The Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 is a budget gaming laptop with respectable performance, courtesy of its RTX 3050 GPU, but its subpar display may deter some buyers. If you don’t care about the depth of your colours or the brightness of your screen, this is the appropriate laptop for you, especially if you’re content to play games at medium graphics settings.
Solid was the first adjective that sprang to mind as I picked up the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3. The mostly plastic laptop has dimensions of 14.16 x 10.49 x 0.86 inches (359.6 x 266.4 x 21.8 mm) and weighs 5.1 pounds. Comparatively, the Acer Nitro 5, MSI Sword 15, and HP Victus 15 weigh 5.51 pounds, 4.96 pounds, and 5.4 pounds, therefore Lenovo’s laptop is light but not the lightest. There is minimal chassis and lid flex if you are concerned about durability.
[content-egg-block template=offers_logo hide=price]Lenovo attempts to conceal the appearance of its roughly one-inch-thick chassis by tapering the bottom of the device near the front. With the exception of a little Lenovo branding on the right edge, the lid is unremarkable. A similar logo occupies the same location on the palm rest. Left and right exhaust ports flank the rear I/O ports (HDMI 2.0, Gigabit Ethernet, USB 3.2 Type-C, and a proprietary power port). Additionally, there are stylish blue highlights in the centre of each tailpipe that break up the monotonous “onyx” grey hue. The only other ports are a single USB 3.2 (Type-A) port on either side, joined by a 3.5 mm audio jack.
In the configuration we tested, the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 (15, 2022) had a Full HD 120Hz IPS panel with the product number LEN156FHD (BOE NV156FHM-NX1, BOE0A81). It has a diagonal of 15.6 inches (39.62 centimetres) with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. The screen ratio is 16:9, the pixel density is -142 ppi, and the pixel pitch is 0.18 h 0.18 mm. The screen becomes Retina when viewed from a distance equal to or more than 60 centimetres (24 inches) (at this distance, the eye loses distinguishing individual pixels, which is usual for viewing a laptop).
The speakers of the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 (15, 2022) are quite impressive. However, discrepancies exist over the entire frequency spectrum. Now, we run the battery tests with the Windows Better performance setting enabled, the screen brightness set to 120 nits, and all programmes disabled outside the one being used to test the notebook. This product includes a 45Wh battery pack. It provides 6 hours and 19 minutes of Internet browsing or 6 hours and 21 minutes of video playback.