I just purchased this off of Lenovo's site. $799 for this model, when you add to the cart, an additional $40 off discount (HOLIDAYSURPRISE) is applied for a total of $759.00.
I added an additional 2 year Premium Care warranty, ($48) as well as 2 year Accidental Damage Protection Add On ($26). That made for a grand total of $897.89.
I then went to Amazon and purchased two sticks of Crucial RAM 16GB DDR5 4800MHz CL40 Laptop Memory CT16G48C40S5 (onsale for $58 a piece today) to bump up the RAM to 32GB. Not too shabby for ~$1000!
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/la...e.com%252F
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IdeaPad 5i Pro
PSREF: IdeaPad 3 [lenovo.com]
PSREF: IdeaPad 5i Pro [lenovo.com]
The Best Laptop for the Money: IdeaPad 5 Pro [youtube.com]
IdeaPad 5i Pro
PSREF: IdeaPad 3 [lenovo.com]
PSREF: IdeaPad 5i Pro [lenovo.com]
The Best Laptop for the Money: IdeaPad 5 Pro [youtube.com]
Just want to say that I totally respect your opinion. I just want to make sure prospective buyers of the IdeaPad 5i Pro linked here do some research on the Intel Arc A370m graphics in included in the machine.
Drivers and software needed some more time on the oven. Newer and more popular titles are still being optimized on a title by title basis and native Direct3D 9 is not supported. Instead it is done in an emulation later. Basically all of that means that your favorite titles may or may not perform the way you expect them to. There will be more ups and downs compared with Nvidia or AMD mostly because of those companies years and years of driver optimizations.
One last note. This is only a rumor at this point, but whispers are that Intel has either cancelled the Arc line or is at least discussing it internally. It would be a bummer to lose another possible competitor in the GPU market, but the possibility of that happening should be at least known. Make sure you are comfortable being an early adopter with all the risks therein.
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Drivers and software needed some more time on the oven. Newer and more popular titles are still being optimized on a title by title basis and native Direct3D 9 is not supported. Instead it is done in an emulation later. Basically all of that means that your favorite titles may or may not perform the way you expect them to. There will be more ups and downs compared with Nvidia or AMD mostly because of those companies years and years of driver optimizations.
One last note. This is only a rumor at this point, but whispers are that Intel has either cancelled the Arc line or is at least discussing it internally. It would be a bummer to lose another possible competitor in the GPU market, but the possibility of that happening should be at least known. Make sure you are comfortable being an early adopter with all the risks therein.
The important issue is that if anyone wants to game at a decent serious level, they should be considering at minimum 3060+ level performance. It well established going to 3060 is a HUGE jump over 3050. In fact many people on here were returning 6800H/3060 for 5800H/3070 just because it was graphics performance that was more important to gaming than the CPU.
On a side note, I had a chance to go to Best Buy before my IdeaPad 5i Pro had arrived. I wanted to check out the build, assuming that the IdeaPad 3 build would be similar to IdeaPad 5i. Lenovo has so many levels of laptops, I was thinking IdeaPad were their low end and that the Slim than Legion than Legion Pro were their ascending higher end trims. I was not very happy with the bulky, plastic-y look of the IdeaPad 3. It definitely felt like it was priced at that lower tier level. I am absolutely stunned at the quality of the IdeaPad 5i Pro. It has almost entirely metallic, brushed metal (aluminum ?) casing. Only the underbelly is plastic. It feels really premium. My current 2 laptops, Dell XPS 15" 9570 and ThinkPad X1 14" Carbon Gen 8, feel on par or less than the IdeaPad 5i Pro.
The 2560x1600 16" 350 nits screen is a big jump over my prior ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 8 1920x1600 14" 400 nits screen. Just Josh had mentioned that the extra resolution and screen size allows the most Excel columns to be displayed. The extra size also allows for full size numpad and full size arrow keys. I'm typing right now lying in bed and can definitely say the typing experience is better than the ThinkPad keyboard. The ThinkPad chiclet arrow keys were absolutely a pain to type with. It did not have a numpad. ThinkPad regular keys were better shaped, that classic slight slope in each key but IdeaPad's key size are nice and I've used the arrow pads multiple times to quickly update typing mistakes just like my desktop full size keyboard ie I can type nearly as fast.
Now there is a cost, the ThinkPad ridiculous 2.4lb was a joy to carry around. IdeaPad 5i Pro's is 4.3lb, in comparison feels SO much heavier but at least it's not 5.5lb like the IdeaPad 3 or the Legion non-Slim laptops. 5.5lb may have been a deal breaker.
So far the heavier weight disadvantage is outweighed by the bigger screen, higher resolution, as well as the increased productivity with the better keyboard. It's really just like what Just Josh said, the best value creator laptop.
IdeaPad 5i Pro
PSREF: IdeaPad 3 [lenovo.com]
PSREF: IdeaPad 5i Pro [lenovo.com]
The Best Laptop for the Money: IdeaPad 5 Pro [youtube.com]
However upon receiving my order, I realize it's different tools for different tasks. I am giving up a lighter model, nicer screen and metal casing for having 32GB RAM, which I'll use as a developer. It can expand to 64GB and has room for an extra SSD drive as well.
While lesser resolution, the 1920x1200/350nits is super bright even for my old eyes. Also want to call out that the battery is massive and I'm happy with the Ryzen over the Intel for power consumption sake. And also think Nvidia GPU and integrated Radeon graphics are better overall, but depends upon your use case.
It's nice that there are two models here that are compelling at this price point. I want to let people know I'm still very happy with Ideapad Gaming 3 model and call out the differences.
Finally, even though it's plastic, I'm very pleased with the case and overall build quality. It's super quiet too, but I haven't really pressed it's limits yet. I am coming from a 16" Macbook Pro (2019) so I had high standards coming in.
However upon receiving my order, I realize it's different tools for different tasks. I am giving up a lighter model, nicer screen and metal casing for having 32GB RAM, which I'll use as a developer. It can expand to 64GB and has room for an extra SSD drive as well.
While lesser resolution, the 1920x1200/350nits is super bright even for my old eyes. Also want to call out that the battery is massive and I'm happy with the Ryzen over the Intel for power consumption sake. And also think Nvidia GPU and integrated Radeon graphics are better overall, but depends upon your use case.
It's nice that there are two models here that are compelling at this price point. I want to let people know I'm still very happy with Ideapad Gaming 3 model and call out the differences.
Finally, even though it's plastic, I'm very pleased with the case and overall build quality. It's super quiet too, but I haven't really pressed it's limits yet. I am coming from a 16" Macbook Pro (2019) so I had high standards coming in.
As a fellow developer, more memory can be a useful perhaps even a must for certain things but for me, the 16" 2560x1600 screen really feels like I have my desktop monitor with me when I'm traveling.