On the other hand, we were pleased with the performance it provides. Its cooling solution is capable of handling the ULV CPUs without a hassle, and the upgrade options are on point. Thankfully, its soldered memory can work in dual-channel mode, when paired with a SODIMM RAM module. Also, there is an M.2 PCIe x4 slot, and a 2.5-inch SATA slot for storage upgrades. Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally occur around us every day. Our “Design and Gaming” profile delivers optimal color temperature (6500K) at 140 cd/m2 luminance and sRGB gamma mode.

We test Windows PCs' graphics with two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for laptops with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Installing our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated article on Blue Light. Conclusions Something you definitely should not make compromises on, however, is the display. Since this unit is sold with either IPS and TN panels, we strongly suggest going for the former, due to its superior contrast ratio and viewing angles. If this is indeed what you look for, then, you will be happy to hear that the unit we have with us has exactly these specifications. Lenovo's IdeaPad 3i easily clears a 4,000-point score in PCMark 10, indicating smooth sailing for basic productivity office apps, like Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. The laptop also does pretty well in our CPU tests, though no one will mistake it for a video-editing or dataset-crunching workstation. While this IdeaPad is also the fastest of the three entrants to complete our Photoshop exercise, it's clearly built more for everyday productivity than digital content creation. Graphics Tests We have to say that despite the budget nature of this notebook, Lenovo didn’t spare any resources and efforts in designing its cooling solution. As you can see, even under extreme workloads, the device can maintain a frequency higher than the 2.40 GHz base one for this processor. Comfort during full loadThe next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light. To get some insight into just how portable this laptop is, we have to take a peek at its measurements. Here, we see a weight of 1.65 kg, and a profile of 19.9mm. Indeed that makes it super comfortable to carry, even at 15-inches in diameter. Unfortunately, the build quality is not great. As the laptop is made entirely out of plastic, we see that the base is super bendy. Definitely refrain from flexing it.

The Lenovo Ideapad 3i comes with an Intel Core i3-1005G1 dual-core processor (two cores/four threads, 1.20GHz, up to 3.40GHz with Turbo Boost, 4MB Cache). You get Integrated Intel UHD graphics, 4GB of RAM and 128GB SSD storage. All this means the laptop can handle most computing tasks, although we wouldn’t recommend it for resource-heavy tasks like photo masking, video filtering, 3D modelling, HD gaming, or demanding business software. Three further benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench R23 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs' Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better). As we said at the beginning of the review, your expectations should have been low. Unfortunately, the IdeaPad 3i Gen 6 (15″) kind of proved this with its poor build quality. Interestingly, Lenovo has shown with a lot of ThinkPads that it can make good-quality plastic devices. However, this particular laptop falls short of that, as its chassis is super bendy, and the hinges are unstable. Given the fact that the build is what provides the first impression, we feel that they could have done a better job.Lenovo IdeaPad 3i Gen 6 (15″)’s IPS panel (LG LP156WFH-SPP1 (LGD069A)) has a Full HD resolution, comfortable viewing angles, and a good contrast ratio. Thankfully, it doesn’t utilize PWM for brightness adjustment, which makes it safe. Of course, since this is a budget panel, it covers only half of the sRGB color gamut. Moreover, the color representation is not accurate, whatsoever. Lenovo IdeaPad 3i Gen 6 (15″) comes with a Full HD IPS panel, model number LG LP156WFH-SPP1 (LGD069A). Its diagonal is 15.6″ (39.62 cm), and the resolution – 1920 х 1080p. Additionally, the screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density – 142 ppi, their pitch – 0.18 x 0.18 mm. The screen can be considered Retina when viewed from at least 60 cm (from this distance, the average human eye can’t see the individual pixels). UL's PCMark 10 is our main benchmark, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and content-creation workflows to measure overall performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheeting, web browsing, and videoconferencing. We also run PCMark 10's Full System Drive test to assess the load time and throughput of a laptop's storage. If you are here, you are probably in the search of an affordable everyday notebook. This means your expectations won’t be high, but you can definitely make use of some power, decent battery life, and a good display. Right? The maximum measured brightness is 312 nits (cd/m2) in the middle of the screen and 288 nits (cd/m2) average across the surface with a maximum deviation of 15%. The Correlated Color Temperature on a white screen and at maximum brightness is 6200K (average) – slightly warmer than the 6500K optimum for sRGB.

Battery: These systems do not support batteries that are not genuine Lenovo-made or authorised. Systems will continue to boot, but may not charge unauthorised batteries. Lenovo has no responsibility for the performance or safety of unauthorised batteries, and provides no warranties for failures or damage arising out of their use. **Battery life is based on the MobileMark® 2014 methodology and is an estimated maximum. Actual battery life may vary based on many factors, including screen brightness, active applications, features, power management settings, battery age and conditioning, and other customer preferences.In this test we use 100% on the CPU cores, monitoring their frequencies and chip temperature. The first column shows a computer’s reaction to a short load (2-10 seconds), the second column simulates a serious task (between 15 and 30 seconds), and the third column is a good indicator of how good the laptop is for long loads such as video rendering.