Friday, September 25, 2020

Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i Hands-on

Gaming laptops usually carry a high price tag given their specs, features, and design, but not everyone has that money to spend just so they can play some games. Lenovo wants to solve that by introducing a gaming laptop with competitive specs at a lower price, and the result is the IdeaPad Gaming 3i. Check out our initial thoughts below.

One of the first things you’ll notice about this gaming laptop is that it’s under the IdeaPad family which is Lenovo’s lineup of capable laptops for general use. In this case, it’s a gaming laptop for light to mid gaming and some productivity tasks that would require a GPU.

It’s chunky but doesn’t feature a fancy design that you would normally see on Legion laptops. It’s all black with a matte paint job but has cuts and angles to give it some of the appeal of a gaming laptop.

Open the lid, you will be greeted by the 15.6-inch Full HD IPS display with an anti-glare panel. It can only produce 250 nits of brightness but has a smooth 120Hz refresh rate.

It’s got slim bezels on the sides. The top is thicker and houses the microphones and 720p webcam with a Privacy Shutter for extra security.

At the base, we have the backlit power button, the Blue LED-backlit keyboard with a dedicated NumPad and huge arrow keys, and the trackpad.

Turn it on its right side and you will see the USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A port and vent.

While on the left, we have the charging port, RJ-45, HDMI 2.0, USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C, 3.5mm headphone/mic jack, and LED indicators.

Down at the bottom, we have the rubber feet, two speakers, and a huge grill for ventilation.

Powering the IdeaPad Gaming 3i is an Intel 10th-gen Core i7-10750H processor, NVIDIA GeForce GTX1650 Ti 4GB GDDR6 GPU, 8GB DDR4 RAM, and 512GB M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD. Lenovo included a Lenovo Gaming M100 RGB Mouse which is nice.

This configuration is enough for handling productivity tasks like photo and video editing, as well as produce decent frame rates in some games in low to medium graphics settings. We’ll discuss more on its performance in our full review.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i with the configuration mentioned above is now available for PHP 59,995.

Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i specs:
15.6-inch FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS, 250 nits, Anti-Glare, 120Hz display
Intel 10th-gen Core i7-10750H processor
NVIDIA GeForce GTX1650Ti GPU
8GB DDR4 RAM
512GB SSD M.2 2242 PCIe NVMe
WiFi 802.11 ax
Bluetooth 5.0
720p webcam
2x array microphone
Blue LED backlit keyboard
2x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A
USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C
HDMI 2.0
RJ-45
3.5mm headphone/mic combo
Windows 10 Home
45Wh battery