Lenovo IdeaPad S340-15IWL review: Peppy quad-core performance, but a cheap display - mccallprioner

Those looking at for solid productiveness power, a commodious screen, and a comfortable keyboard should give the Lenovo IdeaPad S340-15IWL a fair shake, merely piddle sure you pick up the precise model. While we were amused with the benchmark results for the S340-15IWL ($730 list, but generally nearer to $500 online), the configuration we tested comes with a cut-rate Tennessee display saddled with poor viewing angles. you buns upgrade to a superior IPS venire for a modest amount of cash (as in $40 aroun) spell keeping the same internals, so you have options. A svelte contrive rounds out the package, although we do wish Lenovo had managed to wring a trifle much life out of the S340's electric battery.

Price and configuration

Lenovo's 15-edge in S340 describe includes models ranging from $630 up to $830, although Lenovo's continual "exigent" deals typically shave a couple hundred or more off the manufacturer's inclination prices. Our inspection model (the SKU is 81N8003SUS), for instance, has a $730 list monetary value on Lenovo.com, but at the time this follow-up was written, Lenovo's website was marketing it for $510 after a $220 "instant" discount.

Here's what you get for that $730—emergency room, $510 damage tag:

• CPU: Space-core Intel Core i5-8265U
• Ram: 8GB DDR4-2400 RAM
• GPU: Intel UHD Graphics 620
• Display: 15.6-inch 1920 x 1080 TN display
• Storage: 256GB SSD

On paper, those are some pretty decent specs if you manage to buy the S340 at its $510 sales event price. The quad-core Whiskey Lake processor will serve you well when it comes to daily computer science chores, and even some CPU-intensive activities such as video redaction. The 8GB of RAM gives you some headroom when it comes to multitasking, spell the relatively commodious solid-express drive has enough space for Office and your run along-to programs, if non your stallion media library. The integrated art core is fine for light photo editing and maybe a game of chess, but not much more.

In that location is one red flag for this detail configuration, however: the TN (twisted nematic) show. Piece TN panels are fast and responsive (gamers with fragmented-second base reflexes love them), they're also noted for their pathetic wake angles, which means they be given to look blown out unless you're direct facing them. We'll let you know how the full-HD display looks in real life momently. (Spoiler: not great.)

If you want to save a little more Cash, there's a $630 (or $430 on sale) model of the S340 with the same basic specs as this version, except it has a dual-core Intel Core i3 processor sooner than a quad-core CPU. You could also spit up a bit more immediate payment (starting at $830, or $550 on sales event) for an S340 with an IPS display, or go for a version with a newspaper clipping-march 10th-gen Ice Lake Core i5 central processor ($710 number, which is less than the MSRP of any of the 8th-gen models but minus whatsoever insistent savings).

Design

When we call up of Lenovo, we mostly picture those undiluted, boxy, all-business organisatio ThinkPads, merely the S340 manages to cut a relatively stylish profile. Measuring 14.1 x 9.6 x 0.7 inches and weighing in at 3.9 pounds (or 4.4 pounds if you let in the AC adapter), the S340 feels pleasingly thin but a tad heavy. The laptop's Platinum Gray shell (Abyss Blue is other color option) looks plain as yet stylish, with a flat, featureless lid save for a small Lenovo logotype connected the pull.

Ben Patterson/IDG

The Lenovo IdeaPad S340-15IWL's design is plain, yet sleek.

Open the eyelid and you'll find the 15.6-inch expose with slim side and cover bezels, although the bottom bezel is somewhat fatter. The grey keyboard and palmrest are unremarkable, although it's worth noting that the king button sits simply supra the top-redress corner of the numeral keypad, making it much less in all likelihood that you'll press it by accident.

Display

Bargain laptops often come with with cheap displays. Patc this $510 (when it's on sales agreement) configuration of the S340 barely qualifies as a bargain laptop, its iffy exhibit certainly waterfall into the cheap class.

While we are talking a brimfull-HD (1920×1080) display here rather than the fuzzier 1366×768 you see in many hoagie-$500 laptops, the S340's screen brightness A-one away at an anemic 205 nits (operating theatre candelas) accordant to our readings. We generally prefer a laptop display to have a 100-percent display brightness reading of at least 250 nits, and we consider 200 nits to be barely adequate for comfortable indoor viewing.

Ben Patterson/IDG

The TN display on this picky configuration of the Lenovo IdeaPad S340 suffers from poor viewing angles.

A bigger problem than brightness, however, is the cheaper TN (contorted nematic) panel engineering science it uses, which (as we noted before) suffers from poor viewing angles. Indeed, the S340's display looked a miniature blown-out and direct contrast-deprived even when I was viewing information technology dead-on. Once I started moving my head in one direction or another, the screen almost immediately began to fade. The colors went inverse when I looked down at it from a 45-degree Angle. In short, the display on this version of the S340 offers a impoverished showing know, whether you're working on an Office doc operating room watching a Netflix video.

Keep in mind, however, that there are S340 models with IPS (in-plane switching) displays that should (connected paper, anyway) look much better. In fact, there's an S340 configuration (SKU: 81QF0005USRemove non-product link) that's identical to this one save for an upgraded IPS screen, and its "instant" savings price is $550, or just $40 more than the model we're reviewing here. That additive forty bucks would be money asymptomatic spent.

Keyboard, trackpad, and speakers

The S340's backlit keyboard felt comfy and refreshingly snappy to my fingertips, with enough travel (that is, the distance the keys move when they're struck) to keep them from feeling too shallow, along with a nice tactile bump and a springy reverberate. You also scram Alt-enabled hotkeys for disabling the microphone and webcam, positive dedicated media keys above the numeric keypad. Speaking of which, yes, there's a 10-key numeric keypad, although it looks a little squished compared to the relaxation of the keyboard.

Ben Patterson/IDG

We liked the Lenovo IdeaPad S340's comfy keyboard, and you get a dedicated numerical keypad, too. No fingermark referee though.

The medium-sized trackpad on the S340 sits centered below the main keyboard, which means it's placed a trifle to the left of the overall chassis. The trackpad let me move the cursor precisely without too much jitter, and it besides did a nice job of rejecting accidental inputs from my palms. It takes a fair amount of forc to flick the trackpad, but that's pretty standard when it comes to laptops in this damage range.

Lenovo says the S340 comes equipped with Dolby Sound, and indeed, thither's a Dolby Audio frequency app that lets you pick betwixt Movie, Gage, Voice, and Medicine profiles. But while the Dolby Audio app does a decent job of expanding the soundstage and creating a virtual surround effect, information technology can't do untold for the audio quality of the S340's muddy, bass-underprivileged speakers. The S340's 2-watt drivers are not bad; they'atomic number 75 merely common-release laptop speakers. For better quality, you're better off plugging in headphones or pairing IT with a decent Bluetooth speaker.

Missing in action is a Windows Hello-enabled fingerprint reader, which you won't find fifty-fifty along the pricier S340 configurations.

Ports

The Lenovo S340 comes with a solid array of ports and connectors apt its price range. Starting on the left side, there's a full-size of it HDMI port, a USB 3.1 Gen 1 Eccentric-C left, and a jazz band sound jack, along with a barrel-wrought charging port.

Ben Patterson/IDG

Left-side ports on the Lenovo IdeaPad S340-15IWL admit a full HDMI port wine, a USB-C port, and a combo audio jack.

On the right, we have a yoke of USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports, plus a 4-in-1 media card reader.

Ben Patterson/IDG

Two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type-A ports and a 4-in-1 media card reader sit on the right edge of the Lenovo IdeaPad S340.

Overall, that checks off most of our boxes in the ports department. Sure, a Thunderbolt 3 port would have been nice, but you generally won't see same in a laptop this inexpensive. The 4-in-1 memory card reader is a welcome upgrade over the exemplary microSD card one-armed bandit, and USB-C lets you tie in a reasonably speedy auxiliary storage drive.

Performance

With its quad-CORE Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM, and tightly knit artwork, the S340 has all the hallmarks of a productiveness workhorse—in separate words, a machine that'll cruise through Office chores and occasionally put the pedal to the metal when multi-core group power is required. As you'll go through in our benchmarks, the S340 doesn't disappoint, and we were sunnily dumbstricken past a couple of its chart-topping results.

PCMark 8 Work 2.0 Straight

Given that about users of the Lenovo S340 volition be victimisation it as an Office and general productiveness machine, our first benchmark results bear good tidings.

PCMark 8 is planned to simulate so much daily computing activities as composing word documents, tinkering with spreadsheets, online shopping, and video confab. A PCMark 8 score of 2,000 or higher in general means a system lav run Power without breaking a sweat.

Ben Patterson/IDG

The Lenovo IdeaPad S340-15IWL put in the lead dazzling numbers in our PCMark 8 Work 2.0 Conventional benchmark.

Eastern Samoa we can see, the Lenovo S340 leads a pack that's bunched relatively close together, with every laptop in the graph breaking the 3,000 mark. In other words, all the systems in our comparison will handle Office with ease, including that Lenovo ThinkPad at the very bottom. Indeed, the Office performance of a laptop with a 3,500 score on PCMark 8 North Korean won't feel importantly better than one with a 3,150 result; instead, they'll purr close to equally spell you're web browsing, transaction with Excel, surgery performing most other daily PC tasks.

HandBrake

A somewhat more tight test than PCMark 8, our HandBrake bench mark measures how quickly a laptop can encode a 30GB MKV file cabinet into a format desirable for an Humanoid tablet. Information technology's a Mainframe-qualifier test that reliably spins up a laptop's cooling fans, and it favors systems with the most processor cores.

Ben Patterson/IDG

The Lenovo IdeaPad S340 scored well with HandBrake thanks to its quad-burden Intel i5 CPU.

Again, the quad-burden Lenovo S340 acquits itself comfortably, managing to reach our HandBrake finish line in less than 4,000 seconds (or slightly over an hour). That's a grudge that earns the S340 an impressive bronze in our comparison, besting some pricier laptops in the process. Naturally, the S340 is somewhat larger than some of the competitors in our graph, and olibanum easier to chilly.

Information technology's Charles Frederick Worth noting that while the S340 runs along a Whisky Lake CPU sooner than the older Kaby Lake Refresh splintering that powers most of the other laptops on our chart, general performance tests have shown that Whiskey Lake processors enjoy (on norm) only a tiny hurry hike up over Kaby Lake Refresh systems (both are 8th-generation Intel CPUs, by the way), so it's not like the S340's Core i5-8265 break away is an foul advantage.

Lagging far behind at the arse of the graph is a dual-core Acer Draw a bead on 5 model, which goes to show what a difference a quad-core processor makes when information technology comes to television processing and other CPU-intensifier chores. That said, if you're not preparation on crunching massive video files regularly, you mightiness deal saving some cash with a dual-core laptop.

Cinebench

Another benchmark that's designed to push a CPU to its limits, the Cinebench test involves interpreting a 3D image in realtime. Just arsenic with HandBrake, laptops with the most cores generally snag the best Cinebench gobs.

Ben Patterson/IDG

Not only did the Lenovo IdeaPad S340 top our chart with its multi-rib Cinebench performance, its idiosyncratic-thread hit snagged first place, too.

And yes, it's another nice screening from the S340, topping its quad-core competitors with room to spare. In addition to putt up a nice multi-threaded Cinebench score, the Lenovo S340 too posts the best single-train of thought result on our chart, demonstrating the efficiency of the S340's individual CPU cores.

3DMark Sky Underwater diver 1.0

With its merged Intel UHD graphics essence, the Lenovo S340 isn't much of a gaming machine. Patc the S340 locks up third place in our 3DMark Sky Diver benchmark, that's non going to help it cross the 60-fps German mark (or even approach it) when it comes to Fortnite.

Ben Patterson/IDG

The Lenovo IdeaPad S340's 3DMark 8 score isn't bad for a laptop with integrated artwork, but if you wish to envision what a discrete nontextual matter card can do, check out that top score.

What our Sky Diver chart illustrates is the gulf in artwork carrying into action between a laptop computer with a discrete graphics card and one with incorporate graphics. That BLU-82 line at the top represents an Genus Acer Aspire E 15 with a discrete GeForce MX150 graphics notice (and that's just an entry-level GeForce card, mind you). Way behind are the rest, which are mostly saddled with integrated Intel UHD Graphics 620 cores.

The sole exception is past twelvemonth's Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 6 14 with a discrete GeForce MX130 graphics card, which should have put up far wagerer numbers than it ultimately did. We're still scratch our heads over that one.

Each that said, not everyone needs a laptop with discrete nontextual matter. Unless you're a gamer or you're provision along doing video mold, integrated nontextual matter are probably just fine, not to mention cheaper.

Bombardment liveliness

We test battery life past iteration a 4K video using the stock Windows 10 Movies & TV video player, with screen brightness at about 250 nits (because the S340's display lav't experience that bright, we simply cranked its brightness setting all the right smart up) and volume set to 50 pct, with headphones obstructed in.

Ben Patterson/IDG

The Lenovo IdeaPad S340's battery-life score is fine, but we were expecting better.

The S340's average result (we ran the test three times) of 503 proceedings, or a shade under 8.4 hours, is a little of a disappointment given how its competitors fared. So, with its 52 James Watt-hour bombardment, the S340 fared well worse than otherwise laptops in our chart with smaller 48 watt-hour batteries.

Now, this could simply equal a factor of Lenovo's tuning the S340 to favor performance ended vitality efficiency (although we should notice that our benchmarks were performed on AC power), and at any rate, eight hours of battery life is nothing to sniff out at. Still, we were hoping the S340 would snag better numbers given the size up of its battery.

Rump line

The Lenovo IdeaPad S340 isn't the first solid laptop line to come with take down-end TN-transistorized models, and As such, we wouldn't condemn it connected the basis of the particular configuration we tested. Indeed, criticizing a TN panel for its poor viewing angles is the likes of dinging a turtle for being slow; that's just the way they are, take 'pica or leave 'mutton. Swap in an IPS display for the TN control board (which you can do fairly tattily, if you find fault the adjacent step-up model), and you're most likely look an impressive note value.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/398278/lenovo-ideapad-s340-15iwl-review.html

Posted by: mccallprioner.blogspot.com

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