Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Review

If it had a better display, the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 would be in a league of its own. The Ryzen hardware is fully unleashed under heavy loads without overheating or creating unnecessary noise on this well-built, compact laptop. Unfortunately, Lenovo hasn’t yet configured a 100% sRGB panel on this series; with the one available, only the cheaper, lower-specced versions of this laptop make sense to me. But it’s up to you if you’re prepared to give up the screen for the rest of the features.

Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Specs

Pros

• It’s portable, well-made, and has a neat design
• It has an IPS matte screen, although the colors are subdued
• Discreet and effective in routine chores; robust and well-balanced when faced with challenging endeavors
• Battery life that can keep up with the competition even in the most basic settings

Cons

• Aesthetically unappealing,
• Incompatible with USB-C accessories
• Less widely available than its predecessor

Design

The 14-inch Lenovo IdeaPad 5’s clean aesthetic will surely please most of its users. Nothing is particularly striking about the laptop’s design, but we enjoy it. The chassis’s aluminum construction seems high quality and should hold up well to frequent transport to and from class and study halls.

It all comes down to personal preference as to whether or not the laptop’s screen is a dealbreaker for you. The contrast and the brightness are somewhat impressive, but they are sufficient for most office tasks. However, you may seek to conduct extensive professional film and photo editing elsewhere.

Keyboard and trackpad

The keyboard on the IdeaPad 5 is the same as on prior models from Lenovo. This design uses the area around the keyboard for up-firing speakers. Therefore, it’s essential in layout and lacks an extra column for function keys like most 14-inch laptops.

Thus, the arrow keys now double as shortcuts for PgUp/PgDn/Home/End. The keycaps are plastic and not as plush as those on high-end Lenovo devices, but they function adequately. One thing I like about this series is that even the silver model keeps the same black (dark grey) keyboard as the rest of the series.

You can easily distinguish between the keys even with the white light on. Even though the LEDs are low and light leaks from under some keycaps, the illumination is consistent, and Lenovo included distinct LED indications for CapsLock and NumLock. Swiping your fingertips over the click pad will also turn on the light.

Screen

The screen is the main reason I sent back my IdeaPad 5 from last year and my IdeaPad Flex 5 from this year; while the 2021 model does have a little better display, some of you (like me) will still find it wanting. Consequently, this is a 14-inch matte Chi Mei panel with 300+ nits of brightness, perfect blacks, and contrast, and still only a little over 60% coverage of sRGB. That implies the reds and yellows are still muted and washed out. 

Battery Life

The 4500U processor’s power efficiency allowed us to achieve a respectable 12 hours and 1 minute in PCMark 10’s battery test and 10 hours and 55 minutes in our regular movie test, in which we played a 1080p movie on repeat until the battery ran out. That’s more than enough juice to get you through a full day of lectures and homework, and you may even have sufficient juice left over to enjoy a movie on the commute home. 

Performance

The Lenovo IdeaPad 5 has an octa-core AMD Ryzen 7 4800U inside to handle computational duties. To clarify, a processor with eight processing cores is called an octa-core processor. These eight processors can each manage their workloads. Therefore, an octa-core CPU will provide superior performance and multitasking capabilities over its dual-core and single-core counterparts. 

The AMD Ryzen 7 4800U features a base frequency of 1.80 GHz and a boost clock of 4.20 GHz. Additionally, it features 8 MB of cache capacity. If the laptop’s processor is up to snuff, it should be able to handle just about everything you throw at it. However, let’s look at its performance in the Cinebench R20 benchmark to get an idea of its processing power. To sum up, the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 is a competent laptop. As a result, I can only give it an eight out of ten in my review.