Lenovo IdeaPad S540-13API Laptop in Review: Slim Ryzen Companion with Long Battery Life

[Redaktion]

While the Lenovo IdeaPad S540 does not take any new steps when it comes to the design, it is equipped with the AMD Ryzen 5 3550H, which is supposed to offer better long-term performance. Combined with a big battery, the 13.3-inch laptop looks like a promising companion for longer work days. In this review, we will determine what else the small bundle of energy is capable of.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-IdeaPad-S540-13API-Laptop-in-Review-Slim-Ryzen-Companion-with-Long-Battery-Life.448177.0.html

[william blake]

see? one extra heatpipe and extra cooler for the 40w device, and we got silence.

[Rog]

I would've liked the stress test part to be more specific in details. Where are the temperature and the graphs?

[Hakki]

I bought the campus version of this laptop with 7% black friday sale just two weeks ago and I can say that I am very happy with what I get for this price point.

The laptop swiftly restarts and rarely overheats. I made a lot of productivity tests of my own. With Redcine-X I managed to Replay 6k Redraw 11:1 footage 1/2 resolution as well as 6K BRAW  8:1 footaage on Davinci Resolve. However 4K H265 footage and especially damn 10bit ProRes 4:2:2 footaage suffers.

The keyboard is good but not perfect. The best part of the laptop is its compactness. It is very light and comfortable to carry. An 11' laptop sleeve cover this 13.3 inch laptop! But due it's limited ports better to carry along a light usb-c multiplier with usb-c, ethernet and usb-a port at least.

The charger is thin and nice, it weights around 280 gr. Anyway with battery power settings on windows 10, you can simply enjoy up to 6 hours of office work. With high performance seetings tou can expect around 4 hours of browsing and decent office work.

The color rendition of the screen is quite good and with cinema settings of AMD Radeon software you can enjoy trustful colors up to 2.5K images.

So for this money, it is more than poor man's Macbook Pro 13!

Last words: The laptop performes way better with Zoris OS. More silent, faster, more effective! After using a highest end Macbook Pro 17'' for years, I can say that this laptop is a perfect companion to me combining a powerful Ryzen desktop setup at home.  Instead of investing the same amount to a Macbook Pro 16's questionable pricing point I find it's reasonable to go for a Ryzen duo of laptop + desktop.

Probably with the upcoming Renoir Ryzen laptop processors in 2020, this laptop will be even better. (And what if they could have offered the blue variant instead of the boring silver on Ryzen version as well!)

[Hakki]

PS: The webcam is of awful quality! In an age when everybody possess smartphones with way better frontcams, better to completely cancel it and adapt a bezelless design for a laptop.

[testbench]

Thanks for this good review.
In Chinese Market, this model of laptop is called "Lenovo Xiaoxin Pro 13 AMD API Edition",which is complete same to S540-13API except name. I have this one. When switch to the performance mode, the cpu STAPM limit is changed  to 35W. It's a huge performance improvement both on CPU and Vega 8 GPU.
I don't know whether S540-13API has this ultimate performance mode. For further details, I advise that use the AMD uprof tool to observe STAPM value in this mode.

[testbench]

Thanks for this good review.
In Chinese Market, this model of laptop is called "Lenovo Xiaoxin Pro 13 AMD API Edition",which is complete same to S540-13API except name. I have this one. When switch to the performance mode, the cpu STAPM limit is changed  to 35W. It's a huge performance improvement both on CPU and Vega 8 GPU.
I don't know whether S540-13API has this ultimate performance mode. For further details, I advise that use the AMD uprof tool to observe STAPM value in this mode.

[Tim Timovich]

Can usb-c ports be used to hook up a 4k monitor @60 hz over a usb-c to displayport cable (or a docking station with dp support)?

[NikoB]

Tim Timovich
All Ryzen have HDMI 2.0b with HDR, but bad performance for youtube in 4k@60fps in VP9. Intel is ok in 4k@60fps VP9 (dual channel memory only), but have only shame HDMI 1.4b

As a result, we have lame AMD and blind Intel ...

[Asio]

Hello,
is the backlight bleeding a big problem?  From the picture in the article it looks very severe.
Please comment more about that.
Thanks.

[viet Hung]

So it seems that we cannot swap the RAM of this machine because 2 dimm are soldered?

[Paul Queen]

Incorrect size? Where did you get the over small size from?