I bought the Lenovo IdeaPad slim 5 laptop with the intel core ultra 5 processor and integrated arc graphics with oled display. This is a brief review of it after using it for one week.

Display- 1900×1200 oled panel with 400nits brightness. This display is a treat to watch content on. Having an oled display is a major criteria for me since I watch a lot of content and I absolutely love the deep blacks and HDR support in it. It's 100% srgb as well. Absolutely incredible display-10/10.

Speakers- Decent upward facing speakers, no issues indoors. Definitely could have been better for the price. 7/10.

Battery life - Coming from a macbook air, I expected the battery life to be average, no big expectations as such. It gives about 7-8 hrs on light normal use with 50% brightness. Battery drops about 30% on 30-40 mins of gaming. Fast charging support makes it even better. Pleasantly surprised with decent battery life. 8/10.

Looks, feel and build quality - Full metal body looks sleek and great to hold. Keyboard is good with decent travel and backlight. Trackpad is of a good size and pleasant to use. Weighs about 1.5kg and doesn't feel heavy to carry at all. And yes, opening the lid of the laptop with one hand is seamless. 10/10.

Software experience and AI - Windows 11 is seamless, has no fingerprint which is a minus but the windows hello feature makes up for it. It's fast and secure. No lag as of now. MS office is included. Comes with a dedicated Copilot feature that I don't use as of now, but it's there if you want it. Summarising web pages, PDFs, planning schedules, writing documents, searching for stuff, creating ai images, it does all this with ease. Will be exploring AI and Copilot more as I use it. Software experience is good. Had a lot of trouble connecting my phone using your Phone app. It took a few tries to pairbmy phone to the laptop. Even then file transfer isn't as seamless as airdrop which is probably the only thing that I miss from the apple ecosystem. Web cam is decent and usable. Overall software experience is decent- 9/10.

Gaming- This laptop has no dedicated graphics card. Can it game? Yes. Did it surprise me? Absolutely. The new core ultra 5 with arc graphics is doing some magic here. This laptop came with a free 3 month game pass subscription. I thought it was a joke, but let me tell you, this laptop can game. Now don't expect to max out frame rates in elder ring or any game for that matter but, the laptop gives a decent gaming experience and I recommend it for beginners. I played resident evil 3 on uktra settings which gave 60fps, tomb raider 13 gave 60 fps on ultra settings, plague tale requiem gave 30-40 fps on quality all games set to 1900×1200 resolution. By no means this is a gaming laptop. But the thermals are decent, frame rates are okayish for some games and good for older games, comes with 3 month game pass, 1TB ssd. 60hz RR is a downside for gaming. To summarise, you can game as a hobby once in a while, but if you're a serious gamer looking for a gaming laptop this obviously isn't for you. I'm just happy it games at all. 6/10 for proper gamers, 8/10 for casual beginners.

I got this laptop for 75k INR, and for that money, I am really happy with it. Oled screen was an absolute necessity for me and I wanted something that can game casually. AI is good to have for future use.

I do agree that this laptop has a very particular use case that may not appeal to the masses, but this was a good compromise for me. Let me know if this review helps to make a buying decision for you, I know buying a laptop is extremely difficult given the options available.

Even though the ideapad 3 is offering i7 I feel like the other hardware is too old for the laptop to be used for next 7-8 years, what other lenovo options can I look into for a CS major ? under the budget of 65000rs/ 770$.