LENOVO IDEAPAD SLIM 3I CHROMEBOOK
An interesting if chunky ultraportable, but performance isn’t great
PRICE £233 (£280 inc VAT) from johnlewis.com
Weirdly, the IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook isn’t particularly slim, with a 19.3mm thickness that makes it no less chunky than most other Chromebooks on test. What it is, though, is unusually compact, thanks to a shallow 216mm depth that shaves a centimetre or two from the footprint of a typical 14in device. Combine that with a 1.5kg weight, and it’s a good option for slinging in the laptop pocket of a backpack and carrying for a day of work or study, especially where conditions might be cramped.
The body is made from plastic, but the aluminium lid and good build quality mean that it feels robust. Lenovo might have put more thought into the connectivity, however. It’s fantastic to have Wi-Fi 6E on such an inexpensive Chromebook, but having one single USB-C port is a problem on a device that uses USB-C for charging; this practically forces you to buy a dock, even with two USB-A ports and an HDMI 1.4 output already onboard.
The keyboard underwhelms, with medium-sized flat keys that have plenty of travel but a spongy action in places. The left Ctrl, Alt and Shift keys, along with the right Shift, Return and Backspace, have been super-sized to make them easier to whack, but the touchpad gets less space than usual. While its tracking is accurate, it’s hard to navigate the screen at speed without ramping the sensitivity right up. To compensate, the display is excellent for the price, reaching 327cd/m2 in brightness with a contrast ratio of 1,613:1. For browsing, productivity and even casual video streaming purposes, you might not even notice its limited 62% coverage of the sRGB gamut.
The biggest issue here, though, is performance. While nominally an Intel Core i3 chip, the N305 is based entirely on eight Alder Lake Efficiency cores, running at a maximum of 3.8GHz, and the Slim 3i couldn’t even keep up with the similarly specced HP Chromebook Plus 15a. Both use 8GB of RAM, but the IdeaPad Slim 3i lacks the HP’s faster UFS 3.1 drive, falling back on the older, slower eMMC.
It doesn’t feel slow in everyday use, and the battery life – just shy of 11 hours – is impressive, but this is a good, cheap Chromebook with some irritating faults, rather than a great one.