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The Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 is a budget friendly gaming laptop with a lot to offer for the
money.
Mine has the 6 core Ryzen 5 4600H processor with Nvidia GTX 1650 Ti graphics, but there
are other configurations available including Intel based, you can check out those and updated
prices linked in the description.
It’s got an all black plastic build.
There’s definitely some flex due to the plastic, but build quality feels better than
the cheaper Nitro 5 I recently tested.
We’re looking at under 4.8lb or 2.2kg for the laptop alone, then right on 6lb or about
2.7kg total with the 135 watt power brick and cables included.
The size is decent for a 15 inch gaming laptop, not super thin or anything, but not huge and
still portable.
This smaller footprint allows for 6mm thin screen bezels on the sides.
It’s got a 15.6” 1080p 120Hz display, and it’s got FreeSync with a 60 to 120Hz
range which is nice to see.
I’ve measured the screen's average grey-to-grey response time at around 15ms, ideally we want
to see 8.33ms for a 120Hz panel like this.
Unfortunately I haven’t had too many other 120Hz laptops for testing, but it is at least
faster than the 120Hz screen in the ASUS G14.
I’ve tested the screen with the Spyder 5, and got 63% of sRGB, 45% of NTSC, 47% of AdobeRGB
and 47% of DCI-P3, so colours are on the lower side.
We’re looking at 266 nits at 100% brightness, below the 300 or so I like to see making it
a little dim, and with an around average 880:1 contrast ratio.
Backlight bleed was fine even in this worst case test, just some minor glow patches that
I never noticed when viewing darker content, but this will vary between laptops.
There’s a 720p camera above the display in the middle with a physically sliding privacy
shutter, no Windows Hello support.
This is what the camera and microphone look and sound like, this is what it sounds like
to type on the keyboard, and this is what it looks like if we close that privacy shutter.
The keyboard just has a single zone of blue backlighting which illuminates all keys and
secondary key functions.
It’s got two levels of key brightness or can be turned off with the function and space
keys.
Personally I preferred typing on it over the Nitro 5, the keys were a bit more clicky with
1.5mm of key travel, here’s how it sounds to give you an idea of what to expect.
I like that the arrow keys aren’t small and instead are pushed down a little to make
space.
The power button is separate from the keyboard, it’s just above it in the middle.
The precision touchpad is a smooth plastic, it clicks down anywhere and worked fine.
Fingerprints and dirt show up pretty easily on the matte black finish, but as it’s smooth
it’s easy to clean with a microfiber cloth.
On the left from the back there’s the power input, gigabit ethernet, HDMI 2.0 output,
USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A port, USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-C port, no Thunderbolt, 3.5mm audio combo jack
and status LED.
The right just has a USB 3.2 Gen1 Type-A port and air exhaust vent, so no cables getting
in the way if you’re a right handed mouse user.
The HDMI port connects straight to the Nvidia graphics.
The Type-C port does not offer display output, and Type-C cannot be used to charge the machine.
The weight distribution was good, allowing for one finger opening, and by default the
laptop will power on when you open the lid, but you can disable this through the Vantage
software.
There’s nothing on the back other than subtle ideapad text, as air is instead exhausted
below the screen.
There’s nothing happening on the front.
Underneath has some air intake vents towards the back above the fans.
You need to take out 10 Phillips head screws to get inside, and the four down the front
are shorter than the rest.
Once inside we’ve got the battery along the front, 2.5” drive bay above on the left,
two M.2 storage slots, WiFi 5 card in the center, and two memory slots to the right.
This model I bought in Australia shipped with 16gb in dual channel, but the US one just
lists 8gb, so it could be single channel.
Although the SSD installed is a smaller size, there’s room for a longer drive, but the
2nd slot only fits the smaller option.
The two 1.5w speakers are on the left and right sides towards the front.
They sounded ok, I’d rate them about average, no bass and a bit tinny, better than the Nitro
5 though.
They’re not super loud at maximum volume, but loud enough, and the latencymon results
were alright.
The IdeaPad is powered by a 3-cell 45Wh battery, I’ve tested it with keyboard lighting off,
background apps disabled and screen at 50% brightness.
The results were quite good considering the size of the battery, lasting for more than
6 hours in the YouTube playback test.
Beating Lenovo’s L340 from last year with the same battery two spots below.
Let’s check out thermals next.
The Lenovo Vantage software lets you pick between three performance modes, which from
lowest to highest are quiet, balanced and performance, but there’s no user fan controls.
None of these modes applied any overclocks to the GPU, and I didn’t find the Ryzen
Controller software to make any performance improvements in the higher performance mode.
The idle temperatures were good with a 21 degree Celsius room, stress tests were done
with the Aida64 CPU stress test with stress CPU only checked and the Heaven GPU benchmark
run at the same time, while gaming was tested playing Watch Dogs 2.
With the stress tests running, quiet mode is the warmest due to lower fans, then balanced
is a fair bit cooler, completely acceptable.
Performance is only a little warmer as it performs better, but still under 90 degrees
on the processor, then the cooling pad helped lower temps a bit more.
Interestingly when gaming in quiet mode the temps are way down.
This was because the GPU seemed capped to 300MHz, so the game was basically not playable,
I’d write off playing in quiet mode entirely due to this.
Otherwise best case we’re looking at almost 4GHz over all 6 cores sustained long term
for the CPU.
We can see this in the power levels the components are running at, quiet mode with the game running
is way down, again basically unplayable, so not sure why the stress test workload was
unaffected.
Outside of that, the 1650 Ti had no problems running at its 50 watt limit.
Here’s how CPU only performance looks in Cinebench with the GPU now idle, so not too
big of a boost going from balanced to performance.
It’s only just slightly behind the Nitro 5 in both single and multicore score, however
the Nitro did benefit from Ryzen controller, at stock it was around 200 points lower, so
purely out of the box the Lenovo does perform better in multicore workloads.
When idling the keyboard was around the low 30 degree Celsius point which is pretty normal.
With the stress tests running in the lowest quiet mode it’s approaching the 50s on the
left, WASD felt fairly warm.
Balanced mode was a little cooler, probably due to the fan speed increase, then in the
highest performance mode it’s pretty similar, warm but not hot, and we can see the hot air
exhausting onto the screen on the right.
Let’s have a listen to those fans.
I could hear the fan and hard drive at idle, quiet mode does what it says on the box, then
balanced and performance were about the same, and were quieter when compared to a lot of
other gaming laptops I’ve tested in the highest performance mode.
Now let’s check out how well the IdeaPad Gaming 3 performs in games and see how it
compares with other laptops.
I’ve tested Battlefield 5 in campaign mode at ultra settings, and the IdeaPad is highlighted
in red.
Interestingly it’s a fair bit behind the ASUS TUF A15 with the same CPU and GPU combination
two spots ahead of it, this is only my second 1650 Ti laptop though so not too much else
in the way of direct comparison yet, but at least it is above all of the 1650 results.
These are the results from Far Cry 5 with ultra settings in the built in benchmark.
This time the IdeaPad was ahead of the TUF, so it could just be a bad result in BF5.
It’s also beating the 5500M in the Alpha 15, granted that machine does also have the
much worse 3750H processor, otherwise it’s a bit of a jump up to the next tier, being
the 1660 Ti Max-Q.
Shadow of the Tomb Raider was also tested with the games benchmark tool with the highest
setting preset.
The TUF with the same CPU and GPU was a couple of frames ahead, so nothing major, but still
it’s ahead in two of the three games we’ve compared, at least in terms of raw gaming
performance anyway.
Speaking of a couple of frames, that’s the same amount the IdeaPad was ahead of the cheaper
Nitro 5 with 1650, so not all that different.
If you want more results, I’ve tested the IdeaPad Gaming 3 in 22 games at all setting
levels, check out the card in the top right corner or link in the video description.
Now for the benchmarking tools, I’ve tested Heaven, Valley, and Superposition from Unigine,
as well as Firestrike and Timespy from 3DMark, just pause the video if you want a detailed
look at these results.
I’ve used Adobe Premiere to export one of my laptop review videos at 4K.
This test benefits from quicksync from the Intel machines which is why the IdeaPad is
one of the lower results here, though interestingly the cheaper Nitro 5 with lower 1650 was a
little faster.
I’ve also tested Premiere but with the Puget systems benchmark which also accounts for
things like live playback rather than just export times.
In these tests a higher score is better, and the IdeaPad was again slightly trailing behind
the lower specced Nitro 5, but was a little ahead of the TUF A15 with the same CPU and
GPU.
The results were similar in Adobe Photoshop, this tends to be more of a CPU focussed test,
but it’s now a fair bit behind the TUF A15 with same specs, while the Nitro is even higher.
DaVinci Resolve is more GPU heavy, but despite the apparent benefit of the Ti being a higher
spec, it’s scoring the same as the lower Nitro 5, and only just 5 points behind the
TUF with the same hardware.
I’ve also tested SPECviewperf which tests out various professional 3D workloads.
I’ve used Crystal disk mark to test the 256gb NVMe M.2 SSD, the speeds were alright
but nothing amazing.
The 1TB hard drive seems to have decent speeds for a 5,400RPM spinning rust drive.
For updated prices, check the links in the description, as prices will change over time.
At the time of recording, in the US it’s actually sold out, too much demand for Ryzen
I guess.
Here in Australia we’re looking at $1400 AUD, though I picked mine up on sale for under
$1150 AUD, which without our taxes is around $750 USD for my international friends.
The Intel model is in stock in the US for $800 USD, though just a quad core i5 there.
Now let’s summarise the good and bad parts of the IdeaPad Gaming 3 to help you decide
if it’s a gaming laptop worth considering.
Overall I think there’s a lot of value here for the money, but that said, in many games
the performance isn’t all that much different compared to the $670 Nitro 5 with non Ti 1650,
so paying the extra for the Ti alone doesn’t seem worth it.
The screen in the IdeaPad is a little better, higher refresh rate and faster response time,
but colour gamut and brightness is similar and on the lower side.
The IdeaPad does have FreeSync though.
The plastic build quality is a little better here, but still pretty average and I did prefer
the keyboard of the Lenovo.
Thermals are good, but that’s just a side effect of the specs not being high powered.
It doesn’t run hot and performs good in any case.
Battery life was good considering the smaller battery size, and that seems to be a side
effect of Ryzen, as most Ryzen gaming laptops I’ve tested do well here.
Speaking of Ryzen, the CPU performance on offer is next level here compared to what
was available at this price point less than a year ago.
It’s good to see that Lenovo are giving us two memory slots for dual channel memory
now, as the older L340 it replaces only had the one, so all things considered I think
the IdeaPad Gaming 3 is a solid improvement over the L340, but it’s hard to say if the
benefits are worth around $70 or so over Acer’s Nitro 5, especially if you’re on a tight
budget, in that case the Nitro might be the way to go depending on your needs.
Let me know what you thought about Lenovo’s IdeaPad Gaming 3 gaming laptop down in the
comments, is it something you’d consider?
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