Lenovo IdeaPad 730S review: A slick laptop with no gimmicks - armitageliciriand

The Lenovo IdeaPad 730S is known non just for what it offers, but for what it doesn't.

Unlike many other laptops in the $900-and-up price range, the IdeaPad 730S doesn't transform into a tablet and doesn't even have a touchscreen. It uses a discreet 1080p display instead of a electric battery-chewing QHD or 4K panel, and its wildest flourish is a Dolby Atmos speaker system, which for a laptop in reality sounds pretty healthful.

Aside trimming away fancy gimmicks, Lenovo has delivered a lightweight laptop that looks great and performs well for a reasonable price.

One word of caution, though: We've tested two of these laptops, and both had constant Wi-Fi connectivity issues across multiple networks. Lenovo's suggested fix mired installation a newer Wi-Fi driver for a diametric laptop. This solved the problem, but the company hasn't said when IT will officially release those drivers for the 730S.

Price and specifications

Lenovo sent us the $1000 version of the 730S, which includes an 8th-multiplication Intel Core i5-8265U (1.6GHz) mainframe, Intel UHD 620 graphics, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, and a 256GB solid United States Department of State drive. You can save $100 away opting for 128GB of storage, and you can upgrade to a Core i7-8565U (1.8 GHz) CPU—in either repositing contour—for $200 more.

In all cases, you'll get a not-touch IPS display with a resolution of 1920×1080. The maximum brightness level we metrical of 317 nits is surprisingly angelic for the price: shortly behind the 337 nits we measured for Microsoft's Surface Laptop computer 2, and well above the 250-260 nits that we conceive to exist average. The viewing angles are great.

Blueprint

Unlike some contende thin-and-light laptops, the 730S doesn't stomp a logo midmost of the lid operating theater underneath the display. The only sign that you're using a Lenovo laptop—once you remove the indispensable stickers, of course—is a midget embedded logo on the lid's speed-left corner.

lenovo730souter — The lack of a overlarge logo in the middle of the lid is a energizing change from the showy stamps on other laptops.

Aggregate that tasteful approach with edge-to-edge show glass, narrow bezels around the screen, more or less distinctive unsubdivided keycaps, and a dark-gray aluminum frame, and you end up with a beautiful slick-superficial laptop. Lenovo even shaved a mm sour antepenultimate year's IdeaPad 720S innovation, so the new theoretical account measures just 0.47-inch thready, and a very portable 2.4 pounds.

Inclined the absence of a touchscreen, the IdeaPad 730S's want of a 360-degree hinge makes sense. Still, the display does fold back 180 degrees to put inactive on a table. I'm not sure why you'd want to do this, but in hypothesis you could shore up up the laptop computer along a stand, plug in a mouse and keyboard, and use it on a desk without effortful your neck. (If solitary Lenovo offered a docking station specifically for this purpose.)

lenovo730sflat — The Lenovo IdeaPad 730S can fold flat, though we're not sure why we'd use it that way.

A couple of gripes: The laptop computer's hinge International Relations and Security Network't stiff plenty once IT bends past about 120 degrees. As a determined ramification shaker, I often found that the IdeaPad 730S display would gradually tip back with the computer on my swish. The 16:9 widescreen display is also a trifle too cramped vertically, at least with the 150% nonremittal display grading. Dialing information technology down to 125% helped, simply I'd make love to see a taller adaptation of this laptop altogether.

Keyboard and trackpad

Scorn the laptop's thinness, the IdeaPad 730S keyboard offers a lot of travel, on with two levels of backlighting when you press the Function keystone and space block u. In a typing test, I averaged 90 wpm, versus 96 lyric per minute on my usual windup keyboard. The 730S keyboard's frame does bend easily low-level force per unit area toward the center, and I would've liked the keys to follow a bit less strict, but IT's a good keyboard overall.

The trackpad, meanwhile, provides a large, practically frictionless surface that supports Microsoft's Precision Touchpad drivers. This allows you to tweak the trackpad's sensitivity and portion actions to cardinal- and foursome-finger swipes. The only affair holding this trackpad cover from excellence is the increasing pressure required to click on information technology as you incite further up the surface. Folk who prefer tapping terminated clicking should have got No complaints.

Ports, camera, security, speakers

Buying the Lenovo IdeaPad 730S means in full committing to USB-C and abandoning bequest USB-A. The two ports on the right-wing side support Thunderbolt 3 for information transfer and external displays, and one of those ports offers always-on charging equally well. The USB-C port on the left side is primarily for charging the laptop computer with the included power brick, though you could technically power up the laptop through whatsoever port. (I was even able to charge the laptop computer with a smartphone courser, albeit tardily.)

lenovo730sleft — The IdeaPad 730S has solely USB-C ports, but at least you get a headphone jack.

Lenovo did have the good grace to include to include a headphone manual laborer, but if you want built-in ports for USB-A, MicroSD, operating room HDMI, you'll have to look elsewhere.

The camera is your typical gimcrack laptop computer webcam, supporting functioning to 720p resolution. At the least it's adorned along the laptop's top bezel, so you'll avoid the unflattering camera angles that plagued some of last year's thin-and-lights. The IdeaPad 730S does have a fingermark reader just beneath the right pointer key, and so you can log in without a word even though the television camera lacks Windows How-do-you-do facial realization.

Atomic number 3 for the aforementioned Dolby Atmos speaker system, it combines Dolby-designed hardware with some fancy equalization settings for louder dialogue and better-superficial music. This calm a laptop verbalizer, so information technology's not going away to filling your room with rich audio frequency, just YouTube videos came out hearable crisp even at full bam. It's certainly a step up over most laptop speakers, especially when it's connected a unmodulated surface, where the audio can project outward.

Performance

lenovo730svents — The gaps underneath the keys double as air intake sources.

The Lenovo IdeaPad 730S is among the first wad of notebooks with Intel's "Whiskey Lake" CPUs, which should give it a low performance boost under peak loads. We compared it to a group of recent mainstream laptops with corresponding C.P.U., Ram down, and interconnected graphics.

Lenovo talks up the 730S's thermal design, which pulls in cool aerial through with vents in the keyboard and pushes it outgoing through the binding and backside of the notebook computer. Purportedly this allows for some the slim design and a smaller fan. Although the 730S can become uncomfortably excitable happening the lave under the heaviest loads, it ran cool and reposeful all but of the time.

lenovo ideapad 730s pcmark 8 work 2 conventional corrected — Any laptop that scores over 2,000 in PCMark 8 Work Conventional tooshie handle mainstream applications handily. The Lenovo IdeaPad 730S excelled within its group, posting a very rosy score well over 3,000.

We rear sure as shooting see the benefits of Whiskey Lake—and, perchance, that thermal design—in the PCMark 8 Work benchmark. The IdeaPad 730S edged out all other thin-and-light laptop we've tested in the last six months, including some Intel Effect-i7 U-Series notebooks and Dell's rival XPS 13 (which has the same Intel Core i5-8265U mainframe).

That said, the XPS 13 pulled in advance in CPU-intensive tests, including Cinebench, which tests how the CPU renders 3D graphics, and HandBrake, which encodes a long video file for Mechanical man pad utilisation.

lenovo ideapad 730s cinebench — Cinebench is a synthetical C.P.U. tryout that shows how a PC handles a brief break of activity. The Lenovo IdeaPad 730S posts a good account Hera.

Information technology's possible that Lenovo is dialing down the IdeaPad 730S's CPU performance below heavy workloads to maintain the laptop's slim profile and chilly, untroubled operation. If your goal is to get work done, that seems ilk a rational trade-off.

lenovo ideapad 730s handbrake — HandBrake stresses the Processor over a overnight period, often causing laptops to prevent things unresponsive by throttling performance. The Lenovo IdeaPad 730S erred on the side of thermals, posting a slower time as a result.

As for GPU public presentation, don't bear anything out of the ordinary for a thin-and-light laptop computer. 2D indie games like Shovel Knight and Moneymaking Kings volition work fine, and you might be able to scrape aside in a Borderlands 2 session at 720p resolution and 30 frames per second, but this isn't a gambling machine. The 730S posts a decent score compared to similar contention.

lenovo ideapad 730s 3dmark sky diver — The Lenovo IdeaPad 730S has integrated artwork, so its 3DMark Toss Diver score is pocket-sized—and far-right in line thereupon of similarly configured competition.

Shelling life, then again, was a pleasant storm. Although IT has lower capacity than galore other laptops in its class, it still aroused on the higher goal of our video rundown test.

lenovo ideapad 730s video rundown battery test — DO NOT Habit The Lenovo IdeaPad 730S lasted over 10.5 hours in our video rundown examine, a very good musical score for a mainstream laptop.

Lenovo says it's using a more efficient display than last year's IdeaPad 720S, which along with the non-touch 1080p panel likely contributed to the respectable score. The inclusion body of fast charging, which fills the assault and battery equal to 80 percent in an hour, is also a skillful touch.

Should you buy the Lenovo IdeaPad 730S?

It's always respectable to see a laptop that knows what information technology's trying to accomplish. Instead of attempting to beryllium all things to all populate, the Lenovo IdeaPad 730S is content to embody a solid thin-and-light laptop with a strong sense of style. It's ideal for people who want to perform office or other productivity tasks from anywhere, and don't aspire to use their laptop like a tablet or reverse it into a gaming fishing tackle. Atomic number 3 long as the Wi-Fi write out I experienced doesn't prove widespread—or gets patched in the near future—this laptop succeeds at cutting away the cruft.