All things said, finding a replacement for the Lenovo Slim 7 Pro was a much easier endeavor than replacing the wife’s HP Pavilion x360 Convertible 14 laptop. The HP Pavilion still works fine for the most part, except that the USB-C charging port is extremely finicky and will only charge using very specific power chargers when the laptop is powered on. The son also has increasing needs for his computing activities at home — i.e. doing his frequent online homework — so the plan was to pass the HP to him, and I’d get the missus a new laptop. Her requirements were quite specific however:
Something that isn’t a small screen
Something with a touch screen
Something that offered stylus support
Gobs of storage space, on account that the missus doesn’t really handle storage management well LOL
There are only so few laptop manufacturers these days on retail here that offer touchscreens with stylus support, with the two that come immediately to mind being Lenovo’s IdeaPads and also Microsoft Surface Pros. The latter is just 13″ in display and carries Snapdragon processors. The wife would never be happy with a 13″ screen, and I didn’t want to deal with possible app issues with Snapdragon processors later. So, Lenovo IdeaPad it was. The wife doesn’t normally run demanding workloads on laptops — just office productivity software and whatever teacher software her school wants her to use. Aside from the laptop needing to be touchscreen and stylus-enabled, I also looked specifically for something with an OLED screen — who doesn’t like deep contrast-y blacks when watching media — and also an ultra low voltage processor to offer good battery life.
So, I selected the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 2-in-1 with the Intel 120U processor. This is actually a last year’s model, but priced at just SGD1,019 it is a fantastic bargain for its specifications:
Intel® Core 5 120U processor, which would be more than adequate for the wife’s needs
16GB RAM, which is par for the course for this class of laptops
512GB SSD: which is the same as what her current HP offers, so I’d need to swap it out for a larger one
OLED display, but of course!
Touchscreen + stylus
56Wh battery: decently sized though not large
MicroSD slot: in case 1TB is not enough for the missus, I’ll just get a 2TB MicroSD and be done with it forever, hopefully!
I picked up this IdeaPad from a local reseller, and it took just two days to arrive. The first thing I did was remove the back plate to swap out the 512GB SSD for a 1TB one I had on standby, and I realized that the NVMe SSD used in this IdeaPad isn’t the standard 2280 sized one, but the 2242 variant instead. Arrggh. Still, a quick Amazon order immediately, and a Corsair MP600 Micro 1TB M.2 NVMe PCIe SSD arrived a week later for me to do a system migration over to it.
So, so far so good with this IdeaPad, though the wife said she found the OLED screen colors on it a little too strong for her liking and would have preferred a display that was less contrasting. Er…?!?!? LOL.
In any case, continued in the next post with the third laptop: a replacement for mobility and travel!
