The Lenovo IdeaPad L340 (15) Gaming Notebook is no gaming powerhouse. But, with a starting price of $875, which is its biggest plus, it offers decent gaming performance. Our review unit had an Intel Core i5-9300H processor, 8GB of RAM, and 4GB of GDDR5 graphics memory with a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650. This is not the only configuration in the series.

You’ll see us regularly comparing this device to the Asus ROG Zephyrus G GA502DU and the HP Omen 15-dc1020ng during this review as they are similar devices at almost the same price range.

Technical Specifications                    

Processor	Intel Core i5-9300H (2.40GHz, up to 4.10GHz with Turbo Boost, 4 cores, 8MB Cache)
Operating System	Windows 10 Home 64
Memory	8GB DDR4 2400MHz SoDIMM
Hard Drive	128GB Solid State Drive, M.2, PCIe-NVME
Display Type	15.6″ FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS, 250 nits, anti-glare
Graphics	NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 3GB
Warranty	Ideapad 1 Year Mail-in
Camera	720p HD camera with dual microphones
Keyboard	Backlit Keyboard – US English
Wireless	802.11 AC (1 x 1) & Bluetooth® 4.2
Link	https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/laptops/ideapad/ideapad-300-series/IdeaPad-L340-15IRH-Gaming

Review

Case – A decent looking Gaming Laptop

The Lenovo IdeaPad L340 (15) Gaming Notebook has a plastic casing with a brushed metal look. The finish is smooth and the edges and corners are well built. The lid can be opened up to an angle of 180° with just one hand due to the weight distribution in the base. The only downside we observed was that the top lid was a fingerprint magnet.

Starting at 4.8 lbs (2.2 kg), this device is one of the lightest devices we have reviewed. However, the dimensions are quite regular at 14.3″ x 10.0″ x 0.9″ (363 x 254.6 x 23.9 mm) putting it in between the two comparison devices.

Connectivity and Communication

In terms of connectivity, the following are available:

1. DC power jack                                                        2. RJ45

3. HDMI 2.0                                                                 4. USB 3.1 (Gen.1)

5. USB 3.1 (Gen.1)                                                     6. Headphone / mic combo

7. USB Type-C                                                           

While this is the bare minimum, some of the downsides we saw are the lack of a thunderbolt port, card-reader, charging on the USB-C port and the fact that all the ports are on the same side, making them cramped together.

Standard connectivity options are available with up to 802.11 AC (2 x 2) and Bluetooth® 4.2 giving it moderate transfer rates of 290 Mb/s for receiving data and 309 Mb/s.

Accessories

The Lenovo IdeaPad L340 (15) comes with just the standard 135W AC adapter and quick start guide. Other accessories such as a USB-C dock, carrying bags and other input devices can be purchased separately.

Maintenance

The internals of this device can be easily reached by removing the screws on the base plate. There is ample access to reach the memory slots, storage, and fans. The only disadvantage we noticed was that the 8GB of memory was built-in.

Warranty

Lenovo provides an “Ideapad 1 Year Mail-in” warranty for this device.

Input Devices

Keyboard

This device sports a back-lit full range keyboard and offers great typing experience with short travel. The keys, however, feel relatively stiff. The up and down arrow keys are quite small and that was one of the few problems we found.

Touchpad

We weren’t too pleased with the touchpad. It fit loosely in its frame and provided quite less resistance. Clicking was also very much limited to the bottom of the touchpad, which makes navigating with the pointer not so pleasing.

Display

The Lenovo IdeaPad L340 (15) comes with a 15.6″ FHD (1920 x 1080) IPS anti-glare panel and was able to output close to 250 nits of brightness in our tests.

The display only shows some signs of flickering at very low brightness levels of 20% and high frequencies of 25,910 Hz. So this should not affect even users with sensitive eyes. The display has good color separation and deep black tones of 0.18 d/m², with a contrast ratio of 1528:1.

Performance

Processor

Our review unit with the Intel Core i5-9300H offers moderate to good performance for gaming. Despite being able to play most modern games, you will need to use moderate graphics settings.

You are restricted to a Nvidia GeForce GTX 1650, however, the processor, storage and memory are adjustable up to a 9th Gen Intel® Core™ i7-9750H, a 1TB SSD and 16GB of RAM respectively.

The PCMark 10 “Digital Content Creation” single value shows a rather low value for this device. However other configurations in the series fared much better.

Storage

The SSD storage is definitely a level-up over conventional HDDs and gives a good boost for gaming. However, the limited capacity of 128GB that this review model has is a big restriction especially for installing multiple large games. Higher configurations can help with this, or use a cloud storage service.

Graphics Card

The default graphics configuration of the Lenovo IdeaPad L340 (15) is a NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050 with 3GB of GDDR5 Memory. While this offers moderate performance, the 4GB upgrade provides significant improvements in graphics performance, albeit at a slight loss of battery performance, of approximately 14%.

While this graphics card allowed to run even modern games at Full HD resolution, it was observed that it was unable to exceed the 30FPS mark even in tests with older titles such as “Witcher 3” at the highest graphics settings. It has to be noted that the endurance of graphics performance was quite good during our long-duration tests.

Temperature and Fan Noise

During our tests, the L340 reached surface temperatures of up to 27.9 °C (~82 °F) in idle and up to 58.1 °C (~137 °F) under load, with the warmest point located at the bottom left, near the power connector. This made using the device difficult, especially on the lap.

During a stress test of close to an hour, core temperatures of the CPU rose up to approximately 82 °C (~178 °F), with power consumption reaching 124 watts, indicating the use of the CPU’s maximum TDP of 45 watts. This however settled quite quickly bringing the CPU down to its idle setting of 15 watts.

Fan sound was also noticed to a certain extent during the stress test at approximately 40.2 dB(A). However, noise levels were quite acceptable during normal usage.

Speakers

The speakers offer balanced sound, but at a low volume and without considerable bass. They are usable in quiet environments, but headsets or external speakers are recommended via the 3.5 mm audio jack.

Battery Life and Energy Consumption

In our tests, the power consumption of the L340 ranged from 3.8 watts to its highest value of 124 watts. These values are still quite economical when compared with similar devices. The performance was not affected as the power supply provides an output of up to 135 watts making it more than capable.

On battery power, usage of around 7 hours was seen with moderate usage, despite Lenovo’s promise of 9.5 hours. These figures are not unusual in this range and were on par with our other comparison devices. The 45 Wh battery took a little over 2 hours to reach a full charge as specified by Lenovo.

Conclusion

From our tests, the Lenovo IdeaPad L340 (15) is quite decent. Despite the budget pricing, users will be able to play most games, although at moderate settings.

A decent looking case, a good display with bright colors and deep blacks, low emissions, efficient performance, and convenient maintenance this device is quite promising.

There are however some minor drawbacks that users will have to compromise on. Some of them are the moderate graphics performance, limitations on storage, the built-in RAM and the mediocre track-pad are some of them.

Take a good look at the Lenovo IdeaPad L340 Here