Buying any budget Chromebook is a matter of making trade-offs. If you spend £400 or less per laptop, you won't get the best screen, great performance, epic battery life and superior build quality. In fact, there's a good chance you won't get any of the above. With the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook, you can expect a solid overall spec, a better-than-average display, and more ruggedness than most of its rivals, but there are compromises you'll have to make elsewhere. In many ways, it's a thin, compact, and lightweight Chromebook ideal for life on the go, but if you're looking for high-end ergonomics or performance, it may not be the one for you.
Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14: Design
The clear priority with the design of the IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook was clearly to keep the size and weight as low as possible within a cost-effective, mostly plastic chassis. It measures just 324.4 x 216.2mm on the desktop and is 19.3mm tall at its thickest point. In use, it feels smaller than the average 14-inch laptop, particularly from front to back, and at 1.5kg it won't weigh down any bag or backpack.
It's finished in what Lenovo calls a metallic 'storm grey', but only the lid is aluminum, and the rest is a plastic that still feels very solid. There's barely any flex or flex anywhere on the body, with the only points of interest being the speaker grilles at the bottom, towards the front, and the vents behind the hinges and on the base towards the rear. It is virtually silent in operation and doesn't even make any significant noise when pressed with more demanding applications.
Connectivity is a bit disappointing. Instead of the usual pair of USB Type-C ports, we have a single USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type C on the left side, along with a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A on each side. The lack of 10Gbps connectivity for faster storage isn't as big of an issue on a Chromebook as it would be on a Windows laptop, but the single Type-C port will be out of commission whenever the IdeaPad Slim 3i is running. charging. Still, there is some trade-off in the HDMI 1.4 output, not to mention wireless connectivity. With Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.1, it's one area where the IdeaPad Slim 3i is very up to date.
There's a price to pay for this Chromebook's compact size, and that's the touchpad. Measuring just 10.5 x 6.2cm, it doesn't offer much room to move around, although it is sensitive enough to be usable and the click mechanism works well. The keyboard, for its part, will be a matter of taste. The layout makes the most of the horizontal space and there's a decent amount of travel, but I found the action strangely inconsistent, with some keys tighter and a little more clicky than others. However, once again, there are plus points; Backlit keys don't come standard on all Chromebooks for this amount of money.
It's worth noting that the IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 is sold as a standard Chromebook and Chromebook Plus model. If you find the latter at a similar price, it's worth purchasing just for the additional features and benefits of the Chromebook Plus, although the base version should be eligible for a Chromebook Plus upgrade. We say it should, because our test model hasn't been updated several months after the Chromebook Plus launched, despite appearing on Google's eligibility list.
Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14: Display
The display is another area where the Chromebook Slim 3i exceeds expectations. Lenovo claims to have a maximum brightness of 300 cd/m2, but in testing it hit 329 cd/m2. And while its color palette won't give any serious competition to a MacBook Air or Microsoft Surface Pro, with sRGB coverage of just 61%, image quality looks, subjectively, pretty good. Whether browsing the web, streaming video, or working in productivity apps, it doesn't feel like a second-rate display, just one you wouldn't want to use for serious image or video editing work.
The audio isn't bad either. If you anticipate deep bass and a wide soundstage, you'll be disappointed, but the MaxxAudio-branded sound system is perfectly acceptable at low volumes for background music, video streaming, voice chats, and Google Meet or Teams meetings. and the same goes for the built-in microphone array. Details from the 1080p webcam could be sharper, but images look well exposed even in mixed or artificial lighting, and the built-in privacy shutter is an added bonus.
Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14: Performance
The IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook uses one of the more unusual CPUs in Intel's current lineup, the Alder-Lake Core i3 N305. Unlike other Core i3 processors, it's an eight-core CPU, but those eight cores are all efficient cores rather than the performance cores you'd see in even the base Core i3-1305U. Those cores will reach speeds of up to 3.8 GHz with a TDP of 15 W, but you still won't get the same performance you might expect from other Core i3 processors. The N305 works more like a supercharged Pentium Gold.
You can see this reflected in our benchmark results. In Geekbench 6 and the browser-based Jetstream and Basemark benchmarks, the IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 falls behind the Acer Chromebook Plus 514, with its quad-core Ryzen 7 7320C CPU, and is even further behind the Asus Chromebook Plus CX34 with its Core i3-1215U. In Geekbench 6, it scores 913 in single-core tests and 2849 in multi-core tests. The Chromebook Plus 514 scores 1169 and 3571, while the Chromebook Plus CX34 scores 1791 and 5172. The difference is even more pronounced in graphically demanding benchmark tests. While the Chromebook Plus 514 scores 938.08 on the Basemark 3.0 web test, the IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 scores just 859.62.
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This should have some impact on your decision if you plan to run a lot of Android or Linux apps on your Chromebook, but it's not a deal-breaker if you primarily use web-based apps. With 8GB of RAM as backup, the N305 is perfectly capable of handling a couple of browser windows with a dozen tabs open in each, or running all your Google Workspace productivity apps in separate windows and cutting and pasting text and images between them. . It's slower than the more powerful Chromebook Plus Chromebooks, but it doesn't really feel slow.
An advantage of having a lower-performance but more energy-efficient CPU is longer battery life. When looping 1080p video with the screen brightness set to 170 cd/m2, the IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 continued to run for 11 hours and 37 minutes before running out of power, outperforming the Acer Chromebook Plus 514 by nearly three hours and the Asus. Chromebook Plus CX34 for even more. You can comfortably finish a day of work without having to pick up the charger.
Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14: Is it worth it?
The IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 will make a lot of sense for some cost-conscious buyers. It's small, lightweight, and very portable, and the screen, wireless connectivity, audio, and battery life are far beyond most Chromebooks you'll find for this kind of money. The ergonomics aren't top-notch, but not in any way that seriously hinders usability, and the performance will be good enough for most practical scenarios.
If you're looking for a primary device for a small business or a specific user, you might want something with a larger screen, a better keyboard, and more power available, something like the Acer Chromebook Plus 515, the Chromebook Vibe CX3401 Flex. or if budget allows, the Acer Chromebook Spin 714, but as a secondary device to use while you're out and about, the IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 offers plenty of value.
Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3i Chromebook 14 Specifications
| Processor | Intel Core i3 N305 |
| Show | 14 inches, 16:9, 1920 x 1080 |
| RAM | 8GB |
| Ports | 1x USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type C, 1x USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type A, 1x HDMI 1.4, 3.5mm audio Connectivity Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5 |
