Is the Lenovo Ideapad 5 (14") with Ryzen 7 5700U a good laptop?

[litetaker]

Here is the laptop in question: https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/ideapad/500-series/IdeaPad-5-14ARE05/p/82LM0092UK

 

A downside for this spec is that it has soldered 8 GB RAM and it is not upgradable. Other than that it has a Ryzen 7 5700U, 512 GB SSD, and has all the ports I need, has DisplayPort via its USB C port and can support 4K 60Hz. And it is nice and cheap (I can get it for £495 with corporate discount). I want to use this for connecting to a 4K 60Hz TV and watching high res videos, streaming 4K content, some 4K videos on Youtube, 4K 60Hz HDR videos and such. Also, I will occassionally use it for editing photos in Lightroom.

 

Is this laptop powerful enough for these tasks? Is the cooling in this laptop decent? Are the fans too loud or relatively quiet? What is your experience using this device?

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

2 minutes ago, litetaker said:

Here is the laptop in question: https://www.lenovo.com/gb/en/laptops/ideapad/500-series/IdeaPad-5-14ARE05/p/82LM0092UK

 

A downside for this spec is that it has soldered 8 GB RAM and it is not upgradable. Other than that it has a Ryzen 7 5700U, 512 GB SSD, and has all the ports I need, has DisplayPort via its USB C port and can support 4K 60Hz. And it is nice and cheap (I can get it for £495 with corporate discount). I want to use this for connecting to a 4K 60Hz TV and watching high res videos, streaming 4K content, some 4K videos on Youtube, 4K 60Hz HDR videos and such. Also, I will occassionally use it for editing photos in Lightroom.

 

Is this laptop powerful enough for these tasks? Is the cooling in this laptop decent? Are the fans too loud or relatively quiet? What is your experience using this device?

It has windows 10 in S mode, that means you are limited to ONLY using the apps from the windows store and you cannot download third party programs and install them at all like in normal windows. Are you fine with that?

[jaslion]

2 minutes ago, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

It has windows 10 in S mode, that means you are limited to ONLY using the apps from the windows store and you cannot download third party programs and install them at all like in normal windows. Are you fine with that?

You can turn that off with a simple setting change and make it full windows 10

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

Just now, jaslion said:

You can turn that off with a simple setting change and make it full windows 10

oh i actuall didnt know that, i was thinking it was like before where u couldnt....okay well if thats the case the screen looks fine, and it has an ssd. the 3 cell battery is kinda small but according to the review the AMD stuff doesn use that much power soooo i think its a solid little machine

[IBM_THINKPAD_R51]

i wouldnt try heavy multitasking but it should be able to handle 4k video and editing photos

[litetaker]

6 minutes ago, IBM_THINKPAD_R51 said:

It has windows 10 in S mode, that means you are limited to ONLY using the apps from the windows store and you cannot download third party programs and install them at all like in normal windows. Are you fine with that?

Yep, it is very easy to turn that off. So that is not a problem.

[AbydosOne]

15 minutes ago, litetaker said:

Is this laptop powerful enough for these tasks? Is the cooling in this laptop decent? Are the fans too loud or relatively quiet? What is your experience using this device?

I have the previous gen Flex 5 version of this laptop (with the 4500U and 16GB of RAM), and I really like it. I've used it for simple RAW tweaking and it actually takes a bit for it to even become warm. The fans are quiet to average, not really annoying. The battery life is surprisingly good when websurfing or doing light tasks (like upwards of 6-8 hours).

 

I would recommend grabbing one with 16GB of RAM if you can, even if it means starting with a smaller SSD. I feel like 8GB is going to become sub-par in the very near future, and I expect this machine to keep up otherwise, so you'd probably prefer that wasn't the thing holding you back. Adding an aftermarket SSD is usually cheaper than factory, and you have more control over the size/quality of it (that's what I did: 1TB SKHynix P31).

 

I'm glad to see Lenovo added DP to the USB-C port as my Flex 5 doesn't and it's honestly one of my two or three complaints about it overall.