The Lenovo V15 is a very surprising laptop with great performance and excellent battery life for a very palatable price of Rs 39,990. So, what is the catch here? Does the laptop have less RAM? Or is the storage cut down to cover up costs? Don’t worry, the answer is a bit more complicated than that. In this review, we will cover everything, from the pros and cons to where exactly Lenovo made their magic work. Here is the full Lenovo V15 G4 (or Gen 4) review.
This device was originally reviewed by Florence George, and this article is based on his evaluation.
Here is a video review of the Lenovo V15 G4:
Table of Contents
Design and Build Quality
In terms of design, when we look at the listings of this laptop, it is marketed as a business laptop, and it surely looks like one. The laptop we have is Iron Gray in colour, with a simple design. However, the body is made out of polycarbonate, so it will scratch eventually. In fact, during the review, we did find some minor scratches on the top of the lid. So, if you do not treat this laptop respectfully, you will eventually see major scratches down the road.
There is a minor flex on the keyboard, but it is manageable. The hinge is solid, and it does not wobble when typing, which indicates that the internal construction is solid. You can even open the laptop to a full flat 180 degrees, so no issues there.
Display
Coming to the crème de la crème of the laptop, the display. This laptop comes with a 15.6-inch display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 and a standard 16:9 aspect ratio. This is where the positives end, unfortunately. The refresh rate is locked at 60 Hz, and the colour gamut is poor covering only 45 per cent of the NTSC colour space. The major reason is that Lenovo opted for a TN panel, which is notorious for having poor colour accuracy.
It is fine if you want a normal laptop display that can do basic stuff like gaming web browsing and office work. But if you want to enjoy movies and shows, or do colour work like editing on Photoshop, we can’t recommend this laptop.
Coming to speakers, they are mediocre at best. But, Lenovo offers the Dolby app in Windows, and there you can personalise the audio by tuning specific frequencies, which makes a good difference. The speakers did get better after fiddling around in the app.
Keyboard, Trackpad and I/O
Coming to the keyboard, the typing experience is excellent, the keys are tactile and it is responsive. Additionally, it is a full-sized keyboard with a numpad. However, there is no backlight on the keyboard, which is a letdown. The trackpad is decently sized and it gets the job done.
In terms of I/O, on the right side, we get a Kensington lock, a USB 2.0 port, and an RJ45 Ethernet port. On the left side, you get an audio combo jack, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port, an HDMI port, a redundant DC input port, and finally, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port which supports 65W PD charging. You get the USB Type C charger out of the box.
Performance
In terms of specifications, you get a Ryzen 7 7730U processor, 16GB of DDR4 RAM, and 512GB of storage. The RAM and storage is expandable, so you can upgrade down the line. We ran some synthetic benchmarks and here are the results:
Seeing the results, it is evident that this is a good performer. However, what is even more impressive is the gaming performance. We ran GTA 5 at its native 1080p resolution at high graphics settings and we got a solid score of 41.2 fps. This is genuinely impressive and leaves the similarly priced ASUS Vivobook Go 15 in the dust, as it ran at only 22.5 fps.
In conclusion, be it casual gaming, photoshop as well as video editing or simple tasks such as browsing, you can rely on this laptop. The thermals were also well under control, hovering below 70 degrees Celsius at all times.
One thing to note is that there were performance issues with the webcam on our unit. The app crashed after opening for a few seconds, and the quality was sub-par. We hope Lenovo addresses this issue as soon as possible.
Battery Life
The battery life was exceptional. We got a score of 10 hours and 41 minutes of runtime on the PCMark 10 video playback benchmark. This is with the fact that it has only a mere battery capacity of just 38 Wh. Impressive stuff from Lenovo.
Verdict
Summing it all up, the Lenovo V15 Gen 4 is a business laptop. The performance is really good, the battery life is great, and the thermals are decent. The only caveat is the screen. Its TN panel is the only thing that holds us from recommending it to the masses. If you are using this laptop for office work and daily tasks such as browsing, the Lenovo V15 Gen 4 is fine. But, if you want a great display that can be used for video editing and photoshop, then you will have to look elsewhere.
Editor’s rating: 8/10
Pros
- Great performance
- Excellent Battery life
- Well managed thermals
Cons
- Average display
- Build quality could be better
- Keyboard backlighting should have been added
- Webcam could have been optimised better