
Lenovo’s IdeaPad Slim 7 is a showcase for AMD’s exceptional new processor - vlangber
https://www.theverge.com/21423498/lenovo-ideapad-slim-7-2020-amd-review
======
notacoward
I have one. The US version "only" has a 4800U, but it was still an absolute
steal at US$800. It's a nice size, feels solid, and lasts all day _easily_.
I've used it all day more than once and not seen the battery go below 50% yet.
Then again, I haven't really pushed it that hard. I'm sure if I played some
games it would "only" last five or six hours. And no, I haven't had any issues
with the screen. In fact I turn it down. If you're staring at a 500nit screen
at full brightness all day, you're probably not doing your eyes any good.

Unfortunately this model seems to be sold out or perhaps even discontinued
(until the European 4900U version becomes available maybe). Meanwhile, the E14
Gen2 14 is very similar in both specs and price.

~~~
formerly_proven
> If you're staring at a 500nit screen at full brightness all day, you're
> probably not doing your eyes any good.

I'm kinda surprised how many people set their screens to 100 % brightness
(300-400 nits for most screens) on their desktop. I find that blinding and
very uncomfortable. That also seems to be a reason why people complain so much
about IPS bleed and glow; using the screen near full brightness in a dark room
for gaming or movies. Personally I find the "0 %" setting on some screens
where that's around 50 nits too bright for that ( _ahem_ LG).

~~~
chrismorgan
It’s hard to change the brightness of desktop monitors. Bafflingly, Windows
and macOS don’t support adjusting their brightness the way they do for
laptops, despite the existence of DDC/CI to do just that, so you’re left using
third-party software if you know about it, or interacting with the awful
OSD/buttons on the screen, which you’ll hardly want to do all the time.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24316728](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24316728)
is a recent comment chain about this stuff.

~~~
MrGilbert
For Windows users, I can recommend ClickMonitorDDC[1]. While the UI is a bit
cluttered, it has a neat feature:

You can display the current brightness in the notification area, hover over it
with your mouse, and use the scroll-wheel to adjust it. I really like it.

[1]:
[https://clickmonitorddc.bplaced.net/](https://clickmonitorddc.bplaced.net/)

~~~
GordonS
I actually think I tried this one yesterday, and from memory it spammed my
traybar with about 12 different icons. The UI isn't just cluttered, it's
_odd_!

Still, it's a nice demonstration of what you can do with DDC, and just about
anything is better than the crappy physical controls on monitors.

~~~
bllguo
you can disable them in the settings. it gave me icons for brightness,
contrast, saturation, and volume. I only care about setting brightness so I
disabled the others

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ZuLuuuuuu
For people interested in ultrabooks with Ryzen 4800U processors, there is also
another model, which for some reason doesn't get mentioned much, which is
Lenovo S540 13ARE. It has a 13.3", QHD, 16:10 screen.

I bought this laptop after buying a Lenovo Ideapad/Yoga Slim 7 and returning
it (because of some QA issues and 14" was a bit too big for me after using XPS
13 for a long time). I made a small review of the laptop here:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/ilcw5n/lenovo_ideap...](https://www.reddit.com/r/Lenovo/comments/ilcw5n/lenovo_ideapad_s540_13are_review_ryzen_4800u/)

~~~
ChuckNorris89
Unfortunately the machine is not available in Europe outside of the
Netherlands for some reason.

I tried calling a Dutch retailer to ask if they ship to Austria but couldn't
even get pass the _" Do you speak English please?"_ phase :(

Like WTF, the EU single market is a thing since how many decades now?! So why
the hell do we still have region specific SKUs of the same product with
different parts and availability between EU member states?! Imagine the laptop
would be available for sale in California but not in Utah and in California
you can only get it with a 512 Samsung SSD and a 300nit display and in New
York only with a slower 1TB SKHynix SSD and a 400 nit display! /rantover

~~~
throwaway2048
Because charging different countries different amounts of money for the same
SKU is illegal in the EU, so instead every country gets its own SKU, and they
don't ship to other countries.

[https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/pri...](https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/pricing-
payments/index_en.htm)

~~~
ChuckNorris89
Huh, interesting, thanks for that. But then why don't we get different SKUs of
PS4/Xbox and others between EU member states? Or do we?

~~~
throwaway2048
If the pricing is different its very likely you do, its just minor things
changed nobody ever notices.

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jarym
So Intel...

Lost their lead in consumer desktop CPUs and said ‘oh we have mobile and
server’

But now AMD prove that Intel’s lead in mobile has been squandered.

And then the largest buyers of server grade stuff are cloud vendors who are
waiting for ARM to come of age.

~~~
Dig1t
I don't really think cloud vendors are holding their breath to switch to ARM,
they are all heavily invested in X86. All their code has been built on it for
forever, and there's a big advantage to having your dev machines running the
same architecture as your cloud production machines. I think desktop ARM
adoption would have to happen before the server market moves to the same.

~~~
solarkraft
> their code has been built on it for forever, and there's a big advantage to
> having your dev machines running the same architecture as your cloud
> production machines

Is that really so? Are remote development and emulation not sufficiently
advanced yet?

Super hot paths might be x86 optimized, but how much does that really matter?
I'd think at the scales of the big providers nothing matters more than
performance/power use and performance/price.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
Tons of x86 code is dereferencing unaligned addresses. Those have to be fixed
before porting to ARM.

~~~
my123
This isn't applicable to 64-bit Arm at the user application level, don't worry
about it.

Prior to that, unaligned memory accesses were perfectly usable on ARMv7 (and
even v6) too, this was fixed a while ago.

------
mushufasa
How does it work with linux?

My colleague got last year's x395 with the AMD 3000 series. It only lasts 3.5
hours battery with web browsing and moderate coding, whereas it's supposed to
last ~7 hours real-world on windows.

~~~
3np
I can’t speak for the new series, but I have a couple of Ryzen 3400G and I’m
not sure if I got the iGPU working and being utilized 100% properly yet.

The drivers are a huge mess of confusion (what goes into user space vs kernel?
What do you really need? What even goes into host OS vs containers if you run
Docker? What if anything can you actually get out of it without installing the
proprietary non-free closed-source amdgpupro?), AGESA updates are needed to
not have kernel modules crashes, oh and these updates are left up to mobo
vendors, some of which are great, some of which will make you feel like you
bought a lemon. And then there’s the whole mess with mesa that I think is just
now resolved (20.1) and haven’t yet made it to LTS distros.

I’m def not an Intel fan but man, 100% working intel drivers are an apt
install away and I had both forgotten just what a PITA ATI was with Linux and
couldn’t imagine AMD hasn’t stepped up the game at all.

Unless anyone has anecdotal evidence otherwise, make sure you set aside a
couple of working days to hunt down and compile the right kernel modules and
make sure the vendor provides recent enough firmware and/or hav patience.

In short, I wouldn’t hesitate having a new Ryzen for a headless server, or a
desktop rig with a dGPU. For a smaller desktop, laptop, or anything else
requiring use of the iGPU I would wait a year. Unless you’re one of the few
people either already up to speed on all this or finding some absurd pleasure
in learning about it, in which case I really do hope you post your process in
a blog or forum where other users will find it through web searches.

~~~
BenjiWiebe
My ryzen laptop has a 3500u cpu. I did the normal install with fedora 32 kde,
and everything works, though with one annoyance. Occasionally a single pixel
wide line, maybe 10-50 pixels wide, won't update.

~~~
3np
How’s hardware acceleration?

------
hu3
> Those results were a game-changer. They’re miles better than I got running
> the same load on the HP Envy x360 (around eight hours), the Dell XPS 13
> (seven and a half hours), the Asus Zephyrus G14 (almost nine hours), and
> even low-power stuff like Lenovo’s Chromebook Duet (11 and a half hours) for
> which battery life is a major selling point. I’ll be blunt — this is the
> longest battery life I’ve ever seen from a laptop. It’s astonishing.

~~~
Cilvic
For anyone else wondering about the battery life "over 11.5 hours"

>Running through the multitasking load that I described earlier, in battery
saver mode at 200 nits of brightness, the Slim 7 lasted 13 and a half hours.
On the Better Battery profile, it lasted over 11 and a half hours. Remember: I
was not going easy on this thing — you’ll certainly get even more juice if
you’re just clicking around a tab or two.

------
pachico
Pitty the screen is so bad. I still don't understand the point for glossy
screen, to be honest.

~~~
ChuckNorris89
Aren't MacBooks also glossy?

~~~
NikolaNovak
Yes; and it's a deal-breaker for some of us unfortunately :-/

~~~
ezconnect
My 2015 lost a bit of the gloss when it peeled off.

------
closeparen
IdeaPads still shipping with a TLS intercept ad injection proxy?

[https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/02/20/the-lenovo-
super...](https://nakedsecurity.sophos.com/2015/02/20/the-lenovo-superfish-
controversy-what-you-need-to-know/)

------
andymoe
I bought two for the kids and while they are fine and I’m happy with the value
I still despise windows home edition (had to block one from my router during
set up so I did not have to make a windows account for instance).

I really really wish Apple would make a reversible 2 in 1. I can’t tell you
how much of a better experience that form factor is for young kids. iPads are
not a replacement for this.

~~~
boogies
Linux Mint (Windows-like) is free and elementaryOS (macOS-like) is pay-what-
you-want, $0 if you so desire
([https://elementary.io/](https://elementary.io/)). It takes less time to
flash a drive and boot from it than to endure one Windows update on my desktop
(although you can also get GNU preinstalled on fairly Thinkpad-comparible
laptops from eg. “Laptop With Linux”
[https://elementary.io/store/#devices](https://elementary.io/store/#devices),
and Thinkpads themselves will likely ship with GNU soon — many Lenovo PCs are
already certified for compatibility with multiple major distros).

~~~
andymoe
Thanks! This just made me realize the other requirement is that they can play
Minecraft and that it does indeed run on Linux.

~~~
boogies
My pleasure!

Minetest is a free (libre) similar game, but very mod-centric, with mods
loadable from servers without installing them (as easy as Roblox) and (also
like Roblox) written in Lua, may be a fun intro to programming if they’re keen
to try it (ofc there friends probably don’t play, but a couple boys I know
~7-10 enjoyed it to a kind of harmful level), btw.

------
ampdepolymerase
It is a pity that a similarly specced ThinkPad would be at least a thousand
dollars more expensive.

~~~
iakov
A similarly specced ThinkPad or Latitude is built to last, has user-
replaceable components and will not fall apart in 2 years after a warranty
expires.

From my experience you get what you pay for with those professional machines.

~~~
notatoad
my thinkpad X1 with soldered-in RAM and dead non-replaceable battery
disagrees.

i only paid $100 for it on ebay, so i can't really complain, but it doesn't
seem much different to the average consumer laptop to me.

~~~
hajile
Which X1 has a non-replaceable battery?

I've had a couple different models and batteries in both were easy to replace.

In contrast, there's NO way to replace the keyboard without basically buying a
whole new system which is incredibly stupid.

~~~
notatoad
i am apparently mistaken, and the battery is replaceable. so thanks for that.
just ordered a new one.

------
niffydroid
I have a HP ENVY x360 15-ee0002na. I like it a lot. Battery is ok, screen even
is ok and it has 16gbof ram

Trying to find a Ryzen 4xxx with 16gb of ram in the UK is quite hard! Plenty
of Intel's though, it's almost like Intel flooded the market or no one wants
Intel

~~~
ChuckNorris89
No, it's the opposite, it's not a flood of intel device, it's a shortage of
AMD devices.

AMD had to prebook fab capacity at TSMC years in advance and didn't expect the
shortages caused by the pandemic made worse by the WFH demand while Intel can
make as many chips as it wants to fulfill market demand since it owns the
fabs.

It's a shame because the 4800U laptops are either sold out or going for huge
markups right now.

~~~
niffydroid
That makes more sense. I wonder how long before they increase capacity

------
Havoc
Just ordered a Ryzen 4800U minipc for home server use.

Think it might play in that role. Decent number of cores yet modest TDP seems
like a good fit

~~~
megak1d
I am on the look out for a replacement for my HP ProLiant home server with
something that has this chip. What minipc did you go for?

~~~
Havoc
Asus PN50. On pre-order (early oct) but I gather the Aussies already got
theirs. If you do go that route google RAM carefully...there seem to be
compatibility issues (JEDEC vs XMP).

Also, I think the Ryzen 5 is probably better value ratio but wasn't available
for buy so went for a 7.

I believe Asrock is also gonna bring out similar stuff but don't know details.

------
wazoox
I have an IdeaPad S540 API. It's a Ryzen 3500U. It has 2 M.2 slots so you can
had a second SSD if needed. I upgraded it to 32 GB and boy how this beast
flies. And it's really cheap.

Under Pop_OS with minor tweaks the battery lasts about 5 hours, which is
pretty good for a Linux laptop.

Think of turning of Wifi energy saving: Wifi speed went from 50Mbps to more
than 300.

~~~
ihattendorf
I've got basically the same machine as you as well (ThinkPad E495, 3700U,
upgraded M.2 SSD, upgraded 32 GB ram) and while it's great, the 4000 series is
a game changer. I really wish I could have waited but my old laptop had other
plans.

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xioxox
I wonder if they've improved the screen hinges? I've given up on slim Lenovos
as they had this weak metal bonded to plastic hinges which are easy to break
through regular use. The screen snaps off the base and the case just gets bent
and twisted. They seem very poorly designed and are hard to fix.

------
toastal
Only 80.4% DCI-P3 coverage and no Thunderbolt.

These processors are great and OEMs _could_ offer features users want, but
they've still been offering only mid-range or gamer-oriented builds for
everything else.

------
rowanG077
All of the ryzen laptops that exist have abysmal screens. I would have bought
one if it weren't for this fact.

~~~
q3k
Very happy with my T14 (AMD) IPS 1920x1080 display. Some might dislike that
it's not High DPI, but personally that's not a feature I want.

~~~
formerly_proven
1080p on 14" is high DPI. It's just not 250+ DPI high.

~~~
chrismorgan
Colloquially, “high DPI” has a fairly specific meaning: it means “designed to
be used with a scaling factor of at least 2 (and definitely uncomfortable to
use below a scaling factor of 1.5)”. 1920×1080 on 14″ does not meet this
definition.

And when it’s capitalised, High DPI, as it was in the parent comment, it’s
_definitely_ referring to this definition.

Back in the days when 1366×768 and 1280×800 were common sorts of resolutions
and 1920×1080 was the highest available (that is, before Apple’s Retina
displays), perhaps you could have said 1920×1080 was “high DPI”, but people
didn’t _use_ the term “high DPI” back then. And certainly not “High DPI”.

------
FullyFunctional
> Our reviews generally leave extensive synthetic benchmarking to others

That left a really bad impression - I get that they are too lazy to actually
measure the performance, but the snooty "synthetic" was uncalled for and
frankly disrespectful to the people doing the work they are too lazy for.

