Lenovo was kind enough to lend us the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i to check out and review, and I have to say I was surprised to see just how well this little guy performs. Specs-wise, it isn't the most powerful laptop in the market - but despite not having bleeding-edge specs on paper, it performs better than I expected. Before I get ahead of myself, let's go over the full spec sheet:
Processor |
10th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-10750H |
OS |
Windows 10 Home |
Graphics |
NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 1650Ti 4GB GDDR6 |
Memory |
16GB (2x8) DDR4 2933Mhz Memory (2 DDR4 SO-DIMM slots) |
Storage |
NVMe PCIe SSD: 256GB / 512GB / 1TB (Supports 2xSSD or SSD+HDD) |
Audio |
2 X 1.5W speakers with Dolby® Audio |
Battery |
45Wh , Rapid Charge Pro |
Display |
15.6" FHD (1920 x 1080), IPS, Anti-Glare
|
Connectivity |
WiFi 6 (802.11 AX 2 x 2 +Bluetooth 5.0) |
Webcam |
Built-in HD Webcam (720p) with TrueBlock Privacy Shutter |
IO ports |
2 x USB 3.1 Gen 1 (Type-A) |
Weight |
Starting at 2.2kg |
Dimension |
359mm x 249.6mm x 24.9mm |
Backlit Keyboard |
Blue Backlight,1.5mm key travel |
Software |
Lenovo Vantage, Fn+Q |
Color |
Chameleon Blue, Onyx Black |
Material |
PC/ABS Plastic |
Price |
Php 59,995 |
The model we received for testing is the Onyx Black Intel one, with 8GB RAM.
Look and Feel
In recent years, "gaming" laptops stopped looking like souped-up race cars and started resembling regular laptops. And it works - the overly designed gaming laptops have seen a decrease in popularity. The Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i follows this new minimalist trend - it doesn't stand out. It isn't gaudy or flashy. It wouldn't look too out-of-place in an office or a café. You can take this thing out to a meeting or school and still look professional. It doesn't look like a toy, like gaming laptops from a few generations ago.
Classy look
The top cover plastic is made from a polymer blend, and on the spec sheet, it says it has a matte finish to it, but it's actually pretty shiny, and it does kind of attract quite a few fingerprints. However, it does have a very premium feel.
The laptop's profile is angular, making up a hexagon, but done quite tastefully. Just on the edge of the top cover sits the Lenovo logo - out of the way and unobtrusive. Classy. I heard the Onyx Blue one looks great, but the black one isn't too shabby either.
Coming in at 2.2KG, it shouldn't be too difficult to carry around - but remember that weight doesn't include the power brick, which adds another pound or so. But just the laptop itself can be carried around comfortably with one hand.
Typing is a joy on this thing
Typing on it is really pleasant. As someone who's very used to mechanical keyboards, I do think typing on a chicklet keyboard has its own charm. There is a 1.5mm travel to actuate the keys. For comparison, the Ducky One 2 Mini has a travel distance of 1.8mm. Come to think of it, as far as chicklet keyboards go, this is probably one of the snappier and clickier ones I've tried recently. In fact, I'm typing this written review on the IdeaPad Gaming 3i right now. Backlit by a very cool blue light, the keyboard still fits the classy aesthetic this gaming laptop line is aiming for. Unfortunately, mo, you can't change the color, but you can toggle it off or decrease its intensity if you wanna save on battery life by pressing Fn + space bar. I'm also a big fan of the fact that there's a full numpad - making productivity tasks on this laptop easier.
As far as the trackpad goes, I have no complaints. It's responsive and the tracking is about as accurate as you'd expect it to be. It sits almost flush across the body, making it blend in with the design.
Build Quality
As far as sturdiness goes, the IdeaPad Gaming 3i seems to be built solid. The chassis has no flex at all, but the lid, especially when opening it from a fully closed position, bends a little bit - nothing very noticeable but if you do it enough times, slowly, then you'll notice a little curve right where your hand pushes down. That said, though, the lid can be opened easily with one hand, and that's always a plus in my book.
I'm glad to see the built-in webcam has a little built-in privacy shutter. It's a lot sexier than the post-it most of your workmates probably use on theirs.
Features
I'm a huge fan of the Flip to Boot feature. I don't imagine there would be a time when I would flip open a laptop and the first thing I'd do isn't to press the power button. The Flip to Boot feature, which you can turn off in the Lenovo Vantage software, just skips that step. It feels that should've been a feature decades ago.
Good display for a budget gaming laptop
The display is a 15.6" IPS panel, and it looks gorgeous. With a 120Hz refresh rate, it feels smooth. However, I can't measure the response time for most twitchy games, but I feel like there's a little bit of lag - but this is purely anecdotal. In Tekken 7, King's ff1 combo, which has a 2-frame window, was a little harder to hit. I felt like I need to input ff1 a frame or two earlier than I normally would to make it come out on time. On a Valorant deathmatch, I could feel a couple of frames of input lag - nothing game-breaking or drastic, but just something to consider when planning your next peek.
The brightness of the display maxes out at 250 nits, which isn't great, but it'll do the job in dimly lit areas. In bright areas, like maybe the outdoors, the anti-glare feature does help the low maximum brightness but it'll still be pretty hard to see. Also, at a 45% color gamut rating, you might not want to use this machine for high-end photo and print ad production. We do have to consider that this is a budget gaming laptop - so you have to expect some corners to be cut for the price you pay. To be honest, if you're very picky with the display, then you'd probably be better off gaming on a true blue gaming monitor.
Lenovo Vantage
Lenovo Vantage is software Lenovo layered on top of Microsoft Windows 10 for additional control over your hardware. There are three power modes, which controls the voltage and temps. I have been running most of my tests on Performance Mode, which lets your fans go insane while giving you the most power for your games. To test these settings out, I ran stress tests using StressMyPC.
On Performance Mode, I got the CPU to go as high as 91 to 94° C, at a 56-57 watt power draw, and the fans went crazy. I was able to record up to 46 decibels.
On Balance Mode, I got the CPU to go as high as 89 to 91° C, at a 50-watt power draw. The fans, for some reason, were louder at 48 to 50 decibels. I don't know why in three or more tests I did, Balance Mode was always the loudest.
On Quiet Mode, I got the CPU to go as high as 68 to 70°C, at a 26-watt power draw. And the fans were quiet - they only gave me about 36 decibels.
On Lenovo Vantage, there is an option to automatically switch to Performance Mode when you fire up a game. I recommend you give that a try. Also, there's an auto-close option that will kill apps you choose when you fire up a game to make things a little more convenient.
Other options under the software let you enable Eye Care mode and camera privacy mode (but you can just slide the cover the webcam). You can also enable rapid charge and battery conversion mode.
Decent audio
Under Lenovo Vantage, you'll find the audio options as well. When I was testing the laptop's speaker system, I do what I always do when testing speakers - I loaded up Spotify, cranked the volume as high as it can go, and played a little bit of Run the Jewels. It's decently loud, without any cracking. They don't sound amazing, of course - they're tiny laptop speakers, so you're probably better off using a good pair of headphones.
Pretty good thermals
I was actually pretty impressed with how cool the IdeaPad Gaming 3i stayed. I was able to reach mid 90's in the stress test, but synthetic stress tests are one thing, actual performance is quite another. After playing and testing different games for hours, the hottest I got was 78°C on the CPU and 77°C on the GPU. Those CPU temps are higher than what I'm used to but are acceptable temps for laptops.
Cool air is pulled from underneath the machine and warm air is vented out the sides with two fans.
Battery Life
I just wanna quickly mention that the battery life is a little on the low side. I guess, with a 120Hz display, that's to be expected. While mostly idle, just copying files and downloading some stuff to start the tests, the battery at 99% lasted a little over 1.5 hours.
Ports and Connectivity
On the left side, you've got the power input, an ethernet port, HDMI 2.0 out, USB 3.1 Gen 1 (one Type-C and one Type-A), and a 3.5mm jack. On the right side, you've got one USB 3.1 Gen 1 type-A. There are no SD card slots, but I guess that's not a big deal.
Synthetic Benchmarks
OK, here we go - down on the juicy stuff. Let's go over some benchmarks.
CPU Test - Cinebench R23
The multicore test yielded a score of 5,567. Here it is compared to other CPUs:
Processor | Score |
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 2990WX 32-C | 30054 |
Intel Xeon W-3265M CPU | 24243 |
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950X 16-C | 16315 |
Intel Core i9-9880H CPU | 9087 |
AMD Ryzer 7 1700X Eight-Core Processor | 8889 |
Intel Xeon CPU E5-2697 v2 | 8378 |
Intel Xeon CPU X5650 | 6867 |
Intel Core i7-7700K CPU | 6302 |
Intel Core i7-10750H CPU | 5567 |
11th Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 | 4904 |
The single-core test score is 1,063. Here's the shakedown:
Processor | Score |
11th Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 @ 28W | 1532 |
11th Gen Intel Core i7-1165G7 @ 15W | 1382 |
Intel Core i7-7700K CPU | 1230 |
Intel Core i9-9880H CPU | 1183 |
AMD Ryzer Threadripper 2990WX 32-Core | 1109 |
Intel Core i7-10750H CPU | 1063 |
Intel Xeon W-3265M CPU | 1058 |
AMD Ryzen 7 1700X Eight Core Processor | 959 |
AMD Ryzen Threadripper 1950-X 16 Core Processor | 945 |
Intel Core i7-4850HQ CPU | 750 |
GPU Test - 3D Mark Time Spy
The IdeaPad Gaming 3i got a GPU score of 3,591 and a CPU score of 4,794 for a total Time Spy Score of 3,731.
As you can see, it scores lower than the gaming laptops of 2020, but considering this is a budget gaming laptop, it performed admirably.
Performance Test - NovaBench
According to the baseline comparison with a mid-level gaming PC on Novabench, the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i performs only 11% worse.
Gaming Performance Test - Unigine Heaven 4.0
CPU Benchmark - GeekBench 5
The full test results are really long, so it's hard to put it here but here's a link if you wanna pour over details like ray tracing speed, HTML5, SQLite, PDF rendering, text rendering - things like that, read the results here.
Here are the OpenCL test results.
SSD Benchmark - CrystalDiskMark 7.0
Are these numbers any good? Well, to be able to answer that, let's look at sample scores of other drives. Here are the test results of four other drives. Essentially, a 512GB Samsung 950 Pro performs better than the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i's stock drive. The laptop drive is more in line with a 400GB Intel 750.
Productivity and Gaming Benchmarks - PCMark 10
PCMark 10's results indicate that the IdeaPad Gaming 3i is a strong performer for productivity and basic use - for gaming, not too much. However, my actual gaming tells a different story.
Compared to other machines that have taken the PCMark 10 benchmarking test:
As you can see, productivity tasks scored pretty well, but the gaming score brought the overall average down.
Gaming Benchmarks
Synthetic benchmarks are cool and all, but actual organic, real-world performance is the better measurement. I played diverse games on this laptop - a couple of fighting games, a first-person shooter, a driving sim, a triple-A adventure game, and a battle royale - to be able to gauge how this machine would perform with different types of games.
With Tekken 7 and MvCI, it pretty much held at a steady 60 FPS. The dips you see in the minimum were in between rounds or in between games. If you're buying a machine dedicated just for work and fighting games, this is perfect. You can take this into a random bathroom and play some Melty Blood. Both T7 and MvCI were set at max presets. In terms of thermals, after a few games, Tekken 7 was doing up to 67°C on both the CPU and the GPU, at 60% GPU utilization.
Project CARS 2 was set at the highest settings I could possibly get it. While it doesn't quite reach 60 fps, it was at least a consistent 30 FPS. I'm sure you can get a bit more frames if you set some of the settings to low or medium. GPU was at 70°C at 99% utilization, while the CPU was at 70°C and at 23-25% utilization.
Apex Legends was a treat. The settings were pretty much as high as they can go except for vsync, which was set at triple buffered, and texture streaming budget is set to high (and not insane) and spot shadow detail is high, and not very high. It looked really good, and for the most part, especially in tight spaces and buildings where most firefights happen, you get around 50 FPS consistently. When you start looking out into the distance, then the framerate drops to the 40's. Both the CPU and the GPU were at a toasty 73-75°C, with a GPU utilization of 95% and CPU at 22-25%.
Valorant, being a light game to run, does get more than 60 FPS consistently on medium settings and no AA, even with all the skill effects are flaring up on screen. It was pretty smooth. In a Deathmatch, you can even get up to 90 FPS.
What really surprised me what Assassin's Creed Valhalla. At medium settings across the board, AC: Valhalla, a triple-A title released in 2020, was doing, at the worst of it in sprawling cities with lots of activity, around 46 FPS. In wide-open areas in the wilderness, I was getting upwards of 60. It is VERY playable even at frame rates under 60.
Final Thoughts
7.7Overall8Design8Value7Function
The Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i is a jack of all trades, master of none. This budget gaming laptop is quite capable for its specs and its price. Productivity isn't going to be a problem for the majority of basic office work. It can do some light photo and video editing and some light rendering. It looks premium enough to fit in quite well in those use cases. As for gaming, it'll handle most fighting games and light shooters like Valorant, CS:GO, and maybe Overwatch. You can still play some of the more graphically intensive games like Apex Legends, but at a frame rate cost. For big-budget triple-A titles, the experience won't be the best, but they'll be very, very playable.
For its price point, you get a lot of value in the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i. Consider getting this if you want a capable work/gaming machine!