Lenovo Ideapad 310 review – a decent budget all-

rounder
laptopmedia.com/review/lenovo-ideapad-310-review-a-decent-budget-all-rounder/

​December​ ​23​, ​2016

In this review, we are going to focus on one of Lenovo’s new budget offers from the
consumer Ideapad family – the Ideapad 310. It’s a decently designed affordable 15-inch
solution with generally new hardware but not necessarily future-proof. However, the
Ideapad 310 is an excellent everyday workforce on the go due to its seemingly rigid
construction, comfortable keyboard and stealth hinge.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to miss some of its similarly priced direct competitors like the Acer
Aspire E 15 (E5-575G) or the ASUS X556UQ, all of which offer the same CPU, if not better,
and a considerably faster GPU – the GeForce 940M or 940MX. It’s hard to compete with
the GeForce 920M for sure. But are there any other reasons to consider buying the
Ideapad 310 over the aforementioned laptops? Let’s find out.

You can see most of the available models here: Buy from Amazon.com

Contents
1. Retail package
2. Design and construction
3. Disassembly, maintenance and upgrade options
4. Display quality
5. PWM (Screen flickering)
6. Buy our display profiles
7. Specs sheet
8. Lenovo Ideapad 310 configurations
9. Software
10. Battery
11. CPU – Intel Core i5-7200U
12. GPU – NVIDIA GeForce 920MX (2GB DDR3)
13. Gaming tests
14. Temperatures
15. Verdict

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Retail package
The box containing the laptop didn’t come offer anything out of the ordinary – just the usual
user manuals, the AC cord and charging adapter.

Design and construction

The notebook offers clean in generally simplistic design and plastic is the main choice for
the build. Its weight and height are average for its class (22.9 mm and 2.2 kg) but at least
rigidness isn’t sacrificed for the most part that is..

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The silver-colored lid makes the laptop look a bit more sophisticated and resembles
anodized aluminum plate. Although, it bends under pressure but not enough to make any
difference in practice. Still, we recommend not leaving any heavy objects not to damage
the LCD screen. So the laptop has a single-hinge design that feels pretty stealth, smooth
and not overly tightened. The weight distribution allows the notebook to be opened using
only one hand, whereas the bottom features hard, rugged, black plastic, which we are all
used to seeing on most laptops. It doesn’t quite complete the whole design concept but at
least feels sturdy enough to withstand some hard handling. There are some big vent
openings placed on it along with two service hatches for easier upgrade. We will address
this later in the review.

The sides are black, flat and adopt the same black
plastic as the bottom piece. Measuring just around
22.9 mm, they don’t seem to miss out on any major

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connectivity options and the distribution seems fine. On the left we got the DC charging
connector, VGA, LAN, HDMI, USB 3.0, 3.5 mm audio
jack and an SD card reader while the right side
features only two USB 2.0 connectors and the optical
drive.

The interior, however, is a whole another story. It’s

sturdy from top to bottom except for the very middle of
the keyboard, which sinks in a little but only under
strong pressure and won’t be any problem in practice.
The touchpad area is rather small for a 15-inch form
factor and the mouse keys are slightly stiffer to our
taste but perform well. The keyboard, on the other
hand, feels really comfortable with the well-known
AccuType design. The travel distance of the keys is
average but the stiff feedback at the beginning of the
movement makes up for accurate, fast and
comfortable typing experience.

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Disassembly, maintenance and upgrade options
The Ideapad 310 offers fairly easy upgrade via the service lids on the bottom. But if wish to
access the cooling fan or the battery, a full disassembly is required.

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Storage upgrade options – 2.5-inch HDD
The notebook uses only one 2.5-inch HDD without the M.2 SSD option. The HDD is
located under the small service hatch in the lower left corner. Our unit shipped with 1TB
WD Blue drive spinning at 5400 rpm.

Slot Unit Upgrade price

2.5-inch HDD/SSD 1TB HDD WD Blue Upgrade options

RAM
The bigger service lid offers access to the RAM slot and the Wi-Fi card. Our unit came with
the only RAM slot occupied by a Samsung 8GB DDR4-2133 chip but there’s another one
soldered to the motherboard – 4GB DDR4-2133. This means that the maximum memmory

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allowed by the motherboard is 12GB.

Slot Unit Upgrade price

Slot 1 8GB RAM DDR4-2133 –

Other components
As we already mentioned, the Wi-Fi card is located right next to the RAM chip and it’s made
by Lenovo itself with model number SW10A11648.

If you need to access the battery, though, you have to perform a full disassembly. This
requires the optical drive to be removed, along with all the screws around the bottom and
under the service covers. Also, watch out for the cables attached right next to the Wi-Fi
card. The unit is rated at 30Wh.

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If you need any more information
regarding the disassembly process, we
suggest heading to our dedicated article.

Display quality
We took the time to test two versions of the Ideapad 310 – one with Core i5-6200U and one
with Core i5-7200U and both use different panels. This is helpful to those of you who can’t
make a decision between the two versions of the laptop, so let’s clear things out.

The Core i5-6200U model that we tested features a Full HD TN display with 1920 x 1080
resolution, 142 ppi and 0.18 x 0.18 mm pixel pitch. It’s manufactured by BOE with model
number NT156FHM-N31 while the Core i5-7200U version offers Innolux-made display with
model number N156BGA-EB2 but sports HD (1366×768) resolution.

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Since both displays are TN, viewing angles are poor.

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The HD display offers 198 cd/m2 brighntess in the middle and 190 cd/m2 as average with
just 10% deviation – lower right corner. Whereas the Full HD variant delivers 188 cd/m2
maximum brightness in the center of the screen and 187 cd/m2 average across the surface
with 11% deviation – again in the lower right corner.

The color temperature of the HD display is 7000K with 410:1 contrast ratio before
calibration and 360:1 after. The second display (the Full HD version) offers closer to the
optimal color temperature – 6800K and slightly higher contrast – 470:1 before calibration
and 450:1 after calibration.

The color deviation isn’t too high on both displays with the HD panel scoring 2.4 and the
Full HD one reaching as high as 2.8. Values above 4.0 are unwanted.

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Color reproduction

To make sure we are on the same page, we would like to give you a little introduction of the
sRGB color gamut and the Adobe RGB. To start, there’s the the CIE 1976 Uniform
Chromaticity Diagram that represents the visible specter of colors by the human eye, giving
you a better perception of the color gamut coverage and the color accuracy.

Inside the black triangle, you will see the standard color gamut (sRGB) that is being used
by millions of people in HDTV and on the web. As for the Adobe RGB, this is used in
professional cameras, monitors etc for printing. Basically, colors inside the black triangle
are used by everyone and this is the essential part of the color quality and color accuracy
of a mainstream notebook.

Still, we’ve included other color spaces like the famous DCI-P3 standard used by movie
studios, as well as the digital UHD Rec.2020 standard. Rec.2020, however, is still a thing of
the future and it’s difficult for today’s displays to cover that well. We’ve also included the so-
called Michael Pointer gamut, or Pointer’s gamut, which represents the colors that naturally
occur around us every day.

There’s no significant difference between both displays as the HD panel covers 51% of the
sRGB gamut while the Full HD variant offers 50% coverage.

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Below you will see practically the same image but with the color circles representing the
reference colors and the white circles being the result. You can see main and additional
colors with 25%, 50%, 75% and 100% saturation inside the sRGB gamut with and without
our custom “Office/Web Design work” profile.

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13/32
The “Office/Web Design Profile” uses gamma in sRGB mode, 140 cd/m2 brightness and
D65 white point.

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We tested the accuracy of the display with 24 commonly used colors like light and dark
human skin, blue sky, green grass, orange etc. You can check out the results at factory
condition and also, with the Office & Web Design profile.

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16/32
The next figure shows how well the display is able to reproduce really dark parts of an
image, which is essential when watching movies or playing games in low ambient light.

The left side of the image represents the display with stock settings, while the right one is
with the Gaming & Movie Nights profile activated. On the horizontal axis, you will find the
grayscale and on the vertical axis – the luminance of the display. On the two graphs below
you can easily check for yourself how your display handles the darkest nuances but keep in
mind that this also depends on the settings of your current display, the calibration, the
viewing angle and the surrounding light conditions.

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Response time

We test the reaction time of the pixels with the usual “black-to-white” and “white-to-black”
method from 10% to 90% and reverse.

We recorded Fall Time + Rise Time = 18 ms on the HD display and 13 ms on the Full HD
variant.

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PWM (Screen flickering)
Pulse Width modulation (PWM) is an easy way to control monitor brightness. When you
lower the brightness, the light intensity of the backlight is not lowered, but instead turned off
and on by the electronics with a frequency indistinguishable to the human eye. In these
light impulses the light/no-light time ratio varies, while brightness remains unchanged, which
is harmful to your eyes. You can read more about that in our dedicated article on PWM.

Here’s where both panels get really different as the HD display uses PWM only at really
low brightness levels and will me suitable for long hours of work without puting any
unnecessary strain to one’s eyes.

The Full HD panel, on the other hand, uses PWM from 0 to 99% brightness but with high
frequency, which reduces the negative impact to some extent and some users might not
notice it.

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Blue light emissions

Installing of our Health-Guard profile not only eliminates PWM but also reduces the harmful
Blue Light emissions while keeping the colors of the screen perceptually accurate. If you’re
not familiar with the Blue light, the TL;DR version is – emissions that negatively affect your
eyes, skin, and your whole body. You can find more information about that in our dedicated
article on Blue Light.

You can see the levels of emitted blue light on the spectral power distribution (SDP) graph.

Conclusion
Both panels have pretty similar properties, with the small exceptions of resolution and
PWM. They are mostly on par with what the industry offers and will be suitable for general
office work and browsing. If you need a similar-speced laptop with better image quality, we
suggest opting for the Ideapad 510. It’s just a tad more expensive but it’s definitely worth it.

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Buy our display profiles
Since our profiles are tailored for each individual display model, this article and its
respective profile package is meant for Lenovo Ideapad 310 configurations with 15.6″
Innolux N156BGA-EB2 (HD, 1366 × 768) TN screen, which can be found at Amazon: Buy
from Amazon.com

*Should you have problems with downloading the purchased file, try using a different
browser to open the link you’ll receive via e-mail. If the download target is a .php file instead
of an archive, change the file extension to .zip or contact us at bg.laptopmedia@gmail.com.

Read more about the profiles HERE.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's

products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to
produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office work / Web design

If your field is office work or web design, or you just want your monitor's color set to be as
accurate as possible for the Internet color space, this profile will prove to be useful.

$4.96
Buy Now

Gaming or Movie nights

We developed this profile especially for occasions on which you spend a lot of time in front
of your monitor with some games or watching movies – it will be easier for you to discern
fine nuances in the dark.

$4.97
Buy Now

21/32
Health-Guard

This profile reduces the negative impact of pulsation and the blue spectrum, securing your
eyes and body. You still get a pitch-perfect color image, albeit slightly warmer.

$4.98
Buy Now

$9.99
Buy Now

And as for the Full HD (1920×1080) TN version BOE NT156FHM-N31, you can find all the
profiles below.

In addition to receiving efficient and health-friendly profiles, by buying LaptopMedia's

products you also support the development of our labs, where we test devices in order to
produce the most objective reviews possible.

Office work / Web design

If your field is office work or web design, or you just want your monitor's color set to be as
accurate as possible for the Internet color space, this profile will prove to be useful.

$4.96
Buy Now

22/32
Gaming or Movie nights

We developed this profile especially for occasions on which you spend a lot of time in front
of your monitor with some games or watching movies – it will be easier for you to discern
fine nuances in the dark.

$4.97
Buy Now

Health-Guard

This profile reduces the negative impact of pulsation and the blue spectrum, securing your
eyes and body. You still get a pitch-perfect color image, albeit slightly warmer.

$4.98
Buy Now

$9.99
Buy Now

Specs sheet
These specs apply for the tested unit only

Check price

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 CPU Intel Core i5-7200U (2-core,
2.50 – 3.10 GHz, 3MB cache)

RAM 12GB (1x 8096MB + soldered

1x 4096MB) – DDR4, 2133
MHz

GPU NVIDIA GeForce 920MX (2GB

DDR3)

HDD/SSD 1TB of HDD (5400 rpm)

Display 15.6-inch – 1366 x 768 (HD)

TN, glossy

Optical –
drive

Connectivity Wi-Fi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0

Features 1x USB 3.0

2x USB 2.0
webcam
microphone
3.5 mm audio jack
HDMI
VGA
4-in-1 card reader
(MMC, SD, SDHC,
SDXC)
RJ-45
stereo loudspeakers
with Dolby Audio

Battery 30Wh

Thickness 22.9 mm (0.90″)

Weight 2.2 kg (4.8 lbs)

Lenovo Ideapad 310 configurations

Lenovo ideapad 310 (15")
Intel Core i3-7100U
Intel HD Graphics 620
1000GB HDD
4GB RAM

$369.99
More Info Buy from Amazon
Lenovo Ideapad 310
Intel Core i3-6100U
Intel HD Graphics 520
1000GB HDD
4GB RAM

$379.00
More Info Buy from Amazon
24/32
Lenovo Ideapad 310 (15")
Intel Core i3-6100U
Intel HD Graphics 520
1000GB HDD
6GB RAM

$380.00
More Info Buy from Amazon
View more laptops...

Software
We used a fresh install of Windows 10 (64-bit) for our review and we suggest downloading
the latest drivers from Lenovo’s official website if you are planning to perform a clean install
yourself.

Battery
Due to the low battery capacity of just 30Wh, we can’t really expect any record-breaking
results. However, the results appear to be even lower than expected. It seems that the
Core i5-7200U CPU can do so much in terms of energy efficiency.

As usual, all tests were run with these settings: Wi-Fi running constantly, Windows power
saving feature switched on and screen brightness set to 120 cd/m2.

Web browsing

In order to simulate real-life conditions, we used our own script for to automatically browse
through over 70 websites.

Slightly below average result – 267 minutes (4 hours and 27 minutes).

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Video playback

For every test like this, we use the same video in HD.

Just about the same runtime – 276 minutes (4 hours and 36 minute).

Gaming

We recently started using F1 2015’s built-in benchmark on loop in order to simulate real-life
gaming.

As expected, the gaming test took a toll on the battery scoring just 95 minutes (1 hour and
35 minutes) of play time.
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CPU – Intel Core i5-7200U
Intel’s Core i7-6200U is part of the 7th Generation Kaby
Lake CPUs and it’s the direct successor of the Core i5-
5200U (Broadwell) and Core i5-6200U (Skylake). It’s also
based on the same architecture as the aforementioned
chips with little differences that should bring a small
performance increase and a bump in power consumption.
However, the new CPU is clocked at 2.5 GHz and its
Turbo Boost frequency is 3.1 GHz opposed to the 2.3 –
2.8 GHz clocks on the previous Core i5-6200U.

Anyway, we still have the 2/4 core/thread count, 3MB last

level cache, and a TDP of 15W, which includes the iGPU and the dual-channel DDR4
memory controller. Speaking of the former, the chip integrates the newer generation Intel
HD Graphics 620 graphics chip clocked at 300 – 1000 MHz.

You can browse through our top CPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-cpu-

ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook we’ve tested with this
processor: http://laptopmedia.com/processor/intel-core-i5-7200u/

Cinebench 11
NovaBench CPU
Photoshop

3.66

3.22
3

2.76

0
Lenovo ideapad 310 (15″) Acer Aspire E 15 (E5-575G) Dell Vostro 14 5459

Results

Lenovo ideapad 310 (15″) 3.66

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 Results

Acer Aspire E 15 (E5-575G) 3.22

Dell Vostro 14 5459 2.76

Results are from the Cinebench 11 test (higher the score, the better)

Result Price
Laptop Results difference Price difference

Lenovo ideapad 310 (15″) Intel Core i5-7200U (2- 3.66

cores, 2.5 - 3.1 GHz)

Acer Aspire E 15 (E5-575G) Intel Core i5-6200U (2- 3.22 -12.02%

cores, 2.3 - 2.8 GHz)

Dell Vostro 14 5459 Intel Core i3-6100U (2-cores, 2.3 2.76 -24.59%
- 2.3 GHz)

Fritz is a chess benchmark that tests the computing capabilities of the CPU with various
chess moves. The Intel Core i5-7200U scored 6.393 million moves per second. In
comparison, one of the most powerful chess computers, Deep(er) Blue, was able to
squeeze out 200 million moves per second. In 1997 Deep(er) Blue even beat the famous
Garry Kasparov with 3.5 to 2.5.

GPU – NVIDIA GeForce 920MX (2GB DDR3)

The NVIDIA GeForce 920MX is a 920M refresh with
slightly increased performance and now supports GDDR5
memory, although, most notebook will still ship with the
2GB DDR3 standard for low-end GPUs.

The 920MX is based on the GM108 Maxwell GPU on the

28nm node, but with a number of disabled shading units.
While the GM108 features 384 CUDA cores, the 920MX uses only 256 of those with 24
TMUs and 8 ROPs. The memory capacity is 2GB using DDR3 and connected via 64-bit
interface.

The GPU itself is clocked at 1072 MHz with 1176 MHz boost clock while the memory is
clocked at 900 MHz (1800 MHz effective). The TDP of the GPU is rated at around 16W and
will most probably deliver performance similar to the GeForce 930M.

You can browse through our top GPUs ranking: http://laptopmedia.com/top-laptop-

graphics-ranking/

Here you will find other useful information and every notebook with this GPU that we’ve
tested: http://laptopmedia.com/video-card/nvidia-geforce-920mx-2gb-ddr3/

3DMark Cloud Gate (G)

3DMark Fire Strike (G)
3DMark (Sky Diver)
Unigine Heaven 3.0
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 16,000

12,000 12,603

8,000 8,504
8,074

4,000

0
Lenovo ideapad 310 (15″) Acer Aspire E 15 (E5-575G) Dell Vostro 14 5459

Results

Lenovo ideapad 310 (15″) 8,074

Acer Aspire E 15 (E5-575G) 12,603

Dell Vostro 14 5459 8,504

Results are from the 3DMark Cloud Gate (G) test (higher the score, the better)

Result Price
Laptop Results difference Price difference

Lenovo ideapad 310 (15″) NVIDIA GeForce 920MX 8074

(2GB DDR3)

Acer Aspire E 15 (E5-575G) NVIDIA GeForce 940MX 12603 +56.09%

(2GB GDDR5)

Dell Vostro 14 5459 NVIDIA GeForce 930M (2GB 8504 +5.33%

DDR3)

Gaming tests

HD, Low (Check HD, Medium (Check HD, Max (Check

CS:GO settings) settings) settings)

Average 101 fps 61 fps 46 fps

FPS

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 HD, Low (Check HD, Medium (Check HD, Max (Check
F1 2015 settings) settings) settings)

Average 32 fps 25 fps 17 fps

FPS

Temperatures
This test doesn’t represent real-life usage since the general user won’t be able to reach
100% CPU and 100% GPU load at the same time for more than a few minutes but it helps
us assess the cooling system and the stability of the notebook in the long run. Also, we
have to note that we ran the stress test on the Core i5-6200U version and we doubt there
will be any significant difference between the this and the Core i5-7200U model in terms of
cooling capabilities.

When we ran the CPU stress test at first, things appeared to be pretty normal with the CPU
running cool and reaching the maximum 2.7 GHz frequency for four active cores.

But when we ran the GPU torture test as well, the CPU toned down to 2.3 GHz, which is
still in the normal realm but the GPU throttled after some time, even though the GPU’s
temperature was pretty low. Anyway, we can’t consider this as a major issue because the
notebook isn’t designed for such long and intensive workload.

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Temperatures on the surface were fine as well so users won’t have to worry about the heat.

Verdict
The Lenovo Ideapad 310 is okay in most aspects. For the asking price, you get the latest
generation Intel Core i5 or Core i7 processor paired with NVIDIA GeForce 920MX, which
can be considered as slightly underpowered compared to other alternatives on the market
but does its job well. Also, gaming is possible… conditionally. For a few extra bucks, you
can snatch the more powerful Ideapad 510, which also boasts an IPS panel making the
multimedia experience far better.

Speaking of the display, you won’t find any significant difference between the Full HD and
HD variants but for those with sensitive eyes, we suggest optin for the less-detailed HD
display as it doesn’t flicker from 70 cd/m2 (48%) and above. Our tests confirm that the
specs are on par with what the industry offers at this price range. Nonetheless, if you still
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want to opt for the Full HD display, you can just install our Health-Guard profile and forget
about it.

The build qality is relatively good – no surprises here as well. However, we were especially
delighted by the comfortable keyboard. We are happy to see that Lenovo once again starts
to put some effort in its low-end laptops when it comes to input devices.

At the end of the day, the Lenovo Ideapad 310 is your average daily driver for your
browsing and office work but don’t expect it to work long hours away from the charger. It’s
really hard to recommend it among the vast variety of budget solutions, especially when
laptops like the Acer Aspire E 15 (E5-575G) and the Lenovo Ideapad 510 stand out so
much. Also, if you intend to use it for business, we suggest looking elsewhere. For
example, the Dell Vostro 5459 or our all-time favorite HP ProBook 450 G4.

You can see most of the available models here: Buy from Amazon.com

Pros

Decent design and build

Good keyboard
The HD panel doesn’t use PWM above 48% (70 cd/m2)

Cons

Slightly below average battery life

The Full HD variant uses PWM from 0 to 99% brightness (the Health-Guard profile
fixes that)

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