Lenovo IdeaPad L340 Review (2021) – Lenovo’s Budget Gaming Laptop

Last Updated on March 24, 2021 by Ariana

Are you after a laptop that is powerful and can cope with the entry-level of gaming too? Lenovo has recently introduced the Lenovo Ideapad L340 laptop that is taking the gaming laptop world by storm.

The laptop helps the casual users to roll hands-on entry-level gaming as well as making light work of every from content writing to photo editing. A laptop is a hands-down option for budget users, who cannot spend two grand, still want to engage in gaming.

This laptop is a clear option for gaming and work, it is sort of blend of the two. The laptop shares a sleek stylish design and comes with black chassis with a blue accent. The blue backlighting, impressive display, and well-packed keyboard make it a supreme option.

The laptop might not be able to blow you away with the battery life and gaming performance, it maintains 3 hours and 30-minutes, but after reviewing many gaming laptops under $700, we think it is a great bang on your buck.

Let’s have a detailed insight into the Lenovo new entry and learn what new features the laptop is come powered with.

Design & Construction

The Lenovo designed entry-level gaming laptop bolsters a different irregular design construction. Rather than having an aggressive angular design, it showcases round edges brushed aluminum look that resembles a premium range gaming laptop.

Yes, from the looks, laptop reminiscent professional notebooks, you can have it around for professional office work, in meetings, colleges and your engineering work even. The gaming laptop from the style does not make a fancy or stylish statement, simple sleek looks it shares.

The brushed aluminum encompasses the whole chassis of the gaming beast; the black neat entire shape is broken by just a Lenovo Blue background logo.

From the close it looks like a solid slate of aluminum, you would not behold a better minimalist design than this around.

The laptop shares fewer bezels from the sides and more bezels on the up and down, weight at 2.2 Kg it is one of the lighter notebook available on the market right now.

Display

The Lenovo Ideapad gaming laptop comes with a 15.6 inches IPS panels integrating the Anti-glare coating display. The IPS panels obviously are going to give a seamless video and image watching experience.

The anti-glare coating helps the users to have supreme experience in luminance. The gaming laptop display produces 250 nits of brightness and around 45 percent color gamut.

The gaming machine offers refresh rates at 60Hz which is way lesser than recommended rates for high-ended AAA title games running. Still, the display is way better than others and makes you watch videos at high-definition and play games at good settings.

It seems the brand trade-off the refresh rates with better color production and viewing angles. The wide viewing angles are great, from any angle of the screen; you behold the same level of the display without breaking, washing out display.

The anti-glare coating, 250 nits brightness helps you behold seamless display outdoor, it helps when you go out under sunlight to continue your regular computing work, coding, and playing games. The coating retains the screen quality and protects your eyes from extra illuminance or fading out display.

Keyboard & Touchpad

The keyboard of the IdeaPad L340 shows a super gaming ambiance. The gaming laptop comes with a 90-percent layout with navigation keys such as Home, page down, Numpad to help gamers get better typing and input experience.

The up and down keys are put in one button, squished together to fit in the available space of the keyboard.

Yes, the laptop comes with backlighting keys but no RGB backlight. The L340 gaming laptop keyboard has monochrome blue lights and controlled using a simple FN+Spacebar button.

The chiclet based keyboard is not a great fit for a hardcore typist. It does not provide a great tactile experience, at some point; you would feel like a scratchy linear typing experience.

The trackpad as well could have improved, nearer to the left-hand side. The trackpad is smooth and large, with left and right tactile buttons, enough pressured to let you know what you just pressed.

Ports & Connectivity

The trend is now to put all ports and connectivity on one side of the laptop. Here, with L340 you will behold the ports on the left side. The ports are, Ethernet port, an HDMI port, two USB 3.1 port, Gen 1 Type-A connections, a USB Type-c, audio jack, and HDD activity lights.

On the right-hand side of the laptop, there is a Kensington lock. It would have been better if Lenovo could place more USB ports and USB card reader, better consumption of the wasted space.

Processor, RAM & Storage

The Lenovo has powered with its entry-level gaming laptop with Intel 9th generation core i5-9300h Hexa-core processor and GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card. This is an ideal combination of CPU+GPU to provide seamless, error-free gaming experience.

You can outshoot, outrun and outplay your competitor in gaming and can stand out in the crowd. At least you would not feel left behind because of low-powered devices. The laptop assists you in every form of gaming and upholds you every genre of video gaming.

The laptop also comes with an 8GB DDR4 RAM to assist you in multitasking. The size may look disappointing to the many, as it is not recommended RAM size for hard-core gaming. Still, it is manageable and helps you a lot without costing arms and legs.

The storage option is way better than much top-notch ranked entry-level gaming laptop. The beast comes incorporated with a bulky 512GB SSD storage; with extra slot for HDD or SSD another.

Furthermore, the size can be expanded using the extra slots integrated. The size can go up to 64GB RAM and storage up to 1TB SSD or HDD onboard. It is up to you what you can afford and what your needs demand from you.

Graphics Card

Now, let’s talk about the biggest deciding factor in gaming; GPU. I have mentioned it above as well, the Lenovo L340 gaming laptop acquires a GTX 1650 graphics card.

With the size of the graphics card, you can play eSports titles like CS: Go, easily at 1080P max settings, with frame rates above hundreds.

In PUBG, you can go around 50 frames per second at 1080P ultra gaming settings, lowering down the high settings to average can lead to more gain in frame rates around 63 per second.

The gaming laptop lets you roll hands-on top released high-ended games with average to high settings. We cannot mention the frame rates and settings for all the games.

A good option for the avid and casual gamer to go-with, undoubtedly.

Portability & Battery life

The biggest trade-off for a person looking for an ultralight gaming laptop, the laptop is not portable at all. With 4.8 pounds of weight, you will have to endure a bulky gaming laptop. It would not make a great notebook to carry around, despite its design and great looks.

The laptop is not exactly a thin machine, as per today’s standards. It is good to go device, makes a good entry-level gaming machine at a good price bracket. But, not a portable option what most of us lures to while traveling.

The IdeaPad L340 gaming laptop comes with a 3-Cell 45 Watt-hour battery that lasts around 8-9hours under the moderate load. Such as browsing streaming media, writing documents, and much more.

Guru’s Verdict

Lenovo has come up with a superior performance gaming laptop this time under an affordable price bracket. The gaming laptop can also be used as a business laptop, as the look is clean and it emanates a top-notch, 2-grand laptop aesthetics.

From hard-core gamers perspective, the product is not a good grab. If you are a hard-core gamer, love to explore the latest AAA titles, this would not render the best possible experience.

You are a student, a casual gamer, or need something for office work handling, yes the laptop can make a good option.