Lenovo IdeaPad 330 Laptop Review

Lenovo IdeaPad 330 Laptop Review

Welcome to a Laptop Battery specialist of the Lenovo Laptop Battery

When I'm looking to be productive, more screen real estate is a necessity. Bigger screens lets me have multiple windows in view at once, or pin different applications to the screen corners. While I can get by on a 12-inch screen, I adore 15- and 17-inchers.

While strolling through Best Buy a week ago, I saw a compelling 17-inch laptop from Lenovo: the Ideapad 330 with battery such as Lenovo 0A36305 Battery, Lenovo 45N1018 Battery, Lenovo 45N1019 Battery, Lenovo ThinkPad X220 Battery, Lenovo ThinkPad X220i Battery, Lenovo ThinkPad X230 Battery, Lenovo ThinkPad X230i Battery, Lenovo ThinkPad X230s Battery, Lenovo 01AV422 Battery, Lenovo 01AV425 Battery, Lenovo ThinkPad T560 Battery, Lenovo 01AV427 Battery. After playing on the display model laptop a bit, I decided to take the plunge and purchase the laptop myself.

This model has an 8th Gen Intel Core i5-8250U processor (CPU); 8GB of DDR4 RAM; a 1TB, 5400 RPM Hard Disk Drive (HDD); and a 17-inch, 720p display. After using the stock configuration, I swapped in a 512gb SATA 3 Solid State Drive (SSD) and installed a clean version of Windows from a USB drive.

This laptop is built entirely out of plastic, to keep both the weight and the cost down. But it isn't cheap-feeling, and it won't scratch easily. It's also well balanced: it's not a huge strain to briefly use it one-handed, with the bottom of the laptop resting on my forearm. It's also not awful to carry in a backpack.

Besides the size, performance is the main appeal of this laptop. For only $530, you're getting the same processor that's in the $1,200 ThinkPad T470. You're also getting 8GB of RAM, more than enough to keep up with most use cases.

What doesn't keep up with most use cases is the 5400 RPM hard drive. I'm not sure why Lenovo decided to pair this great CPU and RAM with such slow storage, but the product is worse for it.

The display is just OK. It's a 720p panel with decent colors and viewing angles.

Another bad mark is the battery. Even with a full charge and up to date BIOS and power management drivers, I could only squeeze about three and a half hours of work from the laptop. That's just writing up Google Docs documents inside Microsoft Edge, with a couple other Edge tabs open for research. I had the screen brightness at 75 percent,, which is the minimum you'll want to use it at. This is also a 720p panel, so the GPU isn't working nearly as hard as it could be. Simply put, the default battery is too small. If you're going to use this laptop, be prepared to bring the charger with you wherever you go.

Out of the box, this laptop is pretty terrible to use because of the slow HDD and low battery life. However, it's an inexpensive way to get great performance, if you don't mind installing an SSD and maybe a larger battery if they become available.

Working on such a large screen is a joy, and it performs better than anything else at this price point once you swap the hard drive out. There are plenty of ports, but not being able to use the USB-C port for charging or display-out is what's going to cause me to return this laptop.