Review Lenovo IdeaPad L340: The right gaming laptop for gamers on a limited budget

The 15.6-inch IdeaPad L340 starts at a reasonable price for an Intel Core i5-9300H CPU and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 GPU. In case you need more power, there's a more powerful version. It is the Lenovo Ideapad L340 (81LK000EUS) that thrives with a 6-core Core i7-9750H chip and a GTX 1660 Ti, for excellent gaming performance at 1080p screen resolution. With unsurpassed power, this model adds extra battery life and is built with impressive quality.

Design of Lenovo IdeaPad L340

The IdeaPad L340 sits somewhere between Lenovo's business 15-inch ThinkPad X1 and the gaming Legion Y545 series. The Lenovo IdeaPad L340 is primarily a design change, as it shares the same core specifications, the same price as some models, and even the same port layout as the Y540.

Like competitors Acer and Asus, Lenovo equips the IdeaPad L340 with a black chassis with dominant blue keyboard lighting and acceptable quality, commensurate with the money spent buying the product.

The screen measures 15.6 inches (36 x 25cm) and is less than 2.5cm thick. The bezels on the Lenovo IdeaPad L340's display aren't as thin as those of the more expensive MSI GS65 Stealth, but thin enough to give Lenovo a modern look. Lenovo is trying to follow the trend of thin bezels, but still has to make room in the top bezel for the webcam.

Screen

The IdeaPad L340's display is everything a good gaming laptop should be. In addition to 1080p resolution with the GeForce GTX 1650, but the game comes to life thanks to bright and colorful images, good viewing angles and anti-glare surfaces.

The IPS panel has a 60Hz refresh rate, not the 144Hz (or even 240Hz) available on high-end gaming laptops. Aside from some demanding esport titles, the GTX 1650 is not capable of delivering more than 60 frames per second (fps) in modern titles.

Connect

The IdeaPad L340 under review offers only the most basic ports for a modern laptop, all of which are located on the left side, except for the Kensington lock on the right side. It does not include an SD card reader and a Thunderbolt port; all you get is a USB Type-C port, 2 USD 3.1 ports, an Ethernet port, HDMI 2.0, and a headphone/mic combo port.

Connect wirelessly via WiFi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.2. The lack of 2×2 MIMO antenna technology means you'll have to do with transfer speeds that aren't as high as what you get on laptops like the HP Omen 15, but transfer rates are still decent (at 290). -309 Mbps when sending data).

Keyboard and touchpad

Most gaming laptops have RGB backlighting. The IdeaPad L340 in the reviewed model along with the Acer Helios 300 all have a monochrome keyboard backlight that glows blue. Uniform lighting on all keys, can be adjusted for both outdoor and indoor use. It's a full-size keyboard with a standard numeric keypad; The key travel is short and the emphasis is accurate, and it feels comfortable to type on, although the arrow keys are smaller than the rest.

Below the keyboard is the ClickPad, which makes a creaking sound when in use. You will certainly also notice some lag when using the mouse pointer.

Efficiency

Lenovo rates the IdeaPad L340 as a powerful gaming laptop. However, not all models in this product line fit that description, as their specifications differ. However, the review unit in the article is at a basic level and is capable of running modern games smoothly. But nothing else, unless you are willing to spend a lot of money for a better configuration. You won't get extremely high frame rate and graphics settings on modern titles, nor should you try to play at 4K resolution.

In terms of productivity, a 9th Gen Intel Core i5-9300H processor, combined with 8GB of RAM and a 512GB NVMe SSD, keeps everyday computing tasks running smoothly. The chip's base clock speed of 2.4GHz maxes out at 4.1GHz in Turbo mode and can be maintained by up to two cores simultaneously, aided by efficient cooling on the system. As configured, this laptop can deliver solid performance for everyday tasks including spreadsheet processing and media content creation, among other projects.

Graphics performance

On the IdeaPad L340, Lenovo installs two versions of the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 so users can choose from 3 to 4 Gigabytes of video memory. The review unit in the article is the 4GB version and it performs quite well in actual gaming. The graphics card used here can run modern games at Full HD resolution, but sometimes you will have to lower your graphics settings.

As always, synthetic tests are of great significance in measuring the general 3D prowess of a GPU. Far Cry 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider are both modern AAA titles that boast built-in programs, which can run at 1080p on both moderate and maximum graphics quality presets (Far Cry 5 - Normal and Ultra; Rise of the Tomb Raider - Medium and Very High).

This is possible as Far Cry 5 is based on DirectX 11, while Rise of the Tomb Raider can be enabled to DX12, which is essentially what a benchmark does. Tested at 1080p, the Lenovo Ideapad L340 delivers 97 fps in Normal settings, but the value drops to 81 fps in Ultra settings; and Rise of the Tomb Raider recorded 125 fps at Medium settings and 97 fps at Very High settings. Both scores are slightly better than what you get on the Acer Predator Helios 300, equipped with an Nvidia GTX 1660 Ti graphics card.

Battery life

Battery life is the point where the Lenovo IdeaPad L340 far exceeds the Acer Helios 300 (but the battery life is also just over 4 hours). The MSI GS65 Stealth offers better battery life, but the new Acer Nitro 5 is the option that wins over all the competition.

Conclude

Lenovo IdeaPad L340 has all the characteristics of a cheap, basic gaming laptop. As assessed with the Core i5-9300H quad-core processor and Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 4GB graphics card, it far exceeds the standard 60 fps mark in real-time benchmarks, providing a smooth gaming experience. . However, when it comes to budgeting, you have to accept small trade-offs like the lack of a card reader and the mid-range ClickPad.

Advantages

1. Great processor + RAM for multitasking
2. Special SSD + HDD storage options
3. A gaming laptop with exceptional graphics

Defect

1. No optical drive