Lenovo Ideapad 720s
FROM $1,699 | WWW3.LENOVO.COM/AU A compact laptop with plenty of power.
Lenovo hasn’t thrown traditional laptop design out of the window with the IdeaPad 720S, but this is far from a run-of-the-mill machine. If anything, the 720S seems poised for a bare-knuckle battle with Dell’s slightly-dinkier XPS 13, one of the best all-round laptops in the world.
It has a similarly slim bezel design, comparatively compact, luxurious frame, and even goes one better than the XPS 13 with a discrete graphics solution on board. But does it punch above its weight?
The IdeaPad sits in the mid-range bracket in terms of its cost, starting from $1,699. There’s a few different configs on offer, and we tested a midrange Core i5 for this review.
Despite its 14-inch display, the 720S is incredibly compact — a heavily reduced slim bezel means you get more machine in a lot less space.
The reduced keyboard has a few compromises; while it’s neatly backlit, it stuffs the directional arrows into the space of three keys, and inexplicably includes the power button as a keyboard key directly next to Delete and Backspace. It’s not instantly triggered on pressing, so this isn’t as boneheaded as it sounds, but still an odd design choice.
There’s a large multitouch trackpad, fingerprint sensor, and just enough ports that it doesn’t seem neutered. The aluminium case is clearly squashing some serious hardware inside, as the 720S weighs in at a not inconsiderable 1.55kg. It’s not backbreaking, but definitely unusually weighty for a laptop of this size.
One thing seems to play off against another on the IdeaPad 720S. On the one hand, the IPS screen has tremendous viewing angles; on the other, it tops out at a resolution of 1,920 x 1,080. Yes, we’re being picky.
There’s also a decent JBLengineered, Dolby-infused sound system on board, with surprising audio thickness for such a diminutive laptop, but you’ll often struggle to hear it over the wind tunnel blast of the infernal fan cooling system. It’s one of the loudest laptops we’ve ever used when under stress. To be fair, that cooling really works — the 720S barely even gets warm to the touch — but it whirrs at an irritating pitch.
It’s easy to find fault with the IdeaPad before even using it. The 256GB SSD space, with no additional storage on board, is going to fill up very quickly. It has discrete graphics but, as our benchmark results show (achieving just 12.4fps when running Total War: Warhammer at 1080p Ultra and 2.4fps on Deux Ex: Mankind Divided that Kaby Lake processor is an impressive number cruncher.
The battery lasts a typical 3.5 hours — a disappointing result. That time drops even lower if you’re gaming. Drop the brightness and stop hammering the CPU, though, and you’ll get a bit longer out of it.
If you’re looking for a gaming laptop, there are beefier, uglier machines at this price point. If you’re more of a worker, there are lighter machines with larger screens that might suit you better. But if you fall in the middle of those two camps, you won’t be disappointed here.