Lenovo IdeaPad S145 15 Affordable Laptop (81N3001PUS, 81MV00H6US, 81MV00H9US, 81N3001QUS, 81W80000US…)

The Lenovo IdeaPad S145 15 is a low-end 15.6-inch laptop model. The main trade off for its low starting price of around $300 is its budget-class display. The screen is a basic HD TN panel, without sharpness and wide viewing angles of Full HD IPS displays you can find on pricier laptops. As expected, the IdeaPad S145 15 has a casing made of plastics and doesn’t have keyboard backlight.

When it comes to performance, the laptop is a below-average or average machine, depending on a configuration. The most basic processor option is the low-end AMD A4-9125 with Radeon R3 integrated graphics, followed by faster but still low-end AMD A9-9425 with Radeon R5 graphics and Intel Pentium Gold 5405U with Intel UHD 610 graphics. These processors are good only for light computing tasks like web browsing, emails, MS Office apps and similar. But even during light duties they won’t have snappiness of the popular mid-tier Intel Core series processors. Also, the CPUs should be avoided if you’re into 3D gaming, because of their weak integrated graphics processors. Lenovo also offers the IdeaPad S145 15 with the lower-mid-range 8th Gen Intel Core i3-8145U processor with the Intel UHD 620 integrated graphics or newer and a bit faster 10th Gen Intel Core i3-1005G1 with Intel UHD G1 graphics. The Core i3 chips are designed for the regular home and office tasks, but they can deliver a smoother user experience than the AMD A4 / A9 or Intel Pentium processors. The Intel Core series also provide better gaming performance, especially the 10th Gen Core i3. But nevertheless, they and the IdeaPad S145 itself aren’t designed for gaming at all. With the i3 chips you can get some satisfactory performance in lighter PC games and eventually in some heavier titles, but on the lowest graphics detail settings.

Depending on a configuration, the S145 15 comes with either 4GB of system memory (RAM) and a fast 128GB solid state drive data storage device or 8GB of RAM combined with a slower but capacious 1-Terabyte (1000GB) hard drive storage. The second variant is recommended if you regularly run multiple programs and browser tabs at the same time and if you need a lot of storage space for large files like videos.

Here are some examples of the Lenovo IdeaPad S145 15 configurations with their prices on the official Lenovo Store (as of 11/25/2019).

• 81N3001PUS: AMD A4-9125, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, $339.99 ($239.99 during Lenovo’s Black Friday sales)
• 81MV00H6US: Intel Pentium Gold 5405U, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, $319.99
• 81MV00H9US: Intel Core i3-8145U, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, $379.99
• 81N3001QUS: AMD A9-9425, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, $439.99
• 81W80000US: Intel Core i3-1005G1, 8GB RAM, 1TB HDD, $489.99

The 4.1-pound S145 comes with a 30 WHr battery, except the model with the Core i3-1005G1 processor with a slightly larger 35 WHr battery. These are both relatively small capacities. Lenovo claims the battery life is “up to 4 hours” on models with the AMD processors, and “up to 5.5 hours” on models with the Intel processors.