The Lenovo Ideapad series of laptops are built for people who want to work on the go. While these aren’t the most powerful work laptops out there, but they do provide you good enough processing power so you don’t have to rely on having a full-fledged workstation PC all the time.
These Ideapad laptops come with good enough processors and you can also choose to have a GPU if you want to work on graphics-intensive applications even when you’re mobile.
The Ideapad 330 is a great laptop that comes with a great set of specifications. The unit that we have for review comes with an Intel 8th Gen Core i7-8550U processor, 8GB RAM and more. We will see how the laptop performs and we will touch every aspect that the laptop has to offer.
Design & Build
The Lenovo Ideapad 300 looks quite premium even with the polycarbonate body that it has. The body is made out of glossy polycarbonate. The screen lid has a brushed metal finish to it. The laptop has a 15.6-inch screen which is plenty for a lot of people.
The laptop feels quite light at 2.2KG but there are lighter laptops out there for sure. You can buy it in color options of Platinum Grey, Blizzard White, Midnight Blue, Chocolate, and Onyx Black. The laptop also has an abundance of ports and doesn’t skimp out on them.
Opening the lid will reveal the 15.6-inch display with the Lenovo branding on the lower left side below the display. You will also find a webcam along with an LED above the display to indicate that your webcam is on while it is being used.
Coming to the keyboard, the keyboard is a standard affair but you can have a backlit numeric keyboard as an option. You have the extra 10 keys for the numbers and calculations on the right side while the trackpad has been set a bit towards the left of the laptop.
Around the laptop, you will see a bunch of different ports. You have a USB Type-C 3.1 port along with two USB 3.0 ports out of which one supports charging. There’s also an HDMI port along with a 4-in-1 card reader that can read SD, SDHC, SDXC and MMC cards. For audio, you have the 3.5mm combo audio jack that you can use to connect a speaker or a headset with a microphone.
The right side of the laptop also has an optical drive that is something rare to see in laptops today. Turning the laptop over will reveal the 11 screws that you have to unscrew to get to the inside of the laptop. The back cover all reveals vents for the interior cooling fan and for the speakers.
The laptop feels quite solid even with the polycarbonate body but yes there are a few quirks. Overall, the laptops has a decent design and build quality.
Display
The Ideapad 330 unit that we have has a 15.6-inch full HD IPS display. This is an IPS panel which means the colors are quite accurate and the screen has good viewing angles. The Ideapad 330 also comes in another display option of a 15.6-inch HD display with a resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels.
Our unit’s display looked good and having 1080p resolution on a 15.6-inch display is good enough for day to day tasks. The colors looked good and vibrant and the blacks definitely had a white tint just like any other IPS display out there. The display has an anti-glare coating to eliminate reflection of light which is a good thing and eliminates the annoyance of using a laptop with screen glare.
The display can get bright up to 200-nits which is OK but a brighter display would have been better.
Talking about the other variant with the HD display isn’t an IPS panel and the screen you will get will be a TN panel screen which isn’t as good as the IPS display. TN panel won’t look as good as the IPS panel since the colors will be a bit dull and the viewing angles will not be good.
As an option, you can also go for a touchscreen display on the Ideapad 330 which will bring 10-point multi-touch so that you can easily interact with items on the screen using your fingers.
Keyboard & Trackpad
You get a standard Lenovo keyboard. It is a 6-row keyboard and comes with multimedia keys that can be used to play, pause and manipulate the volume on the laptop. You also have a numeric keypad with the 10 numeric keys. As an option, you can get a backlit keyboard that will be lit up so you can use it even in dark environments.
Coming to the Trackpad, you will find a multi-touch trackpad below the keyboard with the left and right click buttons integrated into it. The trackpad works fine and supports multi-touch gestures so you can use the Windows 10 gestures to do stuff easily.
It works well and the buttons are clicky enough. The left and right clicks do make a loud click sound that you may or may not like.
Ports
Coming to the ports, the laptop does not skimp out on the ports at all. You will find a USB Type-C 3.1 port and two USB 3.0. For connecting an external display, there is an HDMI port on the laptop. You also have the ethernet port, the charging port and the Kensington lock port that can be used to lock your laptop with your work table.
For audio, you have a 3.5mm combo audio jack. You can use the audio jack to connect a headphone with a microphone or you can choose to connect wired speakers as well. There’s also a card reader which can read MMC, SD, SDHC, SDXC cards.
Audio Performance
The laptop comes with two 2W speakers that work with Dolby Audio. For a small silent room, the speakers are good enough but they aren’t that loud when you get outside or work in a crowded workplace. It is better to get an external Bluetooth speaker or a headphone if you plan to watch movies or video content on the laptop.
The Dolby Audio support will let you customize the sound to your liking and you will be able to set profiles for different audio devices.
Performance
Finally, coming to the main thing about the laptop, the laptop performed quite well with day to day apps usage. Our unit came with an 8th Gen Intel Core i7-8550U which is a mobile processor.
The processor is coupled with 8GB RAM dual channel RAM with a frequency of 2400MHz. The 8GB RAM has been dividing in 4GB soldered RAM on the motherboard and 4GB DIMM RAM in the RAM slot. You can choose to add more RAM by replacing the 4GB DIMM stick with another RAM of higher capacity.
You can have up to 16GB RAM in other variants of the laptop and there is an option to add 16GB Intel Optane memory to make the performance of the laptop even better.
Coming to the GPU, our unit had an onboard Intel HD 620 Graphics chip along with an AMD Radeon 540 dedicated GPU with a memory of 2GB. The performance of the GPU was good enough and games like Fortnite provided an FPS of around 45-50fps with everything set to medium graphics.
The Ideapad 330 also allows you to choose a GPU up to NVIDIA GTX 1050 with a memory of either 2GB or 4GB. The NVIDIA GTX1050 will be a better option if you want to game on your Ideapad 330.
Our laptop that had a combination of Intel Core i7-8550U, 8GB RAM, and AMD Radeon 540 GPU worked well and gave us enough juice to run games like Fortnite, GTA5, and a few others. All of these games ran at playable FPS but the laptop did head up while gaming.
Battery
As per Lenovo, the Ideapad 300 can provide a battery life of up to 6 hours. The Ideapad 330 comes with three battery variants. You can choose from 30Wh, 35Wh, and 45 Wh. The 30Wh battery variant has a battery life of 5.5 hours while the 35Wh variant gives you 6 hours on a full charge.
Lenovo has also added Rapid Charge capability and you get a 90W charger with the laptop which will give you a 2 hours charge in just 15 minutes. Of course, the battery life depends on a lot of factors and in our tests the battery did stay close to what Lenovo claims here.
Verdict
The Lenovo Ideapad 330 is a good laptop which offers balanced features at a decent price. You do get a good processor but the laptop needs a good GPU to handle the graphics intensive stuff. So if you plan to play games or edit videos on it, we recommend opting for the model with a dedicated graphics card.
This is a laptop that is meant to be used for the light workload and it is a good option for students or home users. If you are a business professional then you should check out Lenovo Thinkpad T480.
