The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 ($519 to start; $529 as configured) is one of Lenovo’s more basic laptops, and that’s not a bad thing. For a modest price, you can get decent everyday performance, a broad array of ports, and a 12-hour battery. But the value equation is all about price, and this laptop is sold through various retailers for a wide range, from as low as $299 to a bit above list price, depending upon the retailer. With a price swing like that, you’ll understand why our recommendation for whether to buy this laptop is an emphatic “It depends.” We recommend our top-ranked budget laptop, the Acer Aspire 3, for a more reliably priced option.Configurations: A Bundle of ChoicesThe Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 comes in a few different configuration options, with choices to be made for the processor, memory, and storage. All of these are grouped under the product name of IdeaPad Slim 3 15IRU8.
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(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Our review unit is one of the cheapest options, equipped with a 13th Gen Intel Core i3-1315U processor, 8GB of memory (which is soldered and thus, not upgradable), and a 256GB solid-state drive for storage. This configuration is listed at several retailers, with prices somewhere between genuinely affordable budget laptops ($299 at B&H Photo) and not-so-cheap ($643 at Walmart from a third-party seller at this writing).Lenovo also lists the IdeaPad Slim 3 15IRU8 with up to an Intel Core i7-1355U (which also bumps the integrated graphics from Intel UHD to Intel’s Iris Xe), 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB SSD. That obviously sounds a lot more capable, but it’s also harder to find—and when you do find it, it rings up at more than $1,000. At that price, several higher-quality options than an IdeaPad become available anyway.
Design: Mixed ImpressionsDressed up in a color Lenovo calls “Abyss Blue,” the IdeaPad Slim looks decent enough knowing its price (range). The 15-inch laptop looks like a fairly standard Lenovo model, with a small Lenovo badge on the lid and a noticeable lip at the front of the lid that serves as an extension to fit the webcam and shutter into the otherwise slim screen bezel. Measuring 0.7 inch thick and weighing just 3.6 pounds, it’s also pretty light for a desktop replacement.The problems creep in when you start looking at the all-plastic construction. While less expensive materials are hardly a surprise for a laptop in this price range, the construction does little to hide the compromises made in the name of cost savings.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
You won’t feel much flexing if you pick up the laptop by one corner, but you’ll definitely feel it as you open and close the lid. If you’re the sort to hammer on the keys as you type, you’ll feel some flexing in that event, too, but most people don’t subscribe to that high-impact typing style.Using the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3: Functional, Not FancyLenovo rarely makes a truly lousy keyboard, but this one does have a mushy feel, even if the spacing and key travel are still sensible and comfortable. The keyboard includes a 10-key number pad, which is welcome, plus a fingerprint reader integrated into the power button, which is my favorite form of biometric security since it makes signing on seamless.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The touchpad is also a bit of a throwback, with a size that would be more at home on a laptop from before 2020. Compared with the spacious touchpads that are common on laptops now, the 4-by-2.7-inch surface feels small. It also feels cheap: It’s not as substantial as you’d get on a more premium model, and it has a little rattle to it when tapped. It’s also placed too far to the left. That does center it beneath the space bar, but thanks to the addition of a number pad, that puts the touchpad a full inch or two from the center. It’s easily the most frustrating part of the hands-on experience.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
But it’s not the only part. The display, though readable and bright in various lighting environments, is a bit of an eyesore. The 1,920-by-1,080 resolution is fine for web browsing and reading documents, but the colors look slightly muted, and the contrast left a lot to be desired, with bright colors washing out.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The laptop’s 720p webcam isn’t so hot either. In today’s market, basic HD is decidedly low-end for a laptop camera, and this one adds the further issues of poor color capture that makes everything look a bit gray and with grainy image quality.Several aspects of the IdeaPad Slim 3 feel like a growing list of corners cut and pennies pinched, but thankfully, I didn’t feel so nickel-and-dimed by the port selection.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
On the right side of the laptop is a USB 3.0 port and an SD card slot. On the left is another USB connection, a full-size HDMI port, a USB-C port, and a headset audio jack. As a plus, you don’t need to share those ports with a power cord, since the laptop uses a barrel-connector AC adapter to charge.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Wireless connectivity is also respectable, with Wi-Fi 6 for current internet and Bluetooth 5.1 for peripherals.Testing the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3: Navigating Budget PerformanceWhen it comes to budget laptops, you have to temper your expectations. In their efforts to boost the value offered by a cheap system, manufacturers will tweak various features, emphasizing one feature to offset overall mediocre specs, or polishing up one aspect of the machine to entice buyers to overlook middling performance or less-than-premium construction. It’s all a balancing act, focused on delivering enough capability while maintaining the thin profit margins that low prices create.For this review, we’re comparing the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 with competitors like the low-priced HP Laptop 15z (2023) and Acer Aspire 3 (A315-24P), some of the most affordable laptops on the market. Similarly, because our review configuration sometimes sells for closer to a mainstream price, we’re also comparing it with the Acer Aspire Vero (2023) and the HP Pavilion Plus 14 (2023, AMD), two midrange models that look a lot better when they’re on sale.One interesting note: While many low-priced systems are sold with the same sort of Intel Core i3 processors found in the IdeaPad Slim 3, you’re just as likely to find AMD represented. This is one of the areas where AMD shines with capable performance for less.The other notable issue with our review unit is the 8GB of non-upgradable RAM. While soldered memory isn’t unusual in today’s laptops, the allotment is a little low for our liking. When even budget systems like the HP Laptop 15z can fit in 12GB of memory, 8GB is subpar, and it’s a difference you’ll feel whether you’re multitasking or just using a memory hog like Google’s Chrome browser.
Productivity and Content Creation Tests We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.Our other three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Geekbench 5.4 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe’s famous image editor to rate a PC’s performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It’s an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.
In PCMark, we consider 4,000 points a baseline for everyday office productivity. The IdeaPad Slim 3 made it across that line, but not by much. While that’s par for the course on budget-priced models, it still fell short of more midrange competitors, like the Acer Aspire Vero (2023) and HP Pavilion Plus 14—but it’s worth noting that even the HP Laptop 15z produced a better score. The same was true in Cinebench and Geekbench, marking the IdeaPad Slim 3 as a ho-hum performer. This makes the IdeaPad Slim 3 a tough sell at its usual price.Graphics TestsWe test the graphics inside all laptops and desktops with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs).To further measure GPUs, we also run two tests from the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which stresses both low-level routines like texturing and high-level, game-like image rendering. The 1440p Aztec Ruins and 1080p Car Chase tests are rendered offscreen to accommodate different display resolutions; they exercise graphics and compute shaders using the OpenGL programming interface and hardware tessellation, respectively. The more frames per second (fps), the better.
Graphics performance was slightly more varied, but the Lenovo still outpaced the Acer Aspire 3 pretty easily and was neck-and-neck with the HP Laptop 15z (2023) in most tests. But this is where the differences in integrated graphics solutions were seen most starkly. The Lenovo’s Intel UHD Graphics put up middling numbers, while the boosted integrated solutions of the Acer Aspire Vero (2023) and the HP Pavilion Plus 14 (2023, AMD) posted dramatically better scores across the board.Battery and Display Tests We test each laptop and tablet’s battery life by playing a locally stored 720p video file (the open-source Blender movie Tears of Steel) with display brightness at 50% and audio volume at 100%. We make sure the battery is fully charged before the test, with Wi-Fi and keyboard backlighting turned off.To gauge display performance, we also use a Datacolor SpyderX Elite monitor calibration sensor and its Windows software to measure a laptop screen’s color saturation—what percentage of the sRGB, Adobe RGB, and DCI-P3 color gamuts or palettes the display can show—and its 50% and peak brightness in nits (candelas per square meter).
Cheap laptops used to be plagued by short battery life, but with battery test results frequently breezing past the 10-hour mark, that’s not as much of a concern these days. The Lenovo’s nearly 13-hour battery sounds lengthy, and it is, but it is the shortest of the bunch, and so deserves to be taken with a grain of salt.We test laptop batteries at 50% screen brightness, which hovers around the 100-nit zone for most competing systems. The IdeaPad Slim 3, on the other hand, has less than half that brightness when set to 50%, just 42 nits. Running the laptop with usable brightness will shorten the usable time it gives you before you have to pull out the charger.The display is also (as I already mentioned) a bit disappointing, due to its low resolution and dull color. On the other hand, the brightness is higher than the other budget systems but a little dimmer than midrange systems.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Verdict: It’s All About the PriceIn the budget-friendly laptop category, some systems provide surprising value; others cut too close to the bone, leaving the buyer feeling let down. Which one the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 is depends entirely on what price point you buy it at. With our review unit selling at some retailers for right around $300, it’s a decent little machine for web browsing and day-to-day productivity. Sure, it has a lackluster display, and the performance won’t wow anybody, but for the price of a cheap Chromebook, it’s a surprisingly capable Windows laptop that throws in a fine port selection.But, if you’re considering this system at list price or above for this same configuration, we urge you to pass on it. That dim display and plodding performance may be acceptable for under $400, but at midrange prices, you should get something with more pep and more robust construction. It’s an acceptable deal if you can find a deal, but if not, this laptop’s a pass.
Cons
Pricing varies by retailer
Lagging performance among budget options
Mediocre 1080p display
Awkward touchpad feels cheap
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The Bottom Line
The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 is a basic laptop that sometimes sells for bargain prices, but it’s too limited by dull performance and a dim display to buy at full price.
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