Lenovo IdeaPad 5i 2-in-1 Review: Barely Squeaking By

The keyboard and touchpad are often compromises made on budget laptops, and the same is true here. The keys feel like they take a lot of effort to push through, as if the actuation force is too high. It can feel a bit tiring to type, which led to a lot of ghost typing where I was missing letters. It does have a number pad, but I don’t prefer them, as they force the touchpad to be off-center.

Speaking of the touchpad, this isn’t the worst I’ve used. The click feels nice, as it’s not overly loud or difficult to press—a common problem with cheap touchpads. The issue here, as per usual, is the tracking. It feels choppy to glide your finger across the surface, and precise actions like text selection feel clumsy. It’s certainly not a unique problem to the IdeaPad 5i, but it’s one of the things that makes cheap laptops feel low quality.

A Rough Display

Photograph: Luke Larsen

You buy a laptop of this size for its screen. But with the IdeaPad 5i 2-in-1, you’re not getting a high-quality panel. It’s a 1920 x 1200 resolution display with a 60-Hz refresh rate. That’s not bad per se, but stretched out on a 16-inch laptop, you can definitely see the pixels. That’s why I often recommend smaller laptops if you’re on a tighter budget. Like many laptops at this price, the IdeaPad uses a crummy panel. It’s IPS, but it has a strong green tint that makes colors look off. It’s noticeable right away, and once I measured it with a colorimeter, it proved true, covering just 63 percent of the sRGB color space.

It is, however, glossy. That’s the one positive trait about it, as many budget laptops use a matte display that makes the screen look even more washed out. It also means the display doesn’t have those really ugly plastic bezels that come with matte displays. That goes a long way toward improving the look of the IdeaPad 5i. One of the reasons these cheap laptops opt for matte is because their displays aren’t very bright. This one maxes out at 334 nits, and yes, that means you will be fighting glare and reflections if you are near light sources.

But let’s be clear: No 16-inch laptop under $800 has a better display. There are smaller laptops like the M1 MacBook Air or the Dell 14 Plus that have far better screens, but nothing in this size range.