2.73 GHz (B+14%)@ 66°C3.11 GHz (B+30%)@ 84°C2.83 GHz (B+18%)@ 76°C
Lenovo Ideapad L340 Gaming (15″)2.39 GHz @ 52°C3.72 GHz (B+55%)@ 87°C2.92 GHz (B+22%)@ 78°C
Intel Core i5-8300H (45W TDP)0:02 – 0:10 sec0:15 – 0:30 sec10:00 – 15:00 min
ASUS TUF Gaming FX5053.25 GHz (B+41%) @ 92°C3.13 GHz (B+36%) @ 92°C2.98 GHz (B+30%) @ 92°C
Dell G3 17 37793.44 GHz (B+50%) @ 98°C3.29 GHz (B+43%) @ 98°C3.11 GHz (B+35%) @ 91°C

Quite similarly to the Ideapad L340 Gaming (15″), the 17-inch version uses a conservative method of thermal configuration. While the hardware (the cooling solution itself) is the same, we saw slightly different results, which interestingly were favoring the smaller Ideapad L340 Gaming. If we compare it to the Dell G3 17 3779 for example, we see lower clock speeds and much lower temperatures, which is a prerequisite for the more comfortable gaming experience. Let’s take a look.

Real-life gaming

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 2 min)GPU frequency/ Core temp (after 30 min)
Lenovo Ideapad L340 Gaming (17″)1679 MHz @ 74°C1595 MHz @ 74°C
Lenovo Ideapad L340 Gaming (15″)1691 MHz @ 74°C1620 MHz @ 74°C
Lenovo IdeaPad 330-15ICH1718 MHz @ 65°C1643 MHz @ 65°C
MSI GL63 8RC (GTX 1050)1658 MHz @ 65°C1645 MHz @ 69°C
Dell G3 17 37791683 MHz @ 77°C1670 MHz @ 88°C

Exactly, as we thought – the 17-inch Lenovo Ideapad L340 Gaming is maintaining significantly lower temperatures in the long run, and although its clock speed is lower, the real-life difference shouldn’t be dramatic at all.

Verdict

Okay, so this laptop is being one of Lenovo’s best effort to brand a line-up for extremely budget gaming and separate the Legion series as a more premium device at the same time. They surely succeeded with the first one, as the Ideapad L340 Gaming (17″) doesn’t look nor feel like a gaming laptop, whatsoever.

In terms of performance, it works exactly as expected from the hardware it packs and moreover it looks like it can easily handle the more powerful processor – the Core i7-9750H. We have to note that the GTX 1650 has better performance but uses less power than the GTX 1050, which makes less demanding in terms of cooling.

Its battery size is pretty small. Man, with that much space inside they could have easily put at least a 52Wh battery pack (the current one is 45Wh and we are in doubt it is going to be upgradable). Despite that, they have apparently done a pretty good job in terms of optimization, because we were able to extract 5 hours of Web browsing and video playback.

Additionally, it was great to see that it has an IPS Full HD panel (LG LP173WF4-SPF6 (LGD05B9)) that is comfortable for use and was pleasing on the eyes. This was confirmed by our lab results, mainly with the lack of flickering (PWM) at any brightness level. Additionally, the laptop covers 84% of sRGB, has a good contrast ratio and a decent maximum brightness

So, at the end of the day, the Ideapad L340 Gaming (17″) is not a terrible device. However, we were happier with the HP Pavilion Gaming 17 (2019) and we think it is the better deal unless Lenovo cuts that price tag even lower.

Feel free to share with us in the comments, are you excited about the new Ideapad Gaming series? Would you prefer it to a low-tier Legion device or you’re fine with the slightly lesser build quality?

Pros

  • Sleek design for a gaming laptop
  • Sufficient cooling
  • Backlit keyboard with large keycaps
  • Adequate price
  • Full HD IPS panel on board that doesn’t use PWM to adjust its brightness levels (LG LP173WF4-SPF6 (LGD05B9))


Cons

  • Budget build quality
  • Unamusing overal experience
  • Only 45Wh battery inside of a 17-inch gaming laptop

You can check the prices and configurations in our Specs System: https://laptopmedia.com/series/lenovo-ideapad-l340-17%e2%80%b3-gaming-l340-17irh/

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R7ex Ed
R7ex Ed
4 years ago

Not bad. Seems like nice screen. So I’ll get the non-gaming version of this L340 17 with an i3 with integrated graphics, coz I don’t game. Smaller battery and no backlit keyboard, but good enough for me to surf web and stream videos. About $330 cheaper.

Alvin Rodriguez
Alvin Rodriguez
3 years ago

it states in your specs above that this is upogradeable to 32GB of RAM. does this MB have 2 dimm slots instead of the one on the 15 inch version? thank you for an informative site.

Kontranavoj
Kontranavoj
3 years ago

It have the one memory slot only