Today, Lenovo is introducing the IdeaPad 5G, its latest Windows on ARM laptop. Last year, the firm introduced the Yoga 5G, and while it was nice, most reviewers criticized it for being too pricey for what added up to mid-range hardware. Now, Lenovo is actually branding the IdeaPad 5G as mid-range hardware (it would be called Yoga Slim if it was considered premium, the company confirmed), and it's leaving out some features.
Most notably, this is a clamshell laptop instead of a convertible. But also, and the thing that will really lower the price, the IdeaPad 5G only supports sub-6GHz 5G. That means that you won't get the multi-gigabit speeds offered by mmWave, but as we know, mmWave isn't tremendously useful anyway, as it doesn't even work indoors.
The IdeaPad 5G is powered by Qualcomm's Snapdragon 8cx; the original one, which was announced in 2019. There was a Snapdragon 8cx Gen 2 that was announced in September, but frankly, you're not missing much. All that changed between the two products is clock speeds. If Lenovo's aim was to cut costs here, then that's a natural place to start.
The IdeaPad 5G has a 14-inch FHD display with a 90% screen-to-body ratio, 8GB LPDDR4X RAM, 512GB PCIe SSD storage, and as you'd expect, a fanless design. It's just 0.59 inches thin, and weighs in at 2.6 pounds with a 51WHr battery.
That's not all though, because if you don't care about 5G, you can get a Snapdragon 8c-powered version of the PC that only has 4G LTE. In fact, even though Qualcomm announced the Snapdragon 8c as a mainstream offering a year ago, this is the first PC to use the new chip. It's similar to the Snapdragon 8cx, but it backs off on the "extreme" performance a bit.
The IdeaPad 5G is only available in select markets, and sadly, those don't include North America, although it might arrive at some point in the future.
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