IdeaPad Slim 3i: Real Users Divided on Battery and Build

Yes, I ended up buying it because I could no longer bear all the browsing and comparing and reading reviews... build quality seems decent, with an aluminium lid, solid plastic/PCB for the rest of the body, and yes, it is very slim. I've adjusted the display colors to a cooler temperature as the 'built-in' blue light protection makes the colors slightly too warm by default.

Trust me, forget about Lenovo Ideapad, the display is horrible. All yellowish and blurred text.

It's snappy and works great for browsing, excel, coding and entertainment. Display was yellow and dull when I bought it but it was a quick fix adjusting the gamma and colors. And now it looks pretty good. Overall feel and build quality is good, it's a clean looking laptop. With power saving mode enabled I got exactly 8 Hours 50 Minutes of use from a full charge doing browsing, YouTube and coding on colab.

I have the same spec Slim 3. Have it for the past 2 years. It works as should however the battery never have lasted me that long, 4 hrs was tops, which is ok I guess. The one downside is that you cannot upgrade the ram (sticks are soldered). I wish that we had one slot available for additional 16GB — I work with heavy ram eater websites and multiple tabs.

I have the intel version. No complains. I have a back-lit keyboard tho.

Thanks I finally saw a review! I'm planning to buy it tomorrow, it'll be my first laptop. I'll use it for my school, programming (lots of multitasking) and light gaming (Roblox only). The fan shouldn't be too loud, right?

You can play Warframe on lower settings, Valorant also works but it's mostly a very light gaming laptop. I just play Skull Girls or Minecraft — works well though. I do regret not buying a PC earlier when they were cheap, as a laptop I feel like it's good.

I only use it occasionally, when I travel or when I spend the weekend away from home. No issues so far, it is faster than my desktop's i5-9500 / 32GB RAM and I've even played some games. I'm happy with the performance and the compact size.

Thanks for taking the time to write a detailed review — you really covered everything. I'm also tired of searching, comparing models and reading reviews. I think I'll buy this one after all, it's also on discount at 549€.

I just downloaded Nier Automata on it. Not exactly low end but it runs at 50-60fps on low settings 900p which is not bad.

I have the slim 3 and within one month of owning it the screen somehow cracked in my laptop case despite me taking good care of it. Lenovo refuses to replace under warranty - so I haven't used it since. Going to replace it soon but the whole experience has been shit.

Currently have one, I love it, down from its performance to its design. However, it's really worth noting how horrible the battery is. It's my first time owning a laptop but I'm not sure laptops have this bad of a battery, usually take 3-4 hrs to drain.

This laptop likely won't last that long, it's already a ~4 years old model and it's one of the cheaper ones in terms of build quality. Save for a more mid-range to high-end laptop with a metal chassis, and one that's modern. Getting 4-5 years out of any laptop is pretty hard without REALLY taking care of it.

I bought the snapdragon version hoping for good battery + speed. instead, what i got - overheating, lag under normal workloads, snapdragon throttling under load, battery dying way faster than promised.

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 feels basic and underwhelming. Its plastic build rattles, and the fan noise is annoying even on battery. The screen is okay but nothing special, and the outdated Intel processor struggles with multitasking and gaming. Slow Wi-Fi and limited ports only add to the frustration. For the price, it feels like too many compromises were made, making it a tough recommendation.

If it's the one I saw on BestBuy's site for $199.99 with 8GB RAM, 128GB storage, and a core i3, it should be FAR better than the school Chromebook. I am a college student with similar specs on an older laptop and have used it for coding classes for a couple of years, it's not fabulously fast but it's doable. The 8GB RAM will mean you can't run a bunch of programs at the same time however. Probably worth the $200, especially if you can't afford more.

I'd recommend Vivobooks over Ideapads 1 or 3 because Lenovo seriously cheaps out on build quality with these, I have a stack of them with dead hinges, one got fried motherboard.

This device is not at all value for money. The Ideapad when overloaded with work tends to slow down and lag, creating a horrific experience for the user and also it starts heating after heavy usage and the battery also drains quickly. The processor is the thing that needs to be improved.

5 to 8 hours battery life, depending on what you're doing, screen brightness, power saving mode, etc. Probably less if you're gaming or doing heavy stuff.

How is it in terms of fan noise? Especially during light tasks like web browsing or watching YouTube?

It's still holding up pretty well for me, everything feels like a breeze. My unit's fans only run loud when gaming, although some other people did experience their fans running loud all the time. Battery lasts for like 5-6 hrs doing YouTube and getting some studies done, performance is still good.

I have the exact same computer with the exact same chip and same RAM size and I could say that your review is accurate. Just one thing but I also have it brand new (1 month) but I'm seeing that my battery is dying faster than usual.

I've had this laptop for a lil over 2 years now. I haven't really ever experienced thermal throttling when doing normal work or gaming on it so I don't think that's really an issue. Build quality is decent enough — no real complaints there.

I wouldn't buy this laptop as it's 2 major generations old. Look for something newer. Also check what the specifications of the IPS is — if it's 45% NTSC, then it's trash. The colors can be insanely dull.

The 8840HS has 8 Zen 4 cores at max 5.1GHz with a 16CU 780M RDNA3 iGPU — way better than the Steam Deck specs. Higher TDP too.

I'm thinking of buying this laptop because of its price and features. I'd like to know if the RAM can be upgraded — this model was offered to me with 16GB of RAM, but I'd like to upgrade to 32GB.

Ideapads' body being plastic, have you experienced any issues with its hinges? Overheating issues? Trackpad?

The trackpad sometimes ghosts a bit — it feels like the cursor is catching up to you rather than moving instantly — but it only lasts for like a minute. The laptop crashes rarely when I play Valorant on it, although I think it's more of a Vanguard anti-cheat problem rather than the device.

I'm interested in buying this laptop, but I'm concerned about whether it feels cheap due to the plastic materials. The processor and RAM seem excellent for the price, so I'm wondering if they might have compromised on something else to keep the cost low.

Just bought this an hour ago and it's updating. From playing with it in store it's better than the N150 4GB models by far that were $150. I was able to get those to slow down to a crawl just opening a few tabs on edge — they ran out of memory. This one was sitting at 80% memory with a couple tabs open.

I just ordered this one from Amazon for 550 USD but was not able to find much reviews except one. Hoping it works out for me.