the Lenovo IdeaPad L 340 has been such a highly requested gaming laptop on the
channel I bought one just to review for you all so let's get into the details
and find out if it lives up to the hype in this review
starting with the specs mine has the Intel i5 90 300h CPU nvidia gtx 1650
graphics and 8 gig of memory and single channel as the l3 40 only has one memory
slot for storage I've got a 256 gig m2 nvme SSD and a 15.6 inch 1080p 60 Hertz
screen for network connectivity it's got Gigabit Ethernet ain't no 2.11 AC Wi-Fi
and Bluetooth 5 there are a few different configurations available there
you can find examples and updated prices linked in the description the plastic
lid has a brushed silver finish with a subtle blue Lenovo logo towards the side
while the interior has the same material in smooth texture there were no sharp
corners or edges anywhere and considering the plastic build it didn't
come off as cheap feeling the starting weight of the El 340 is listed at 2.2
kilos and mine was around 100 grams last without a 2.5 inch drive installed with
the 135 watt power brick and cables for charging this rises to just over 2.6
kilos the dimensions of the laptop are thirty-six point three centimeters in
width 25.4 centimeters in depth and around 2.4 centimeters thick there are
smaller laptops though it's not too chunky looking and I
measured the screen bezels at around one centimeter on the sides the 15.6 inch
1080p 60 Hertz IPS screen has a matte finish good viewing angles and no g-sync
I've measured the color gamut using the spider 5 pro and my results returned 64%
of srgb 46% of NTSC and 49% of Adobe RGB and 100% brightness in the center and
measured 274 nits within 942 1 contrast ratio so lower brightness and color
gamut compared to most machines I've tested which is to be expected in a
gaming laptop at this price point it looked all right to me a little dim but
otherwise ok for gaming backlight bleed seemed alright in my unit but this will
vary between the laptops and panels there was more screenflex than expected
considering health it is and that the hinge runs along most
of the width of the body I could almost open it up with one
finger and it did feel a little back heavy but there are problems using it on
my lap the top above the screen is still fairly thick so plenty of room for the
720p camera the camera microphone look and sound about average there it looks a
little dark but you can change the brightness settings through the linear
advantage software the keyboard in my unit only has blue backlighting and it
lights up everything including secondary key functions the brightness can be
controlled in two different levels or turned off completely by pressing the
function and spacebar I wasn't a fan of the smaller arrow keys however I did
like typing on the keyboard the key presses want mushy here's how it sounds
to give you an idea of what to expect
that wasn't as much keyboard flex as I was expecting considering the plastic
build it seemed pretty sturdy all things considered the touchpad uses Eiland
drivers was smooth and worked well enough it clicks down anywhere with left
and right clicks down the bottom throw the usual two finger click anywhere for
right click works to the touchpad felt a little loose that's the best I can
describe it if you tap it it sort of moves a little and makes this noise
which isn't the actual click
fingerprints showed up fairly easily on the plastic interior there was a smooth
surface I found it easy to clean on the left from the back there's the power
input Gigabit Ethernet HDMI 2.0 output 2 USB 3.1 genuine type-a ports 3.5
millimeter audio combo jack and USB 3.1 genuine type C port no Thunderbolt 3
here on the right there's no IO at all so no possibility of cables getting in
the way of your mouse hand if you're right-handed just the Kensington lock up
the back on the back there's nothing at all just smooth plastic and it's a
similar deal on the front as well underneath is pretty clean looking just
some blue air intake vents towards the back above the fans the bottom panel can
be easily removed by unscrewing 11 Phillips head screws once inside from
left to right there's the 2.5 inch drive bay the single m2 slot for storage Wi-Fi
card just below it battery below that and single memory slot towards the right
while my 256 gig not to drive is short you can install a regular-sized one
instead just remove the mounting
market while there does appear to be space for a 2.5 inch drive my ell 340
didn't actually come with the cable necessary to connect to drive to the
motherboard and there's nothing to properly mount it provided either you
need to first remove the m-dot to drive under this is the spot to connect the
cable to attach a 2.5 inch drive my Wi-Fi 40 did come with such a cable so I
tried using that one instead but I wasn't able to get it to work so not
sure if there's a difference between the cables
I contacted Lenovo support asking how to get this and they said they'd send me a
cord 10 days later I got a quote for 200 Australian dollars before tax
so about 135 US dollars however I'm not sure how this would vary by region just
to get the cable bracket and screws they want me to spend 20% of the cost of the
machine no thanks if you plan on adding a drive later
based on this I'd recommend just buying it with the hard drive to begin with as
I could have gotten it with a one terabyte hard drive installed for less
than this the speakers are towards the front left and right corners they
sounded ok average for a laptop not too tinny
sounding however at max volume they didn't get that loud in the latency one
results weren't looking good powering the laptop is a 3-cell 45 watt hour
battery I've tested it with the screen brightness at 50% background apps
disabled and keyboard lighting off while streaming YouTube videos it lasted for 5
hours and 25 minutes much longer than I expected for a battery of this size and
it was using the Intel integrated graphics studio and video optimist
while playing The Witcher 3 with medium settings an invidious battery boost set
to 30fps the battery lasted for one hour and 28 minutes in total however after
the first 53 minutes with 23 percent charge remaining the framerate dips to 3
fps and was no longer playable the 135 watt power brick that lenovo included
with l3 40 seems to be adequate for these specs I didn't see any battery
drain during any of my testing let's move on to the thermal testing air comes
in through the bottom of the Machine and is exhausted out of the vent below the
screen on the right hand side there are a couple of heat pipes shared between
the processor and graphics along with two fans
unlike higher tier options like Lenovo's Y 540 there's no option to disable
hybrid mode and fan speeds couldn't be adjusted either it
basically no options in the Lenovo Vantage software that could be used to
increase performance or cooling stock settings our roll you get thermal
testing was completed in an ambient room temperature of 21 degrees Celsius so
expect different results in different environments I've got the results that
idle down the bottom and the temperatures are looking fine there the
rest of the results are from combined CPU and GPU workloads and meant to
represent worst-case scenarios as I ran them for extended periods of time the
gaming results towards the upper half of the graph were tested by playing
watchdogs to as I find it to use a good combination of processor and graphics
the stress test results shown on the lower half of the graph from running
they're a 264 CPU stress test with only the stress CPU option checked and the
heav'n GPU benchmark it max settings at the same time to fully load the system
in almost all tests regardless of workload the CPU wasn't passing 85
degrees Celsius worst case however it was achieving this buy power limit
throttling but we'll see how clock speeds were affected in the next graph
under bolting the CPU wasn't enough to lower temperatures and under stress test
the cooling pad didn't help lower the CPU temperature either only a slight
improvement while gaming the only thermal throttling taking place was on
the GPU which was happening any time the average hits 74 degrees Celsius so we
were only really able to remove this with the cooling pattern use these are
the average clock speeds for the same tests - shown basically there was power
limit throttling on the CPU in every test this is why we see a boost to CPU
clock speed with the under multiplied however something interesting happened
when using the cooling pond although we weren't thermal throttling there was a
nice improvement to the clock speed with the cooling pad applied as this was due
to the power limits being set just before we move on I'll note that we saw
some clock speed improvements to the GPU with the cooling pad as this was able to
remove the thermal throttling on the graphics
these are the average TDP values reported by Hardware inferred during
these same tests I found the laptop would dynamically
change the power limits by 0.5 watts at a time it seemed to do this based on
temperature to prevent it getting too hot as we saw before the temperatures
were well under control however performance was down due to
these lower Parliament's I think this is why we see higher power limits and clock
speeds with the cooling pad it's able to maintain the same temperature
while boosting power limits so while there was no CPU thermal throttling
additional cooling does seem to help and as we saw previously the cooling pad
again helped remove GPU thermal throttling these are the clock speeds
while under a CPU only workload as there's no GPU testing taking place at
the same time we're seeing better performance with the undervolt
able to take us to the full 4 gigahertz or core turbo boost speed of the i5 9300
H in this workload at stock full performance was not hit due to power
limit throttling even in a CPU only workload where capped to a 35 watt TDP
and I couldn't raise this with until x2 year this is why we see lower
temperatures with the under bolt in place we're able to hit the 4 gigahertz
clock speed with less power and run cooler as a result to demonstrate CPU
only performance I've got some Cinebench CPU benchmarks this is my first test
with the 9300 H so I don't have anything to compare against however it's still
around 1000 points below the 9750 H partly due to having too less cause but
also due to the 35 watt power limit as for the external temperatures will
actually be putting your hands at idle it was around the normal 30 degree
Celsius while under combined CPU and GPU stress test the keyboard was a bit warm
but not too bad however we can see the hot point up the back where air is
exhausted onto the screen while gaming the results are similar again hot up the
back where we're hitting 60 at the air exhaust below the screen as for the fan
noise produced by the laptop I'll let you have a listen to some of these tests
and idle it was almost completely silent the fan was only just audible there
wasn't much difference while gaming or under stress test in any case the fan
was noticeably quieter compared to most of the gaming laptops I usually test
overall the Lenovo l3 40 ran fine in terms of CPU temperatures those were
well under control however it was easy to hit thermal throttling on the GPU
however this didn't seem to negatively affect clock speed too much as we saw
performance of both the CPU and GPU could be improved with better cooling in
this case using a cooling pad you heard earlier how quiet the fans run this
really seems to be the main limitation holding things back if they just gave us
the option to boost fan speed to maximum or something then would probably see
better performance as this allows higher power limits but I suppose this doesn't
mean the machine will run on the quieter side which I know many people prefer
even at the expense of some performance next let's take a look at some gaming
benchmarks I've tested these games with the latest Nvidia drivers and Windows
updates at the time of testing battlefield 5 was tested in campaign
mode rather than multiplayer medium settings played alright and was able to
reach 60 FPS averages however the 1% lawyers were a fair bit
below this showing the occasional stuttering that I noticed regardless of
setting level apex Legends was tested with either all settings at maximum or
all settings are the loss possible values as it doesn't have predefined
setting presets it felt a bit choppy at max settings and it was possible to
improve average FPS by around 32% simply by setting everything to minimum shadow
of the Tomb Raider was tested with the built-in benchmark the results from this
test were again on the lowest side however lowest settings was still
labeled average above 60 fps in this test the division 2 was tested using the
built-in benchmark medium settings was just below 60 fps so another title while
you'd most likely want to sit around the low to medium for a decent framerate for
tonight was tested with the replay feature as a less demanding title even
maxed out at epic settings was working well enough with around 70 FPS average
is being reached however we could more than double this
at low settings if needed whoever watches another well optimised game and
was tested in the practice range epic settings still played well for me
as the 1% lawyer was around the refresh rate of the display while I have a 1
FPS was achieved at low levels csgo was tested using the you let achill FPS
benchmark and is a less demanding eSports title that runs on basically
anything even with all settings maxed out 100 FPS averages was still reached
in this test Rainbow six siege was tested with the built-in benchmark at
Ultra settings the results are looking that bad here with 80 FPS for the
average and still around 60 for the 1% low result Assassin's Creed Odyssey was
tested with the built-in benchmark and straightaway I can tell you this is the
worst result I've seen in this test at ultra high settings no matter though
we're not expecting top-of-the-line performance with these specs the results
at high settings and blur are at least playable as this game doesn't need super
high FPS to enjoy derrida 2 was tested playing in the middle lane with an
average amount of action going on and there's a game that runs on basically
any modern hardware it was still playing well at Ultra settings with above 80 FPS
while higher frame rates were possible at lower settings watchdogs 2 is a
resource heavy game that still plays fine for me with a solid 30 FPS however
this was not possible at Ultra settings very high settings played ok and then
there wasn't really too much difference performance wise stepping down to high
it was a little choppy due to the lower than 30 FPS 1% lower much more playable
at low settings The Witcher 3 was playing well right at high settings
where I was still able to average above 60 fps and the dips and performance
weren't too noticeable definitely more stuttering at Ultra
settings as illustrated by the much lower 1% low result if you're after more
gaming benchmarks check the card in the top right corner where I've tested 20
games on the l 340 let's also take a look at how this config of the lenovo L
340 compares with other laptops to see how it stacks up use these results as a
rough guide only as they were tested at different times with different drivers
in battlefield 5 I've got the l 340 highlighted in red near similarly spec
machines as the only 1650 laptop I've tested recently it's down the bottom
however it is also worth remembering that the L 340 is the only laptop on
this graph that was tested in single channel I did fully plan on installing
dual channel memory but only found out after opening it up that it has one slot
so this wasn't possible here are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra
settings in the built-in benchmark again for the same reasons just explained the
l 340 is coming in at last place not only that but as a CPU
heavy game the 9300 H is probably giving us a little lower performance when
compared against the 9750 H I still need to compare those in a future video
though these are the results from shadow of the Tomb Raider with the built-in
bench market highest settings once more the lenovo l 340 is in a last place out
of these laptops tested but it's important to note that it's also the
cheapest of these machines so you get what you pay for when compared to other
machines the l 340 doesn't look too good it's worth keeping in mind that the
comparisons we just looked at with maximum setting levels as we saw earlier
the l 340 is definitely capable of playing modern games with good frame
rates at low to medium settings just don't expect miracles at higher above it
does of course depend on the title that way limited by the single channel memory
as the l 340 doesn't provide the option of dual channel and the fact they only
seem to sell it with memory running a ddr4 2400 i don't think that the i5 9300
h cpu or gtx 1650 graphics are bad options in a laptop we're just not able
to get full performance out of this particular machine and as we saw earlier
performance was further kneecapped by GPU thermal throttling and cpu power
limits at 35 watts now for the benchmarking tools I've tested heaven
valley and superposition from Unigine as well as fire strike time spy and VR mark
from 3d mark just pause the video if you want a detailed look at these results
I've used crystal disk mark to test the storage and the 256 gig M naught 2 + vm
e SSD was getting decent reads and ok riots but this was the cheapest disk
option available you can select different drives when buying it's also
worth mentioning my particular drive is PCIe 3 by 2 so still better than sada
but not like the usual PCIe 3 by 4 options you can get for updated pricing
check the links in the description as prices will change over time at the time
of recording in the u.s. it starts at less than 800 US dollars my exact
configuration isn't listed here so if we customize it to the specs i've tested
with we're looking at around 830 u.s. dollars with the current sale that will
vary but lenovo regularly have sales for instance here in australia i got mine
for 1090 australian dollars if you remove
tax and convert to USD that's six hundred and fifty five US dollars which
i think is quite a good deal when compared to other options here with all
of that in mind let's summarize the good in the bad aspects of the Lenovo IdeaPad
l 340 gaming laptop the main issue I have with this laptop is that it only
has one memory slot so it's not possible to gain the benefits of dual channel
memory additionally it only seems to run at ddr4 2400 this is the speed they
advertise it at and the stick mine came with is capable of ddr4 2666 so it seems
to be limited while I did only get eight gig of memory 16 gig could help a bit
but I wouldn't expect anywhere near the improvement we'd have from a dual
channel configuration as we saw this lowered the overall performance of the
machine granted I was also testing with an i5 CPU in GTX 1650 graphics which are
lower than most of the other machines I've recently tested in the end there it
is still capable of playing games at low to medium settings just fine with
highest settings possible depending on the game while you can order the machine
with a 2.5 inch drive installed I would have liked to have seen the cable
required to add one later included in the box in terms of thermals it didn't
get too hot however GPU thermal throttling was hit
the CPU was ok though but this was due to power limitations both of these seem
to be due to the result of the fans being so quiet there's no way for us to
boost the fan speed and as a result we are losing performance this does mean
that the machine runs quieter compared to most gaming laptops I've tested but
it does come with that cost overall the build quality of the machine was decent
despite being primarily plastic the screen wasn't too bad despite the lower
color gamut at least for gaming it was a little dim and only seemed to be
available with the 60 Hertz option I liked using the keyboard small error
Keys aside the touchpad was ok but a bit loose feeling and I wasn't a fan of the
eland drivers despite the smaller battery we're getting decent battery
life likely due to the low powered specs while the press makes the l3 40 look
attractive I'd look for other options with the same specs that have the option
of dual channel memory so that you have an upgrade path with that said though
especially for the configuration I got at the price it's a decent entry-level
budget-friendly gaming laptop which is still capable of
quaint modern games let me know what you thought about the lenovo l 340 gaming
laptop down in the comments and if you're new to the channel consider
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