Lenovo IdeaPad 720s
Lenovo did a great job here with the IdeaPad 720s. This laptop is very well made and you’ll immediately acknowledge that from the moment you get it out of the box. It just feels strong, with not flex or give in the lid cover and only a tiny amount in the keyboard deck, as it’s still not an unibody construction and gets a plastic inner chassis. But even so, I feel it can can stand next to the best of the best in terms of build quality.
The entire exterior is made from smooth matte metal, the same finishing we’ve seen on many other Lenovo laptops. It feels great to the touch, doesn’t show any smudges on this color version and should age well. It also looks nice in a simple, non-obtrusive way. The few branding elements blend in with the casing, both the Lenovo logo on the hood and the subtle Lenovo, JBL and IdeaPad logos on the interior. There are also no lights and flashy elements, except for the status LEDs on the left side and the slightly annoying power key that’s part of the actual keyboard and always lit on. All in all though this laptop would be a great pick for school and work environments with stricter design policies.
There is however one aspect of the construction that I have to nitpick on: the edges are rather sharp, both the beveled ones around the interior, but especially the ones around the screen. You’ll feel their bite when grabbing the laptop and when opening the screen. There are no other sharp bits though, not even on the underside where the back-panel attaches smoothly to the main-body, leaving no exposed dents like on some other laptops with a similar build. Lenovo puts a 56 Wh battery inside the IdeaPad 720s, which is a little bigger than on most other 14-inch laptops with similar traits. Combined with a FHD screen, this laptop can last for quite a while on a charge.
Lenovo offers the IdeaPad 720S in a bunch of different configurations with an Intel Core i7-7500U processor, 16 GB of RAM, a 1 TB NVMe SSD and Nvidia GTX 940MX graphics with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory. There are two fans inside the Lenovo IdeaPad 720s, with a minimalist cooling system with just one heatpipe that spreads on top both the CPU and the GPU. The large intake on the bottom and proper output grills sure help though.The two fans are not individually controlled and spin at the same time. They remain inactive with very basic activities, like watching a movie, but kick in with the slightest traces of multitasking or the moment you launch Chrome. They’re usually fairly quiet and barely noticeable even in a completely silent room, but they do occasionally ramp up for a little while and then quiet back down, and then ramp up again and so on. I measured noise levels of around 38 dB at head level with everyday multitasking, with a base room noise level of 33 dB. There’s no coil whining or electrical noise, so overall this laptop runs quiet and cool with daily use.
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