Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i Review: A top-tier budget gaming laptop with few compromises 

The IdeaPad features a plastic chassis, although it doesn’t feel cheap. I found very little flex on the lid, while the overall build quality felt solid. The new IdeaPad weighs around 2.3kgs and measures 21.8mm thick, making it a pretty thick and chunky boy. However, with gaming laptops, the heft doesn’t seem like such a bad thing. When it comes to the design, Lenovo doesn’t deviate from the standard gaming laptop formula.

The IdeaPad Gaming 3i features rounded corners and angled lid edges, although the overall design is clean rather than edgy or stylish. Our version of the notebook arrived in the Onyx Grey colour and was quite resistant to smudges and fingerprints. While the hinges on the laptop felt secure, it could still be opened with one hand. The IdeaPad also had several vents across the sides and back.

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Connectivity 

In terms of I/O, Lenovo has got you covered. The IdeaPad 3i features two full-size USB Type-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, 1 HDMI port, 1 Ethernet port, a combo audio jack, the power connector, and a USB Type-C port with Thunderbolt 4. The notebook also offers Bluetooth 5.2 and Wi-Fi 6 connectivity. The port selection on the IdeaPad 3i is bang on average. The IdeaPad also features a 720p webcam with dual microphones and a privacy shutter. With adequate lighting in the room, the webcam is just about decent.

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Keyboard & Trackpad 

The new Lenovo IdeaPad 3i features a full-size keyboard with a Numpad. The keyboard boasts 4-zone RGB backlighting with various pre-set patterns that can be set up through the Vantage app. The keys have a satisfying travel distance and good spacing between the keys, making it comfortable to type or game on. The IdeaPad 3i (Gen 7) is equipped with a responsive trackpad with multi-finger support and Microsoft’s Precision drivers. The trackpad area is fairly large and makes navigating relatively easy. However, the plastic surface is no quite as smooth as some of the glass trackpads we’ve used in the past.

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Display & Audio

For the display, the IdeaPad Gaming 3i boasts a standard 15.6-inch Full HD ISP panel. The screen boasts a 165Hz refresh rate and slick response time. The panel features good viewing angles and with a peak brightness of 300 nits, it gets plenty bright for use while travelling. However, it doesn’t tend to favour dark scenes in shows and movies. Additionally, it also boasts 100 percent sRGB colour coverage, which makes it versatile for photo editing. You also get a 16:10 aspect ratio, making the panel excellent for viewing content.

The display on the IdeaPad Gaming 3i certainly punches above its price, considering you get a fast, bright, and mostly colour accurate panel without really breaking the bank. The IdeaPad 3i packs two downward firing stereo speakers with Nahimic audio. While the speakers get quite loud, enough to fill a large room, the lack bass with the audio sounding muffled at higher volumes. The Nahimic audio software from SteelSeries can be quite useful while fine tuning the sound but doesn’t little to improve sound quality. The audio quality on the IdeaPad 3i is decent at best but well above the average for a budget gaming laptop.

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Performance

When it comes to performance, the Lenovo IdeaPad 3i is equipped with an Intel Core i7-12700H, which comes with 14 cores (six performance and weight efficiency cores) and 20 threads. The chip is paired with 16GB of DDR4 RAM and 1TB of M.2 PCIe SSD storage. The notebook also features an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3050 Ti laptop GPU with 4GB of GDDR6 RAM as well as Intel’s Iris Xe graphics. Now, let’s look at some real-world results.

We tested a few titles on the IdeaPad, including Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War, which saw an average of 80 fps on ‘High’ settings with ray tracing turned off. Additionally, Overwatch managed 115 fps on average on ‘High’ settings. Apex Legends was just under 100 fps on average on ‘High’ settings. Apart from the multiplayer titles, we also tested God of War, which managed over 60fps on average on ‘High’ settings. Lastly, Shadow of the Tomb Raider hit 85fps on average on ‘High’ settings.

We also ran Cinebench R23’s test, scoring 1801 points in the single-core test and 16701 points in the multi-core test. We did a marginal drop off in Cinebench’s stress test – 14024 points (multi-core score) and 1723 (single-core score). In Geekbench 6, the IdeaPad hit a single-core score of 2284 points and a multi-core score of 9805 points. In Geekbench’s OpenCL Cuda test, the GPU scored 685734 points. For cooling, the IdeaPad features two fans and three heat pipes along with several vents. The cooling system here has been borrowed from higher end models, which keeps internal temperatures in control.

The CPU rarely crossed the 90-degree Celsius mark, while GPU stayed below 85 degrees Celsius. This resulted in solid sustained performance, maintaining stable frame rates through long gaming sessions. Additionally, heat stayed well clear of the keyboard and palm rest areas. However, things tend to get significantly hot near the vents and you do see some throttling after continuous prolonged gaming. You can also easily switch between the various performance modes using the Vantage software. Overall, the IdeaPad Gaming 3i primarily focuses on good, sustained performance, which is preferrable over high peak performance.

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Battery Life 

The Lenovo IdeaPad 3i packs a 45Whr battery that arrives with a rather compact 230W adapter. Lenovo claims that the IdeaPad can deliver up to 5.9 hours of battery life for local video playback at 150 nits of brightness. In our testing, we got around four and a half hours of battery life on a single charge, which involved regular multitasking between MS Word and Google Chrome with screen brightness set at 50 percent. The IdeaPad supports fast charging and can also be powered through the USB Type-C port, although you’ll require the 230W adapter for gaming.

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Verdict

With the IdeaPad Gaming 3i, Lenovo has built a solid affordable gaming laptop. Lenovo doesn’t tend to cut a lot of corners with the IdeaPad Gaming 3i, still managing to offer a robust build, while not straying too far away from the design language of mid-tier Legion laptops. The laptop also performed admirably under pressure and displayed a lot of versatility during longer gaming sessions. Additionally, despite the 1080p resolution, the display managed to impress for both gaming and entertainment. For a gaming laptop, battery life and audio quality were well above the average, while the keyboard wasn’t too dissimilar from higher end Legion laptops.

However, the one drawback of the IdeaPad Gaming 3i is that it isn’t too affordable, coming in at just under Rs 95,000. However, Lenovo does offer the option of customisation, which should allow you to downgrade the processor to a Core i5 and upgrade the GPU to a laptop Nvidia RTX 3060 card for around Rs 3,000 to 4,000 more. But if you are looking for a good affordable laptop, the base version of the IdeaPad Gaming 3i, at around 75K, comes out on top against most of its competitors, giving it an easy recommendation in our books.