However, give it a little time and the IdeaPad 3 Chromebook turns out to be surprisingly useable. The flat keys don’t have much travel, but they do have a light and fairly crisp action with no wobbles or flexing in the middle. You don’t get a graphics card, just the integrated graphics that is part of the Core i3 processor. There was little point in subjecting the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 to our usual gaming tests, but I did try out Skyrim to see if it would run. Limits:Limit 5 per customer. Offers valid from Lenovo in the US only. Lenovo may increase or decrease these limits, from time to time, for certain offerings. Now for the big surprise. Where other ultra-budget Chromebooks stuff in dated Celeron N3350 and N4000 processors, the IdeaPad 3 has a 2019-vintage N4020 running at up to 2.8GHz.

There are just a few other points to mention. The Lenovo IdeaPad 3’s speakers are, you may gave guessed, pretty poor. They have the thin, bass-free sound typical of your average budget laptop. The scores in the Android Geekbench 5 benchmark are a little higher than the Celeron N4000-based Chromebooks, too, though not up there with the faster Pentium and Core i3 models. All told, the IdeaPad 3 feels a little snappier than some of its rivals in day-to-day browsing and general use. Since 1982, PCMag has tested and rated thousands of products to help you make better buying decisions. See how we test. Paired with 8GB of RAM and 256GB of eMMC storage, it’s nowhere near as fast as the Core i3 and Core i5 processors we’re seeing in devices such as the Asus Chromebook Vibe CX34 Flip or Acer Chromebook Spin 714.Before I joined the tech-journalism ranks, I wrote on topics as diverse as Borneo's rain forests, Middle Eastern airlines, and Big Data's role in presidential elections. A graduate of Middlebury College, I also have a master's degree in journalism and French Studies from New York University. It runs Windows 10 S, which means you’re restricted to Windows Store apps unless you switch it to full Windows 10. You can do this for free in a matter of seconds, although will see some performance compromises. Sound is another area where the IdeaPad Slim 3i does surprisingly well. You’re not going to get the richest tone or immersive surround sound here, but it isn’t horrible weedy, harsh or tinny, and you can watch old concert footage on YouTube or stream a show on Netflix without feeling like you have to plug some headphones in.

By the way, the CrXPRT 2 performance benchmark measures things like how fast your Chromebook completes tasks and the Speedometer benchmark captures the responsiveness of the web applications. These benchmarks are good indicators of how a Chromebook will perform under different loads. It should also be noted that because Chromebooks get updated every six weeks, the test results aren’t always going to line up perfectly. Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 Chromebook: Battery lifeThis isn’t anything like a deal-breaker. The old Pentium Gold 7505 was a decent Chromebook processor, giving you noticeably snappier performance than the Pentium Silver and Celeron CPUs often used in budget Chromebooks without ramping up the price too much. And you can say the same about the Core i3-N305. The Lenovo IdeaPad 3’s matte finish means it can actually be used outdoors on a sunny day reasonably comfortably. Watching a cached Netflix movie won’t be much fun, but text editing look OK, thanks to the very high contrast involved. Yes, it’ll look dim, but you can make the text out. Ah, Chromebooks. What an ever-evolving journey we’ve seen so far. When they first materialized into existence, Chromebooks were a popular option for students due to their durable frames and affordable price points. They were (and still are) designed to be everyday machines. Nowadays, there are even cloud-ready gaming Chromebooks, which are super rad and something I never thought I’d see. While I’ve evaluated all sorts of Chromebooks, from modern 2-in-1s to machines made of recycled material, this time I’m reviewing the IdeaPad Slim 3 Chromebook. Lenovo’s latest offering is definitely a more conservative approach, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

You have the metal-effect plastic base, mid-grey keyboard keys, a textured plastic hinge and a cheap-looking screen. Lenovo has made some great-looking mid-price laptops over the years, but this cheaper one won’t convince too many eyes – it’s anything but a budget model close-up. That metal effect illusion works best from a distance. A propensity to wander also means that Chromebooks need solid Wi-Fi, since they may be far from a wireless base station. While I didn’t experience any random disconnects or slowdowns while testing the IdeaPad 3 connected to a Netgear Nighthawk router, it is unfortunate that the laptop uses the older 802.11ac Wi-Fi standard. This offers adequate speed and reliability today, but the next-generation 802.11ax (Wi-Fi 6) standard provides better future-proofing. TN screens almost always offer dramatically worse image quality than an IPS LCD, the type used by almost all pricier laptops and the majority of phones and tables. The Lenovo IdeaPad 3’s colour saturation is very weak, contrast is low and the effects of the panel’s contrast shift are obvious.Where the Vibe CX34 Flip scored 1,805 in the Geekbench 6 single-core test and 6,517 in the multicore, the Lenovo scored just 1,025 and 2,663. In fact, its score in the WebXprt3 web application benchmark (223) is much closer to the Acer Chromebook 514 with its Pentium Gold 7505 (215) than it is the Vibe CX34 (284). Just like its predecessors, the IdeaPad 3 is very much an entry-level Chromebook – in fact, it’s one of the cheapest available in the UK. It’s a strictly frills-free device: it has a conventional clamshell design, an 11.6-inch screen and a Celeron processor, so nothing unexpected in the slightest.