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Lenovo’s IdeaPad Slim 7 is a showcase for AMD’s exceptional new processor
- hu3 6y ago> Those results were a game-changer. They’re miles better than I got running the same load on the HP Envy x360 (around eight hours), the Dell XPS 13 (seven and a half hours), the Asus Zephyrus G14 (almost nine hours), and even low-power stuff like Lenovo’s Chromebook Duet (11 and a half hours) for which battery life is a major selling point. I’ll be blunt — this is the longest battery life I’ve ever seen from a laptop. It’s astonishing.
- Cilvic 6y agoFor anyone else wondering about the battery life "over 11.5 hours" >Running through the multitasking load that I described earlier, in battery saver mode at 200 nits of brightness, the Slim 7 lasted 13 and a half hours. On the Better Battery profile, it lasted over 11 and a half hours. Remember: I was not going easy on this thing — you’ll certainly get even more juice if you’re just clicking around a tab or two.
- formerly_proven 6y agoIn the T440 or so models you could have three batteries (one internal, one regular, one ultrabay) in a Thinkpad for a claimed 30 hours or so battery life with two hot-swappable batteries... :)
- rsynnott 6y agoOne potential note of caution is that the screen may be a contributor to that good battery life.
- tomComb 6y ago> Lenovo’s Chromebook Duet (11 and a half hours) for which battery life is a major selling point. No it isn't. For that device, price ($300 with keyboard) is it's major selling point.
- Tade0 6y agoI have an ASUS G14 with an R7 4800HS and while nine hours are possible (at ~100% it shows exactly 10 hours), you'd have to set the brightness to a pretty low level and forget about doing anything challenging. But six hours with your IDE open, brightness at the default level for battery mode and compiling a Node.js + TypeScript project from time to time is something you can reasonably expect to be able to do. Currently, even though I have my charging set to max out at 80%, I don't look at the charge indicator too often because I know that I have a good few hours before it's time to plug in.
- rowanG077 6y agoAll of the ryzen laptops that exist have abysmal screens. I would have bought one if it weren't for this fact.
- q3k 6y agoVery happy with my T14 (AMD) IPS 1920x1080 display. Some might dislike that it's not High DPI, but personally that's not a feature I want.
- Grazester 6y ago250 to 500 nits. That is not very bright and this is the potential problem for me.
- bluedino 6y ago250 is not bright, but 500 sure is.
- q3k 6y agoI'm on 300 and it's definitely bright enough for my needs - so your mileage may vary.
- post_break 6y ago500 is a lie, since that panel has an extra layer for their stupid privacy guard.
- fomine3 6y agoMy ThinkPad E495 has 500nit FHD IPS display. It's enough for most place but it's not enough bright for very bright place. It's not looks like 500nit.
- rowanG077 6y agoFull HD for 14 inch display is not great. And unless you get the privacy guard screen it's also not a bright screen. Tbh I would jump to any high res oled 13 inch laptop almost instantly. Screen is one of the most important parts for me.
- notacoward 6y agoI have one. The US version "only" has a 4800U, but it was still an absolute steal at US$800. It's a nice size, feels solid, and lasts all day easily. I've used it all day more than once and not seen the battery go below 50% yet. Then again, I haven't really pushed it that hard. I'm sure if I played some games it would "only" last five or six hours. And no, I haven't had any issues with the screen. In fact I turn it down. If you're staring at a 500nit screen at full brightness all day, you're probably not doing your eyes any good. Unfortunately this model seems to be sold out or perhaps even discontinued (until the European 4900U version becomes available maybe). Meanwhile, the E14 Gen2 14 is very similar in both specs and price.
- formerly_proven 6y ago> If you're staring at a 500nit screen at full brightness all day, you're probably not doing your eyes any good. I'm kinda surprised how many people set their screens to 100 % brightness (300-400 nits for most screens) on their desktop. I find that blinding and very uncomfortable. That also seems to be a reason why people complain so much about IPS bleed and glow; using the screen near full brightness in a dark room for gaming or movies. Personally I find the "0 %" setting on some screens where that's around 50 nits too bright for that (ahem LG).
- chrismorgan 6y agoIt’s hard to change the brightness of desktop monitors. Bafflingly, Windows and macOS don’t support adjusting their brightness the way they do for laptops, despite the existence of DDC/CI to do just that, so you’re left using third-party software if you know about it, or interacting with the awful OSD/buttons on the screen, which you’ll hardly want to do all the time. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24316728 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24316728 is a recent comment chain about this stuff.
- formerly_proven 6y agoI dunno. The OSD on Dells is pretty simple. You press the topmost button twice, up/down to adjust, lowest button to save and exit. Since my office has windows, I've been doing this two to four times a day on most days for years. Doesn't bother me too much (it's pretty quick though because I largely only use the 0-40 range, which is about 20-120 nits). On my LG it's even quicker, push the joystick back, then forward/back to change, push in or timeout to save and exit. Some people say they'd like ambient light sensors, but I'm not sure I'd wanna use something like that. Sometimes I do find the changing brightnesses on mobile devices irritating. Changing this directly in the OS would be a better UX, though.
- niffydroid 6y agoI have a HP ENVY x360 15-ee0002na. I like it a lot. Battery is ok, screen even is ok and it has 16gbof ram Trying to find a Ryzen 4xxx with 16gb of ram in the UK is quite hard! Plenty of Intel's though, it's almost like Intel flooded the market or no one wants Intel
- ChuckNorris89 6y agoNo, it's the opposite, it's not a flood of intel device, it's a shortage of AMD devices. AMD had to prebook fab capacity at TSMC years in advance and didn't expect the shortages caused by the pandemic made worse by the WFH demand while Intel can make as many chips as it wants to fulfill market demand since it owns the fabs. It's a shame because the 4800U laptops are either sold out or going for huge markups right now.
- niffydroid 6y agoThat makes more sense. I wonder how long before they increase capacity
- jarym 6y agoSo Intel... Lost their lead in consumer desktop CPUs and said ‘oh we have mobile and server’ But now AMD prove that Intel’s lead in mobile has been squandered. And then the largest buyers of server grade stuff are cloud vendors who are waiting for ARM to come of age.
- lazylizard 6y agoepyc rome are cheap n good
- Dig1t 6y agoI don't really think cloud vendors are holding their breath to switch to ARM, they are all heavily invested in X86. All their code has been built on it for forever, and there's a big advantage to having your dev machines running the same architecture as your cloud production machines. I think desktop ARM adoption would have to happen before the server market moves to the same.
- jarym 6y agoDesktop and laptop vendors were heavily invested with Intel before now. Apple was heavily invested with Intel before now. Don’t underestimate what cloud vendors will do in pursuit of cost or efficiency - they are ruthless at both.
- solarkraft 6y ago> their code has been built on it for forever, and there's a big advantage to having your dev machines running the same architecture as your cloud production machines Is that really so? Are remote development and emulation not sufficiently advanced yet? Super hot paths might be x86 optimized, but how much does that really matter? I'd think at the scales of the big providers nothing matters more than performance/power use and performance/price.
- 8K832d7tNmiQ 6y agoThere’s still no real justification for vendors to even offer ARM instances, and instead become more clear to keep x86 instead with the rising of remote development and emulation.
- pachico 6y agoPitty the screen is so bad. I still don't understand the point for glossy screen, to be honest.
- ChuckNorris89 6y agoAren't MacBooks also glossy?
- NikolaNovak 6y agoYes; and it's a deal-breaker for some of us unfortunately :-/
- ezconnect 6y agoMy 2015 lost a bit of the gloss when it peeled off.
- noir_lord 6y agoTil they offer the fancy laser etching at a premium I guess.
- solarkraft 6y agoMatte screen protectors are cheap and look great.
- GordonS 6y ago... and are an absolute bastard to apply. Seriously, it's almost impossible to get all the air bubbles out. Also, "look great" is stretching it a bit - they tend to make things look slightly softer and desaturated.
- solarkraft 6y agoYou're right about the application, but when you're done you have a screen that is more robust and doesn't have an inset bezel. The desaturation and softness are (AFAIK) inherent to matte screen surfaces and the reason manufacturers nowadays tend to avoid them.
- ampdepolymerase 6y agoIt is a pity that a similarly specced ThinkPad would be at least a thousand dollars more expensive.
- iakov 6y agoA similarly specced ThinkPad or Latitude is built to last, has user-replaceable components and will not fall apart in 2 years after a warranty expires. From my experience you get what you pay for with those professional machines.
- greggyb 6y agoAnd a similarly specced Thinkpad will be perfectly usable if purchased in 2-3 years as they cycle out of enterprise fleets, and for a better price than the notebook in the article. Not a satisfying option for everyone, but a great one in my book.
- ford_o 6y agoWhere can you buy such thinkpad?
- godtoldmetodoit 6y agoebay has tons of that stuff.
- greggyb 6y agoThis site[0] is going a little out of date but has good info for several-generations old Thinkpads right now. As a sibling mentioned, Ebay is your friend. The other nice part about Thinkpads is that they are quite user serviceable and you can usually buy any part you need for reasonable prices. [0] https://www.bobble.tech/free-stuff/used-thinkpad-buyers-guide https://www.bobble.tech/free-stuff/used-thinkpad-buyers-guid...
- pianoben 6y agoThere's a subreddit for that: https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpadsforsale/ https://www.reddit.com/r/thinkpadsforsale/
- ZuLuuuuuu 6y agoFor people interested in ultrabooks with Ryzen 4800U processors, there is also another model, which for some reason doesn't get mentioned much, which is Lenovo S540 13ARE. It has a 13.3", QHD, 16:10 screen. I bought this laptop after buying a Lenovo Ideapad/Yoga Slim 7 and returning it (because of some QA issues and 14" was a bit too big for me after using XPS 13 for a long time). I made a small review of the laptop here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/ilcw5n/lenovo_ideapad_s540_13are_review_ryzen_4800u/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/ilcw5n/lenovo_ideap...
- sandGorgon 6y agoOh brilliant. Thanks for this. This is coming soon to India. Do you run Linux on this ? How's the performance. Would love it if you can test with a liveusb of fedora
- ZuLuuuuuu 6y agoI might try it, I'll let you know if I do under this topic.
- httpsterio 6y agoI have the previous model of the S540 with i7. Ubuntu, Pop_OS and Arch all work fine on it. I don't see why the Ryzen model wouldn't either.
- sandGorgon 6y agothat's basically the heart of it - its a different motherboard and CPU architecture and therefore a different bios. this is where things break
- ChuckNorris89 6y agoUnfortunately the machine is not available in Europe outside of the Netherlands for some reason. I tried calling a Dutch retailer to ask if they ship to Austria but couldn't even get pass the "Do you speak English please?" phase :( Like WTF, the EU single market is a thing since how many decades now?! So why the hell do we still have region specific SKUs of the same product with different parts and availability between EU member states?! Imagine the laptop would be available for sale in California but not in Utah and in California you can only get it with a 512 Samsung SSD and a 300nit display and in New York only with a slower 1TB SKHynix SSD and a 400 nit display! /rantover
- mushufasa 6y agoHow does it work with linux? My colleague got last year's x395 with the AMD 3000 series. It only lasts 3.5 hours battery with web browsing and moderate coding, whereas it's supposed to last ~7 hours real-world on windows.
- katmannthree 6y agoYou'll want to run a recent kernel, >=5.8 for a renoir chipset. I get maybe 75% of advertised battery life on my fedora rawhide install. Granted mine is an ideapad 5 with an amd 4500u but it's been terrific. There are a handful of bugs still but nothing that prevents productive work. The worst one is where turning down the backlight too fast kills the backlight entirely, but you can fix it by just bumping the brightness up key and then going back down to your target.
- 3np 6y agoI can’t speak for the new series, but I have a couple of Ryzen 3400G and I’m not sure if I got the iGPU working and being utilized 100% properly yet. The drivers are a huge mess of confusion (what goes into user space vs kernel? What do you really need? What even goes into host OS vs containers if you run Docker? What if anything can you actually get out of it without installing the proprietary non-free closed-source amdgpupro?), AGESA updates are needed to not have kernel modules crashes, oh and these updates are left up to mobo vendors, some of which are great, some of which will make you feel like you bought a lemon. And then there’s the whole mess with mesa that I think is just now resolved (20.1) and haven’t yet made it to LTS distros. I’m def not an Intel fan but man, 100% working intel drivers are an apt install away and I had both forgotten just what a PITA ATI was with Linux and couldn’t imagine AMD hasn’t stepped up the game at all. Unless anyone has anecdotal evidence otherwise, make sure you set aside a couple of working days to hunt down and compile the right kernel modules and make sure the vendor provides recent enough firmware and/or hav patience. In short, I wouldn’t hesitate having a new Ryzen for a headless server, or a desktop rig with a dGPU. For a smaller desktop, laptop, or anything else requiring use of the iGPU I would wait a year. Unless you’re one of the few people either already up to speed on all this or finding some absurd pleasure in learning about it, in which case I really do hope you post your process in a blog or forum where other users will find it through web searches.
- Havoc 6y agoJust ordered a Ryzen 4800U minipc for home server use. Think it might play in that role. Decent number of cores yet modest TDP seems like a good fit
- megak1d 6y agoI am on the look out for a replacement for my HP ProLiant home server with something that has this chip. What minipc did you go for?
- Havoc 6y agoAsus PN50. On pre-order (early oct) but I gather the Aussies already got theirs. If you do go that route google RAM carefully...there seem to be compatibility issues (JEDEC vs XMP). Also, I think the Ryzen 5 is probably better value ratio but wasn't available for buy so went for a 7. I believe Asrock is also gonna bring out similar stuff but don't know details.
- andymoe 6y agoI bought two for the kids and while they are fine and I’m happy with the value I still despise windows home edition (had to block one from my router during set up so I did not have to make a windows account for instance). I really really wish Apple would make a reversible 2 in 1. I can’t tell you how much of a better experience that form factor is for young kids. iPads are not a replacement for this.
- wongarsu 6y agoUpgrade keys for Windows 10 pro are cheap on eBay and are completely worth it.
- kristianp 6y agoAren't they unauthorized volume keys that are likely to fail activation?
- wongarsu 6y agoYes, they are volume keys. Check the legal situation in your jurisdiction before buying. I've had one out of about ten fail on activation. But they cost 1/40th of what Microsoft is charging, so I don't mind that.
- boogies 6y agoLinux Mint (Windows-like) is free and elementaryOS (macOS-like) is pay-what-you-want, $0 if you so desire (https://elementary.io/ https://elementary.io/). It takes less time to flash a drive and boot from it than to endure one Windows update on my desktop (although you can also get GNU preinstalled on fairly Thinkpad-comparible laptops from eg. “Laptop With Linux” https://elementary.io/store/#devices https://elementary.io/store/#devices, and Thinkpads themselves will likely ship with GNU soon — many Lenovo PCs are already certified for compatibility with multiple major distros).
- toastal 6y agoIf it wasn't for the GNOME lock-in, Pop_OS would be a great recommendation in the space for this sort of user
- wazoox 6y agoI have an IdeaPad S540 API. It's a Ryzen 3500U. It has 2 M.2 slots so you can had a second SSD if needed. I upgraded it to 32 GB and boy how this beast flies. And it's really cheap. Under Pop_OS with minor tweaks the battery lasts about 5 hours, which is pretty good for a Linux laptop. Think of turning of Wifi energy saving: Wifi speed went from 50Mbps to more than 300.
- ihattendorf 6y agoI've got basically the same machine as you as well (ThinkPad E495, 3700U, upgraded M.2 SSD, upgraded 32 GB ram) and while it's great, the 4000 series is a game changer. I really wish I could have waited but my old laptop had other plans.
- FullyFunctional 6y ago> Our reviews generally leave extensive synthetic benchmarking to others That left a really bad impression - I get that they are too lazy to actually measure the performance, but the snooty "synthetic" was uncalled for and frankly disrespectful to the people doing the work they are too lazy for.
- xioxox 6y agoI wonder if they've improved the screen hinges? I've given up on slim Lenovos as they had this weak metal bonded to plastic hinges which are easy to break through regular use. The screen snaps off the base and the case just gets bent and twisted. They seem very poorly designed and are hard to fix.
- closeparen 6y agoIdeaPads still shipping with a TLS intercept ad injection proxy? https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/02/20/the-lenovo-superfish-controversy-what-you-need-to-know/ https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/02/20/the-lenovo-super...
- toastal 6y agoOnly 80.4% DCI-P3 coverage and no Thunderbolt. These processors are great and OEMs could offer features users want, but they've still been offering only mid-range or gamer-oriented builds for everything else.