Review Summary
Expert Rating
Lenovo’s IdeaPad Slim 1 series is a line of budget-friendly laptops designed to offer essential computing power in a lightweight and portable form factor. According to the company, these laptops are ideal for students, casual users, and professionals who need a reliable device for everyday tasks like web browsing, word processing, and media consumption.
Available at a starting price of just Rs 34,490, we took the top model powered by AMD’s Ryzen chipset for a spin to see if it’s worthy of being a solid budget option.
Table of Contents
Design and build
The IdeaPad Slim 1 features a minimalistic silver chassis, similar to the previous-gen models. The all-plastic construction means it’s fairly lightweight at 1.58kgs, which is great for a 15.6-inch laptop as it makes it easier to carry around.
The lid and keyboard deck have a smooth polished finish with embossed metal Lenovo branding on the right corner. While they do flex a bit, the overall finish is pretty solid for a budget laptop. The bottom cover, hinge, and all the edges have a textured finish, which seems to be made out of recycled plastic. Overall the build quality isn’t super rigid, but that’s something that I was expecting from a sub-Rs 40,000 machine.
The bottom cover can be removed by undoing ten Philips screws and gently prying with a plastic tool. Apart from the 42WHr battery, you can replace the M.2 SSD and the Wi-Fi card. Notably, Lenovo ships the laptop with a smaller-sized 2242 PCIe Gen4 QLC SSD, although there is enough room to fit up to a 2280. Also, the RAM is soldered, which is very unusual for a laptop of this size, especially considering 8GB isn’t really enough for a lot of users.
Display
The display on the IdeaPad Slim 1 measures 15.6 inches offering a full HD (1,920 x 1,080) resolution. It is a TN type panel offering a mere 220 nits of peak brightness and 45 percent coverage of the NTSC colour gamut. It comes black plastic bezels and the 720p webcam sits on top with a physical shutter.
Lenovo has clearly cut down on costs for display as the performance and quality is subpar. Colours feel washed out and viewing angles are one of the worst I’ve seen on a laptop in a long time. Apart from controlling the colour temperature for reader mode, there are no other software-based settings. Even the brightness levels are quite low, making it unsuitable for outdoor use cases.
Essentially the display barely qualifies for everyday computing tasks. While you can binge-watch your favourite TV shows or movies, the visual experience is underwhelming.
Keyboard and trackpad
The laptop features Lenovo’s standard ThinkPad-inspired keycaps with rounded edges at the bottom. Key travel is shallow, but I was satisfied with the typing experience even though the keycaps don’t have a premium finish to them. Since it is a large laptop, there is a dedicated number pad on the right side which can be useful for certain use cases. Notably, there is no backlighting for the keys, which may or may not hamper your productivity in dark or dimly lit areas.
As for the trackpad, it isn’t very large but I believe it should be suitable for most users. It is responsive, accurate and the left and right clicks offer a soft feedback.
Performance and software
Lenovo offers the IdeaPad Slim 1 with AMD Ryzen 5 7520 CPU featuring a quad-core configuration with eight threads and a boost clock speed of 4.3GHz. The laptop can also be purchased with the Ryzen 3 7320U and the Ryzen 5 5500U. For storage, there is a 512GB M.2 2242 PCIe Gen 4.0 QLC SSD and 8GB of LPDDR5-5500MHz soldered memory. Graphics are handled by the integrated Radeon 610M GPU clocked at 1,900MHz.
Despite having a PCIe Gen 4.0 SSD, performance is not up to the mark. In CrystalDiskMark the maximum sequential read and write speeds were around 1,800MBps and 1,400MBps, respectively. While these speeds are not low for daily workflows, the storage drive is clearly not being used at its full potential.
The Ryzen 5 7520 is a pretty efficient CPU and Lenovo has configured the chip to peak at 25W, which also results in decent battery life. Under heavy loads, the CPU does not go beyond 90 degrees and in our thermal test, which involved 30 minutes of playing Valorant, the CPU went up to a maximum of 86 degrees while the onboard GPU recorded 75 degrees. In our usual set of benchmark tests, the IdeaPad Slim 1 delivered average results that can be easily toppled by most laptops running in Intel at a similar, or slightly higher price point.
Running on Windows 11 Home, the laptop isn’t riddled with much bloatware. Apart from Lenovo’s Vantage system management utility, the laptop comes preloaded with McAfee which can be a nuisance because of its pop-ups. The 720p webcam is passable for video calls, but struggles to keep up in low light conditions, and doesn’t support any of the new Windows 11-based camera filters. The stereo speakers offer clear sound and a little bass, but overall the experience is average. Notably, the laptop comes bundled with three months of Xbox Game Pass Ultimate, which is surprising as Lenovo does not market it as a gaming laptop.
Battery life
The laptop features a 42Whr battery which is comparatively smaller, especially for a 15-inch notebook. Having said that, the battery backup is actually quite good. I was able to use it continuously for 7 hours before I had to plug in the 65W charger. Even in PCMark 10’s Video battery benchmark, the laptop scored 8 hours and 25 minutes at 80 percent brightness.
Verdict
The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 1 is highly recommended for anyone who wants a basic Windows laptop for under Rs 40,000. It has clean and minimalistic aesthetics, offers good battery life, and while the CPU isn’t all that powerful, it should be able to handle simple computing tasks with ease.
The below-average display and the limited 8GB of non-replaceable memory are deal breakers here, and should be kept in mind if you are planning to invest in a budget laptop.
Editor’s Rating: 6.5 / 10
Pros:
- Good battery life
- Clean design
- Well priced
- Suitable for everyday computing
Cons:
- Poor display quality
- Limited to soldered memory
- Slow SSD speeds
- Not the best for multimedia use cases