Lenovo IdeaPad S540 Laptop Review: AMD or Intel? Lenovo gives consumers the choice and we compare both

[Redaktion]

The Lenovo IdeaPad S540 promises to be a compact 14-inch multimedia laptop. The device should have good battery life too, although there are some noticeable differences between the AMD and Intel models. We have both in for review to see which variant should be more worthy of your consideration. Read on to find out how the two models fare against each other and other comparable laptops in this detailed review.

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-IdeaPad-S540-Laptop-Review-AMD-or-Intel-Lenovo-gives-consumers-the-choice-and-we-compare-both.427167.0.html

[FC]

This line is utter trash and highly unreliable.  DO NOT BUY!!!!! I Bought a S530 (directly before this).  In terms of sheer parameters (e.g. RAM, HD size), it looks like an amazing deal (e.g. compared to Thinkpads), but Lenovo puts the worst, cheapest components, and they are extremely likely to fail.  You can search dozens of people who have had HD failures, my keyboard + wireless card broke over 2 months, followed by a complete motherboard failure.  This line looks great on paper, but has absolutely terrible reliability.  Lenovo support will even emphasize to you that since you brought from their consumer line, they do not care about you and you don't matter.  Save yourself over 3 weeks of no computer access by purchasing another brand.

[Randy]

Such a great review btw could you fix the image of AMD one stress test as it all intel lol

[gc]

Idle battery life times are at min brightness
where the IWL model min brightness was 5,
and the API model min brightness was 24.6.

24.6 is unusually high, though the Envy x360 13 2019 (AMD) panel review measured 26.  Often it is around 10-15, though Thinkpads may get down to 3.

Since the min brightness has a large effect on idle battery time, it could be interesting to ask the manufacturers how the minimum brightness is chosen during the design.

Typo: s/STAMP/STAPM/
(STAPM = Skin Temperature Aware Power Management)

[Sandra Yen]

I would recommend against buying ideapad products.  The line has seen a decline in reliability, and the s720 I had bought 2 years ago had several major problems. 

[xy]

I have the IWL model, did not notice any screen flickering (used a phone camera to test it), but it has this reddish tint when displaying whites. Could it be that my unit is faulty? Fans also run pretty loud.

[Shyam Sunder Nishad]

Did you confirm by connecting a 4K display to this laptop, whether it is supported at 60Hz through type-c usb port? The manual does not list it though, but I hope it does so.

[Alfie]

Hopefully someone answers this but what do you mean that it cannot maintain the fps for an hour does that mean if i play a game and its gets 60 fps it will throttle?

[Unai]

I have the lenovo s540-14i and i have to say the laptop is amazong, and the audio deserves at least 90%, sounds really loud

[NikoB]

Intel - Connectivity 47 / 81 → 58%

AMD Connectivity45 / 81 → 56%

`What are you doing notebookcheck ?!
The Intel version does not have 4k video output at 60Hz with HDR!
AMD has it!

UHD620 vs Vega 8/10 - HDMI 1.4b (No 4k output!) Vs HDMI 2.0b HDR!

How can AMD put the ridiculous 56% when it has at least 20 points higher! At the same time, changing the network card to 2x2 Intel is easy for $20 and buyers of shameful versions with Intel will not be able to get HDMI 2.0b and 4k for monitors, TV and projectors with HDR! And 4k monitors are everywhere! And at some point they will find themselves in the position of losers who are not able to connect a 4k monitor, and owners with Ryzen can easily do this, i.e. their laptop will last much longer!

[NikoB]

Shyam Sunder Nishad

Did you confirm by connecting a 4K display to this laptop, whether it is supported at 60Hz through type-c usb port? The manual does not list it though, but I hope it does so.

No, S540 with Intel don't have 4k@60Hz output. USB-c is fake in this series
But S340 have DP out via usb-c. See 17-18 pages user manual in pdf.
.

But AMD version 100% have 4k@60Hz via HDMI 2.0b. Buy AMD version. It version much more faster in multicore and long load for cpu.

It second mistake(?) from notebookcheck. 3700U much faster then 8265U.

[Arif]

I have the lenovo s540-14i and i have to say the laptop is amazong, and the audio deserves at least 90%, sounds really loud

May i know that if this laptop does have cpu throttling under gaming conditions and if updating the drivers of the mx250 improve the performance because i feel something is off about this laptop only getting 40 or so fps on Fifa 19 when ive seen other mx250 with the same tdp get way more than that?

[Kyubi]

I have the low end model, the Ideapad s540-14API, with Ryzen 3500-u as CPU and Vega 8 as GPU.
I have to say: This laptop has a huge Wifi communication problem, far beyond notebookcheck reported.
The wifi speed is extremely slow (around 0,3 mb to 3mb) and it seems depends on the network card, the Realtek 8821-ce. There is no way to have better speeds: I downloaded (and tried) drivers both from Windows update and the official site,changed the bandwith in the network options, stopped energy-safe options, tried speed on other wifi networks, reinstalled the OS from scratch but nothing changed. The laptop is extremely slow, compared with other laptops. Moreover, it is not possible to replace the network card without avoiding the warranty, as Lenovo indicates in the hardware manual for this model, that wifi card is not a CRU (a customer repleaceble unit). There is no ethernet port and Linux support.
So as ultrabook is practically unusable, whereas as gaming or office laptop you can find far better solutions.
I was a huge Lenovo fan, but now I'm extremely disappointed.

[Kyubi]

I have the low end model, the Ideapad s540-14API, with Ryzen 3500-u as CPU and Vega 8 as GPU.
I have to say: This laptop has a huge Wifi communication problem, far beyond notebookcheck reported.
The wifi speed is extremely slow (around 0,3 mb to 3mb)

I made a typo error: I meant 0,3mbps to 3mbps (tested on speedtest.net site)

[NikoB]

Kyubi,

Both series S340/540 support Intel AX200 2x2 (12-13$ on Ali/eBay), buy and install. The bad news is that everything was done architecture vilely there, the antennas almost touch each other under the rubber(stupid decision by R&D vs another laptops from another brands) and the antennas themselves are made unsuccessfully by geometry and sensitivity. It is necessary to put new antennas into the screen cover. and this is no easy task for simple layman). Therefore, the only thing that can be done quickly and easily is to replace the slow 1x1 going from the factory to fast Intel AX200. Be careful when opening the back cover, it is very fragile and thin!