Lenovo [Smart Choice IdeaPad Slim 5 12th Gen Intel Core i5-1235U 15.6″(39.62cm) FHD IPS Anti-Glare(16GB/512GB SDD/Win 11/MSO 2021/Backlit/1Yr Warranty/Grey/1.85Kg) + 15.6″ Red…

 Bought this laptop for college use and pretty satisfied with the product. It’s snappy , powerful , lightweight has good build quality.Got it for about 66k and seems like good value for money even though it has some issue. IF you want a simple ,reliable device that’s built well and don’t mind the washed out colours when watching movies then go for this . I bought it because it had the best battery life in this price segment. If you want more processing power and better display then Other options in this price range are asus vivobook (with i5-1235U like mine), asus vivobook pro 15 mi notebook pro ( my 2nd choice), Lenovo yoga slim 7 pro (i5 11th gen). There’s a ryzen version of my laptop with discrete graphics card but it is always out of stock , that probably has more consistent battery life.

Battery life : in power efficiency mode with 60% brightness is about 9hrs for web browsing , ms word . u’ll easily get 6- 7hrs with moderate usage. You can use it for 2-3 days on full charge so it’s great for traveling too. Device drains very little when idle unlike other intel chips. Overall i would say battery life is good but not consistent , most probably because it has an intel chip.

Charging : laptop supports type-C
PD charging which is very convenient as i have to carry only one charger for most of my devices it charges device from 0-80% in about 45 mins. But the charging brick’s wires are very THICK and little hard to bend , takes up a lot of space in the bag . Even on desk cable management becomes a mess . I would have preferred a more compact charger like MacBook’s OR realme slimbook’s (which is like 20k cheaper )for all thin & light laptops .

Performance : Can handle multi-tasking pretty well , you can have several apps running ,10-15 tabs open in browser but the device will still function smoothly. Haven’t played many games yet . Fall guys and Valorant ran smoothly . Got a Cinebench score of 1487 for single core and 7035 for multi core. Can do basic video editing smoothly @1080p 60fps with quite a few layers but export time is pretty long . It struggles with anything above that , obviously people who want to edit videos wouldn’t be looking at this type of laptop.
Edit : Warframe gives me 60fps at 720p and 38- 45 fps at 1080p . gameplay is occasionally choppy when i get close to many other characters in-game. Also i felt there’s a significant input lag on the display about 0.7sec delay , bit annoying in daily use and effect can be seen clearly in PvP or competitive shooter games.

Edit : After using the device for about 6 months are doing all kinds of tasks i noticed that the ssd is bit slow , about 3800Mb/s read and 2300 Mb/s write speed. Had to edit some videos and transferring /copying moderately large files ( 5gb+) would take about 10-15sec. You probably won’t notice it in other situations that much .
Another issue is RAM MANAGEMENT : Since i’m stuck with 16gb soldered ram , i often find myself with 70-80% ram usage. System takes up about 6gb, other essential apps take up about 2gb, firefox takes up 0.5- 2 gb and rest depends . So most of the times 70-80% of my ram is used up , i’ll have about 3-5gb ram left for other applications , this is something to keep in mind. Then again i consider myself a heavy user because i’ll have atleast 4 windows running all the time , while playing youtube videos , taking notes from 10 tabs , texting etc.

Thermals : good , is mostly cool and gets moderately warm when if used continously . Fan noise is moderate – low . I’ve never heard fan noise unless i am gaming or the device is plugged in while doing some heavy tasks for long time. max temperature i’ve reached in 80°C for 1hr + of CS Go i think . valorant and warframe haven’t crossed 66°C yet.
Update: Thermals are ok-ish if u operate slightly heavy task for more than 2hrs , the keyboard area gets a bit warm. Could be solved if it had side vents and another small bottom vent .( How i wish companies kept side vents , while not removing the necessary ports for thin and light laptops like these ). The fans don’t kick in unless cpu reaches 70C , and there’s no software i could find that can tune the fans for this model.

Webcam : Horrible webcam , it’s unusable, 1080p video quality looks like 240p , exposure also sucks. Mic quality is ok-ish , doesn’t pick up sound very well. Ik laptop webcams are generally not good but didn’t expect it to be this bad.

Display : 45%ntsc is not as bad as i thought it would be , colour accuracy is ok , viewing angle and anti-glare ok-ish Because of matte display the light falling on display diffuses making it hard to see what’s on the display. , the colours look a bit duller. You won’t notice that unless u have already used an oled panel or you watch some intense scenes with lot of shades and varying brightness. It’s got thin bezels too.300 nits is decent but some other laptops at this range offer upto 600 nits. It’s suitable for indoor use and outdoor too but not if it is sunny.

Trackpad : It’s not a glass trackpad but It’s smooth and good most of the time but the bottom part of the trackpad has uneven gaps when clicking. Palm rejection is not that good doesn’t work on right side well. ( i noticed it much later and thought it was normal at first but it seems it isn’t , can’t return it now but since i use trackpad only for scrolling mostly it’s fine.)I’m not a fan of off-centred track pad either and right click only works at the bottom and have to press harder than i usually do , So 6/10 for trackpad. You can solve some of these problems by tweaking touchpad settings.

Keyboard: Seems pretty good to me , responsive and has just enough travel distance but some keys are’nt equally responsive. Some may not like it but i like such keyboards , they don’t make a lot of sound. The numpad comes in clutch for my data entry tasks. Wish the arrow keys were full size. The left side may feel a bit cramped due to off centred trackpad.

Speakers :Out of the box speakers are below average but when i ran dolby atmos app it made a world of difference sounds richer now with more clarity and loudness. I can say they are Surprisingly good , moderately loud with good clarity and bass and balanced sound. Adequate if u want use in a small room which is silent. I wish it would get a little louder though considering they dedicated a lot of space at top of keyboard for it.

Build& design : build quality is good , very little flex on the lid and in the keyboard area because it’s full metal build. Has matte finish which is very nice but fingerprint magnet. It has a minimalist design which i like a lot but the storm grey finish scratches easily especially near the ports so handle it carefully or use a skin .Display is tiny bit wobbly because of the central hinge but it doesn’t affect me much. The HINGE makes creaks when i shake the laptop or lift it which worries me a bit but no problems so far.

Portability: For a thin & light laptop this is too heavy at 1.8kg and it’s very noticeable. Most thin & light laptops are under 1.6kg regardless of their price.Also the lid doesn’t magnetically attach to the body when the closed because of this the lid remains slightly open when i put it in my backpack . I’m scared of damaging my screen because sometimes stuff like scale , pen , dust etc easily gets in between the display and keyboard .When i walk while holding it horizontally in hand the lid flaps a bit which is also concerning. So handle this laptop with extra care.

NOTE: u may feel mild “shock” like static electricity if u touch the laptop near the area close to charging port while its charging but apparently this issue is common among laptops with metal builds , even in high end laptops.

Note : the warranty for mine was activated few months before purchase itself so i had to go through Lenovo’s the procedure to correct it , make sure u check this.

Iam writing this review after 20 days of usage for multimedia and multi-tasking
Pros – Product overall look and styling which is quite impressive, it is slim and light weight as the model says. Build quality is not so great but super, which is sufficient. They gave 2021 MS office and 1 month of Mcfee, but you can extend to one year by paying 199.
Speed of the laptop is good for multi-tasking and browsing. Booting speed is impressive. Display is Ok ok. Bezels around the screen are very less. Keyboard is good and typing experience is ok. Touchpad is sufficient, not so big but response is fast and smooth, simply super. Gestures work accurately.
Keyboard backlight is ok. It is not RGB just white light with two step adjustment.
Charing speed is good. you can get battery backup up to 5-6 hours for multi-tasking.
Cons- There are no big cons
As surface and edges are made of metal sometimes you can feel light conductivity of electricity. Avoid using it while charging or else use don’t try to touch edge of the key board platform.
It would have been better if they have given ‘H’ processor. It would take high loading of software.
The price of the extended warranty and battery warranty are very high. Overall pricing of the laptop seems to be high compared to its specs.
Laptop is compatible for DDR5, but they gave only DDR4 which is only 3200mhz.
You can take this laptop if you like LENOVO so much. Laptop will seem to be bit pricy. Otherwise, you can take Ideapad gaming laptops or you can prefer Dell.

I received a old 2022 model and warranty expired laptop.

Very good product which lenovo launched in 2022. I like the product and you can use it for work from home or basic home use. Not for gaming because it has integrated GPU.thanks lenevo and amazone for my exchange product. Timely delivery and i opened the product in front of delivery just to check if laptop is in box or not.