Lenovo IdeaPad L340 Gaming Laptop
US 1+
Pros
- Large screen
- Full-size backlit keyboard
- Separate 10-key number keypad
- Extensive connectivity
- Large and responsive trackpad
Cons
- No optical drive
- Average battery life
- Low RAM
- Off-center trackpad
- Bit heavy
Read Lenovo IdeaPad L340 gaming laptop review and see the price. This Lenovo IdeaPad L340 is one of the serious gaming laptops for sure, though not one of the most powerful ones for serious and professional gamers.
It will provide you with all the power and performance that you need to play games at moderate settings, only.
You can also use it for other professional tasks such as video editing, but not for those tasks that need running some complex software.
Typically, at this price point, this is quite a good device to be used by the gamers, professional content developers, college going and mechanical engineering students, and of course for any other average user.
The sleek and stylish design includes a full-sized keyboard with ambient backlights, an i7 processor that is good enough for gaming, GTX 1650 graphics chip to supercharge your gaming performance with its Turing architecture, and an SSD storage to get things done quickly.
This dependable laptop will put you in the driver’s seat allowing you to control its different modes when you work or play on it.
You can use the Quiet mode and save on the battery power when you work on it, and when you need things to be more exciting while you play games and want the performance to be higher, you can switch to Quick mode very easily and quickly.
However, this will not increase or decrease your productivity as it is entirely in your hands and depends on your abilities.
Your privacy will also be well protected when you use this laptop. You can prevent others prying on you when you work or play games on this machine by turning the camera off with the physical shutter.
You can work or play on this device for several hours at a stretch without worrying about straining your eyes or damaging your optic nerves.
You can trust the Lenovo Vantage’s Eye Care Mode which will eliminate the chances of eye fatigue.
This will reduce the blue light emission from the screen and at the same time will adjust the color tone of the display to prevent the chances of any eye damage.
Therefore, this is one reliable laptop not only from the performance perspective but also from the point of view of your eye health as well as your privacy.
Table of Contents
Lenovo IdeaPad L340 Gaming Laptop & Variants Price
Lenovo IdeaPad L340 Gaming Laptop Review
Buy for: Fast latest processor, dedicated and powerful graphics card, adequate fast SSD storage, strong 180-degree flip-hinge, sleek design.
Beware of: All ports on one side, single memory slot, playing in high settings, low refresh rate of screen.
Verdict
The Lenovo IdeaPad L340 is surely a good gaming laptop, but is definitely not an excellent choice. It does not only belong to the medium tier in terms of performance and power, but comes with only 8 GB of RAM while 16 GB would have made it future proof. It is just a decent gaming laptop with a good CPU and graphics card and the 512 SSD just helps in getting into gaming a lot quicker.
Design and Build
The design and build of this laptop are pretty good which does not only make it look simple yet elegant but also keeps the size and weight of this laptop within bearable limits, unlike most gaming laptops today.
Though this weighs a tad more than 6 pounds, it is quite portable. Check out Best Laptops for Mechanical Engineering Students.
This laptop does not look like a spaceship like most of the gaming laptops today.
You may be a bit apprehensive of its build, which is mostly from plastic, and feel that it will be subdued and unattractive, but it is just the contrary.
You will certainly like the backlit keyboard which looks cool in blue and ensures better, faster, and more comfortable typing experience with higher accuracy rate, even in dimly lit rooms.
The keyboard is full-size and comes with a separate 10-key number keypad that will allow faster data entry. The keys are well spaced to allow larger fingers to type fast on it.
With a fairly good key travel distance, feel, and tactile feedback, you will love to type on this keyboard.
The best part of the keyboard design is that it comes with an option to choose from two levels of these backlights and even offers you with an option to switch it off completely if you do not want it during the day or to save on your battery power.
However, be aware of the fact that the power switch is on the keyboard which is small and located just next to the Del button.
If you are not careful you may shut the system down while trying to delete a portion of a text or an entire one.
The trackpad of the device is nice and wide. It is quite responsive to touches and will allow easy navigation through the apps, text and images.
The full HD screen of this device meets the minimum requirement of a gaming laptop these days.
However, it is much larger than the standard 15.6 inches and though it is not an edge-to-edge display, the real estate of this screen is quite high due to the thinner bezel on its two sides.
Delivering the images at 1920 x 1080 pixels, this IPS display also provides a wider viewing angle to see the characters of a game clearly from any sides and from any angle.
The color accuracy is also much better as compared to any regular LED screen, though the refresh rate is only 60 Hz, which is just the basic level, where a 144 Hz refresh rate would have been much better.
Performance
The 9th generation Intel Core i7 9750H processor will provide adequate support to the graphics card and also handle most of the games and other computing tasks most efficiently.
It has all the power and ability to handle high-end games with its six cores and twelve threads that operate at a speed range of 2.6 GHz and 4.5 GHz at base and boost frequency clock.
The 8 GT/s bus speed, 12 MB smart cache, and TDP ranging between 35 W and 45 W adds to its performance level.
The Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650 graphics card, on the other hand, is a comparatively new chip of the GTX series being released in April 2019, but it is still quite good in performance, in spite of being a cheap alternative to GTX 1050 and 1060.
Though it will not turn your head with an exceptional graphics output, it still has the power to run most of the full HD games even at their highest settings.
It is all due to its high CUDA cores, boost and base clock speed, memory speed and bandwidth, and, of course, its Turing architecture.
Adding on to the performance of this machine is the Windows 10 Home operating system.
Whether you use this laptop for your everyday computing needs or for gaming, this operating system will handle it all.
Fortunately, it does not come with a lot of useless software which you have to uninstall throughout the day to work on it more efficiently.
In fact, this popular operating system will do most of the work for you, whether it is in the performance aspect or security of your system while working on it, or both.
RAM & Storage
The 8 GB of DDR4 memory is adequate for a standard laptop but for a gaming rig at least a double than that amount is expected.
However, this is enough to allow you to do some simple multitasking on this device.
Remember, you will not be able to add a new 8 GB stick alongside it. If you want to upgrade your system with a 16 GB RAM, you will have to replace the entire stick since there is only one slot in this laptop.
The QLC SSD is quite fast in performance assuring a faster boot up of the system and lower loading times of the apps.
The 512 GB size is quite decent because loading games nowadays take up a lot of gigabytes of data.
This type of SSD has a much faster read and write speed, whether it is random or sequential.
Ports & Connectivity
The machine comes with an adequate number of ports and slots allowing you to connect several devices to it externally.
Unfortunately, all these ports are on the left side of the chassis, which may be a bit of an issue for some users.
From inside out, it starts with a DC power jack to charge the system, an RJ 45 port for Ethernet LAN support, one HDMI 2.0 port to connect the laptop with a larger external display, two USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type A ports, one 3.5 mm stereo headphone and microphone combo jack, and one USB 3.1 Gen 1 Type C port.
On the right side of the chassis there is only the Kensington Lock port.
In addition to that, you can connect Bluetooth devices with it as well through its Bluetooth support.
You can also rely on a strong internet connection due to the 802.11ac wi-fi network support.
Battery Life
The life of the lithium-ion battery of this laptop will primarily depend on what you are using it for.
Since this device comes with different performance modes namely, Quiet and Quick, the battery life will also be affected according to the mode you choose to work with.
Ideally, the average battery life for basic usage of this laptop will be anywhere between 6 to 7 hours, and for gaming it may come down by an hour or so, which is quite as expected from most of the gaming laptops even if you start playing with a full battery.
Additional Features
The device comes with a good enough audio system that consists of a good set of stereo speakers which supports Dolby Audio sound technology.
This technology is very advanced and will produce better sound output with high volume and deeper bass.
It will take your gaming and multimedia experience to a new level with better listening and viewing pleasure with no echoing as you may get in a cheaper laptop.
There is also a good quality webcam integrated on the top bezel that takes quite good pictures.
However, if you are worried about somebody peeping on you and are absolutely paranoid about it, the camera shutter will block it completely to prevent others from watching you.
Lenovo has kept the system clean with only a few carefully selected apps and software preloaded in it. These will provide you with a safer, uncluttered, and better computing experience.
It includes proprietary apps such as Vantage, App Explorer, Utility, LinkedIn, and free trial offers for one month of McAfee LiveSafe and Microsoft Office 365.
Specs:
- Brand: Lenovo
- Screen: 17.3 inches
- Display: Full HD (1920 x 1080)
- Storage: 512 GB
- RAM: 8 GB
- Storage Type: M.2 NVMe QLC SSD
- RAM Type: DDR4
- Processor: 9th generation Intel Core i7 9750H
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650
- Processor Speed: 2.6 GHz
- Processor Brand: Intel
- Product Dimensions: 16.3 x 11.2 x 1 inches
- Operating System: Windows 10 Home
What Do Users Think about Lenovo IdeaPad L340?
This is certainly not one of the high-end laptops available on the market that is intended for gaming but is certainly one of the best that one can get given the price point, said a lot of users.
The processor is great and its speed is quite high to deal with the data processing aspect but the graphics processing seems to be within the mid-high range.
Also, the hard drive could have been much better, not in storage capacity but in type and performance, which would have made it a really good gaming rig for the money, they said.
The memory of this unit is only 8 GB while 16 GB is the preferred standard today, especially when a laptop is intended for gaming, said a lot of users.
Moreover, this low RAM comes in a single channel which unfortunately leaves no room to add more RAM, they regretted.
Apart from this minor setback due to its design, there is nothing much they could have complained about this machine. Check out IdeaPad L340 Manual.
The device has just enough power and capability to produce some really good frames while playing games at mid to high level graphics settings only.
It seems to falter in playing high-end games. However, the system is good for some complex computing tasks on it and is therefore good for students and professionals as well.
As for the other things, they are good, especially the backlit keyboard in blue that has a nice look, feel and key travel to provide a better typing experience.
Few users were very happy with their purchase since they found that the system runs all apps and software programs they wanted to, most efficiently and smoothly.
This does not seem to falter even under heavy and extensive use, they added. It is a great deal, especially considering its level of performance offered at this specific price point.
Yes, the battery life of this machine is not so great, but they said they did not expect it either from a laptop that comes with the latest hardware and a large screen meant for gaming.
Some of the users however pointed out that the lack of a DVD player and enough I/O ports are a couple of things that they did not like about this system but otherwise they are quite happy with this fast and powerful machine.
It not only supports playing games, but also allows doing some video editing and professional jobs on it apart from the basic day-to-day computing tasks.
Providing a high value for their money, this is an efficient machine that can comprehensively deal with anything that is thrown at it, they said.
This is just an ‘ok’ sort of laptop, said those users who felt that it is not worth the money since it can support games much better if, and only if, these are played at moderate settings, which is not what is expected from a gaming laptop at this price.
However, they said that the 1080p display with a reasonable frame rate is just good enough but warned others not to expect miracles from it or from the system on the whole.
They also said a 16 GB or DDR4 RAM instead of 8 GB is the standard today, and this is supposed to be a modern gaming laptop!
Other Expert Views
This is a decent gaming laptop at this price point, feels IT Pro. However, it still has a lot to do to compete with the powerful gaming laptops out there. The CPU supports all computing tasks and the GPU powers most FHD games but all at moderate settings only.
The 512 SSD makes the system operate faster but the low amount of RAM holds it back in performance, feels NotebookCheck. However, the design of this system is sleek and very attractive and the screen is good enough in presenting most of the games.
Laptop Media however says that this device performs just as expected from its hardware. The i7 9750H packs more power and the GPU consumes less of it. This makes up for its average battery power and is good in terms of thermal management.
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