Lenovo IdeaPad 520 Review – Fast, affordable laptop with small battery
Lenovo’s IdeaPad 520 is an affordable 15.6″ laptop that performs well and has a screen with a high contrast. The quality of the housing is reasonable and a plus is the possibility to place an extra HDD or SSD. The biggest disadvantage is the battery life, which is moderate because Lenovo has used a battery with a low capacity. You can browse or watch movies on the battery for about five hours. A separate video card is missing in this version, but for fifty euros more there is a model with GeForce MX150 GPU.
Pros
- Processor performs well
- Matte screen with high contrast
- Storage is expandable
Cons
- Moderate battery life
- Touchpad does not feel sturdy
Laptops have become a lot faster since the end of last year thanks to the arrival of Intel’s energy-efficient Kaby Lake-R quadcores. The Core i5-8250U in particular is on the rise and is pushing the previous generation of dual cores off the scene. More and more affordable models are also equipped with such a quadcore. The Lenovo IdeaPad 520 is one such model. For seven hundred euros you get a laptop with the Core i5-8250U processor, 8GB of ram and a 256GB SSD. In addition, the screen has an IPS panel. On paper, that makes it a fast laptop without major drawbacks. In this review we look at whether that is also the case in practice.
Casing and connections
With its gray housing, the IdeaPad 520 looks modest. The whole looks neatly finished and makes a pretty solid impression. The lid is made of metal, just like the plate around the keyboard, where your wrists rest. The bottom of the laptop is made of plastic, but it feels solid. If you exert pressure on the housing around the keyboard, it will spring back a bit, but this is not disturbing during normal use. The screen feels quite sturdy.
You will find all connections on the left. If you have a lot of peripherals connected, it could be inconvenient if you use a separate mouse next to the laptop with your left hand. There is room for an optical drive on the right, but Lenovo has not built it into this model.
The IdeaPad 520 is quite complete in terms of connectivity options. You get a gigabit Ethernet port, an HDMI 1.4 connection, two USB 3.0 ports with type-A connectors, and an SD card reader. There is also a USB-C port, but it does not offer any additional functionality compared to the other USB ports. For example, you cannot charge the laptop with a USB-C charger and it is not possible to connect screens via an adapter or hub.
Keyboard and touchpad
Lenovo opts for a keyboard with a numerical part in the IdeaPad 520. As a result, the keys are not much larger than those on a 13.3″ laptop. They are pleasantly shaped and provide clear feedback, with a reasonable amount of travel. There are laptops with a better keyboard, but we find this one more than sufficient.
We are less pleased with the touchpad, a copy of Synaptics. When you click on it, it seems to be a bit loose in the housing and that feels cheap. However, the touchpad is smooth and moving the mouse cursor over the screen is therefore smooth. Multitouch gestures are also well supported in Windows 10.
Hardware and Benchmarks
The IdeaPad 520 offers value for money when it comes to hardware. The combination of a quad-core CPU, 8GB of ram, a 256GB SSD and an IPS screen is very neat. Lenovo has cut back on the WiFi module, which is a Realtek 8821CE 802.11ac and which is not known for its high speeds.
| Lenovo IdeaPad 720S-13ARR 81BR0028MH | |
|---|---|
| Processor | Intel Core i5-8250U |
| cores/threads | 4/8 |
| Clock frequency (turbo) | 1.6GHz (3.4GHz) |
| GPU | Intel UHD 620 |
| Random access memory | 8GB DDR4-2400, dual channel |
| Storage | SK Hynix SC308 256GB SATA SSD |
| Wi-Fi | Realtek 8821CE 802.11ac |
| Screen | 15.6″, ips, 1920×1080 pixels |
| Screen panel | BOE NV156FHM-N42, matte |
| Operating system | Windows 10 Home |
| Dimensions | 378x260x22mm |
| Weight | 1970 grams |
If you want to view the inside, you have to remove the entire bottom of the laptop. You can loosen it by removing thirteen screws. On the inside we see some striking things; Lenovo uses a 2.5″ SSD, which takes up quite a bit of space, and the battery is very small.
The large, empty area at the top left is where an optical drive can be placed. A SATA connector is already running to it and it is actually connected to the motherboard. It is therefore possible to install an optical drive yourself, but with the help of a bracket you could also easily add an extra HDD or SSD.
Lenovo has installed one 4GB memory stick, but an additional 4GB of DDR4-2400 has been soldered to the motherboard, bringing the total to 8GB in a dual-channel configuration. Those who want to expand the memory must replace the 4GB strip with a larger one.
The SSD in our test sample of the IdeaPad 520 is an SK Hynix SC308 with a capacity of 256GB. We recently also encountered this in laptops from Acer in the same price segment. It doesn’t excel in benchmarks, but the speed is fine for making the laptop feel fast in use.
The Core i5-8250U is a smooth processor on paper, but the performance depends very much on how the manufacturer has set it up. Lenovo did a good job with this IdeaPad 520, because the CPU can do its job smoothly. This is especially apparent from our practical benchmarks in Lightroom and Photoshop, in which the Lenovo scores well.
In addition, the laptop has virtually no problems with throttling . We tested this by letting the laptop repeat the rendering of an object in Blender for half an hour. The first run was done in 73 seconds and after half an hour rendering took 75 seconds. The speed hardly decreases if you use the laptop for a long time.
Screen and battery life
The 15.6″ panel in the IdeaPad 520 has a resolution of 1920×1080 pixels and a matte finish. As a result, you will not be bothered by reflections. The panel used by the Chinese manufacturer BOE has IPS properties, which means that the viewing angles are also excellent. We put our SpectraCal C6 colorimeter on the screen and took measurements with the CalMAN 5 software to see how good the panel actually is.
Compared to more expensive laptops, it is noticeable that the saturation of the colors is a lot less. This can also be seen when measuring the primary colors: red and blue have a considerable deviation and lack saturation. Despite that, the screen is a lot better than the TN panels that we still see a lot in laptops around this price range.
The contrast of the IdeaPad 520 is excellent, in that respect the screen is not inferior to that of much more expensive laptops. The maximum brightness is on the low side and falls short to comfortably read the screen in direct sunlight.
Laptops with Intel U-series processors generally do very well in our battery tests, but this one disappoints. The cause lies in the battery, which at 35 watt hours has a much lower capacity than what we usually find in 15.6″ laptops. This reduction is also clearly visible in the results; a battery life of about five hours during the browsing or watching movies is mediocre.
In the PCMark 8 battery test, which simulates somewhat heavier workloads, including video editing, the battery drains very quickly. However, the IdeaPad also gets a very high score in this test, which means that the processor worked hard during the tests.
Conclusion
Lenovo offers value for money with the IdeaPad 520. The Core i5-8250U performs well, and due to the presence of 8GB of ram and a 256GB SSD, there are no bottlenecks that slow down the laptop. The build quality is very decent, although you notice from the sturdiness of the housing that this is not a top model. For example, it springs in a bit when you press the area around the keyboard. The screen is quite sturdy and has a metal lid. The construction of the touchpad is also not optimal, but feels a bit loose when you click on it.
The biggest flaw of the IdeaPad 520 is the battery life. You can use it to browse or watch movies for about five hours, after which it has to be plugged in. That’s a mediocre score, as many laptops with comparable hardware last up to twice as long in these tests. Lenovo has saved on the battery by placing a small one with a low capacity of 35Wh. However, with its 15.6″ size and weight of about 2kg, the IdeaPad 520 is probably not a model that you buy to use a lot on the road. If you mainly want to use the laptop indoors, the battery life is not a big problem.
Many laptops in this price segment have a TN panel with poor viewing angles. The IdeaPad 520 has an ips properties panel. That gives a nice image, although the color saturation is on the low side and the maximum brightness is also disappointing. The contrast is good and compared to cheap TN panels, the screen is much better.
The $700 version we tested doesn’t have a graphics card. If you want to play a game now and then, the variant with GeForce MX150 GPU is an interesting alternative. You can find them for an additional price of about fifty euros at online stores.
At the time of writing, there is also a version with a 128GB SSD, 1TB HDD, and MX150 GPU for 699 euros in Lenovo’s own web store , which is a very competitive offer. However, this is a model that is limited in stock and can therefore be sold out quickly.
Each store has its own model
When we review a laptop, we prefer to choose models that are available in different stores. That gives some certainty about the availability. After all, it would be a shame to publish a review of a laptop that is no longer for sale shortly after publication.
Shops and manufacturers, however, have other interests. Large stores close deals and get an ‘exclusive’ model, which is only available at that particular store. That makes it difficult for consumers to compare, the Consumers’ Association noted at the beginning of this year .
The Lenovo IdeaPad 520 is a clear example of this. The model we tested is only available from Coolblue and has a 256GB SSD.
MediaMarkt sells a copy with a 128GB SSD and a 1TB HDD. Coolblue has no less than three exclusive models: variants with SSDs of 128, 256 and 512GB. There is no hdd in these models. We find another configuration at Max ICT and Central Point. At these stores you get a version with a 256GB SSD and Nvidia MX150 GPU for about 750 euros.
If you put all these models next to each other and know where to find them, you as a consumer have quite a few to choose from. Although this review is about the 256GB model from Coolblue, the opinion largely also applies to the variants that are for sale at the other stores. The laptops all have the same chassis, screen and processor. You can let your choice further depend on your preference for storage, the presence of a GPU and the price.