Lenovo idea pad 14 1 laptop


with reviewing mid-range and premium laptops I could take a step back every now and then and look at what the budget

and Ultra budget category have to offer and in that regard one of the most prominent figures undoubtedly is lenovo Idea Pad one series I've done

reviews on these in the past and today we're looking at the latest generation of the Idea Pad 1i now just to be clear

the I stands for Intel so if you see a one eye it's an Intel variant if you just see the number one it's a AMD

variant the configuration in particular right here is rocking Intel's n6000 Pentium silver series processor we have

a measly four gigabytes of ddr4 memory and an even smaller 128 gigabytes of solid state drive storage now we do get

Wi-Fi 6 as well as Bluetooth 5 standards on board and this is a 15 inch laptop with a full HD display now keeping in

mind that this is a very budget-friendly laptop we're gonna keep things in relevance so we're not going to compare

it against the most high-end laptop we're gonna see if this offers everything you'd expect from a budget

laptop and if there's anything noteworthy in particular so let's get started from an unboxing perspective


Unbox



this thing comes in a pretty plain and simple cardboard box once you open the box itself inside you'll find of course

the laptop itself behind all that protective packaging here it is you also have the inclusion of a 45 watt charging

adapter though you don't get USBC charging on the box but I suppose that's fair at this price point you also of

course have the Standard wall outlet charging cable piece and finally a quick start guide and some basic documentation

one of my favorite things about the ID iPad 1 series is the fact that despite being a budget laptop it still looks and

feels just as good as the higher end Idea Pad 3 and 5 series granted it

doesn't have the same metallic finishes they do rather you have a full plastic

body here but it doesn't feel finicky or cheap rather it's sturdy and it gives

that nice professional business look you might want from an Idea Pad laptop plus

that Abyss blue color here looks so nice and stunning now this laptop does have a modest weight of about 3.5 pounds which

is surprisingly a little bit heavier than I thought it should be given again it's a full plastic build but it's not

too bad starting with the top like I mentioned you have a full plastic surface here it's clean and simple though it is a bit of a fingerprint

magnet unfortunately you'll also notice you have a the Lenovo badging on the side but a pretty graceful look all things considered you'll find a decent

Ports


variety of ports on either side of this laptop so on one side you have a DC charging port a USB a 3.0 port a HDMI

1.4 port a basic USBC Port you also have a headphone jack on the other side you will find one more USB a port though it

is 2 2.0 and you have interestingly enough a full-size SD card reader a feature that's often not found on laptops several times more expensive

than this one so can't complain the bottom of this laptop is pretty standard stuff so you have a plastic surface

finish you'll notice you have a large air intake vent which is semi pointless because you don't actually have a

cooling fan on this device I guess it's mostly there for Passive Cooling and

then on either corner at the bottom you'll see you have a speaker Grille so

it's a bottom firing setup we'll definitely do a sound test in a bit as



Trackpad Keyboard

soon as you unfold this laptop you immediately notice you have a lot of palm rest space here which is always a good thing and then Abyss blue color

again just makes this device look so elegant now with that said you'll notice you have a relatively small trackpad

proportioning to the rest of the body however the good news is that despite having a plastic surface finish it's a

very tactile trackpad there isn't a ton of flex and I generally find that using it is actually quite bearable in fact

I'd say it's one of the better track pads you'd find on a laptop in general

the keyboard here is more or less in line with the rest of the Idea Pad Series so you have those well-labeled keycaps

with those semi-rectangular designs you have a decent amount of spacing between each keycap though I hate that split in

half shift key with the slash button it's a huge design flaw in my opinion you also have the inclusion of a 10

keypad since this is the 15 inch variant though you still don't get any sort of backlighting but I suppose that's fair

enough now as far as the typing experience goes it's still pretty darn good though I do feel like there is a

very slight drop in quality this year's models feels like it has a little bit less key travel so it gives it a more

shallow feeling but still I think this is probably the best budget keyboard I've seen on a laptop you're still there

I'm so happy to see that if you're enjoying the content  let's carry on hinge quality isn't half


Display


bad either you have a single mechanism hinge over here and the impressive the part is that you can do a near 180

degree tilt now as far as the display fitting goes you do have a standard plastic lip all around though you have a

relatively thin chin at the bottom fairly narrow bezels that are not with modern day standards and a thin enough

forehead at the center of which you will find a one megapixel 720p webcam which

is good enough to make it look a Minecraft character though I wouldn't use it for your dating needs with that

said though you do get a built-in privacy shutter so that's got to account for something right the display quality

is arguably the least impressive part of this machine though that's kind expected I suppose so starting with the

good stuff you have a full HD resolution


or


1920x1080p which is actually an upgrade from last year 720p base display you also have a 60 hertz refresh rate a 16x9

aspect ratio you have a pretty high quality IPS panel here with great viewing angles now for the gloomy stuff

you have a peak brightness just 220 nits that means means that in bright settings or daylight settings your screen will be plagued by glare as there's just not

enough brightness to compensate for it so do be wary of that now on a more gloomier note you have a 45 ntsc rating

or approximately 56 scrub meaning colors will look like they've died on this machine needless to say you should not

be doing color sensitive activities like photo or video editing though it'll be fine for General use like web browsing


for example let's quickly talk about

Performance


performance as well I need you guys to understand something this is a Intel Pentium silver processor this thing is

designed to do as little work as possible and that's not an insult I just mean that's its true capacity so if

you're doing stuff like web browsing writing up Word document checking out

the news it's going to be just fine it's designed for that kind of stuff but if you're gonna try to use this laptop in

its mere four gigabytes of RAM to do stuff like let's say benchmarking photo editing programming in in most cases

it's just not possible this laptop will choke up lag and ultimately just not do those kind of tasks if you are trying to buy this laptop for any of the

activities I mentioned or let's say for even casual gaming do not do that this laptop is at for a very basic and

standard use case so keep that in mind on that note as far as thermals go let's say you're watching full HD videos on

the web you can hit a maximum average surface temperature of Just Around 32 degrees Celsius which isn't too shabby given the fact that you have no active

cooling or basically no cooling fan on this machine though it won't go much

higher than that and will immediately thermal throttle if you try doing anything more intensive with a 45 watt


Speakers


hour battery you'll get around seven and a half hours of real world battery time

on a single charge as far as speaker quality goes it's actually not bad so

you have bottom firing speakers like I mentioned earlier here's a quick sound



Price


approximate retail price of 280 US Dollars the Idea Pad 1i is more or less a Ultra budget Windows laptop now keep in

mind you get Windows 11 S Mode by default but you can actually remove the S Mode entirely I made a video on it

I'll leave the link somewhere above there but anyway you can definitely

check that out now with that said the one eye does give you some cool perks given its price point for beginners you

have a really nice build here the quality is pretty good for a laptop of this class despite being a full plastic

build and while the laptop is a little bit heavier than I like it to be it's still just a well-designed machine I

also appreciate the fact that you have a decent trackpad and keyboard over here

and also some pretty robust sounding speakers now keep in mind the biggest compromise with these type of laptops is

performance this laptop is very basic in its use case if you are doing anything more than General productivity it most

likely will not be enough for your needs due to the Limit modern Ram processor in

power as well as storage capacity with that said though again if your use case is basic I think you'll appreciate what

this machine has to offer as it definitely gives you a fair amount of value for the price you pay and often these laptops go on sale so you may end

up paying a lot less than the base price I told you about let me know what you think of the Idea Pad 1i if you already

have one I'd love to hear your thoughts


Thanks