Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 - Essential Gaming Laptop - 15.6" FHD - 120Hz - AMD Ryzen 5 6600H - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3050 - 8GB DDR5 RAM - 256GB NVMe Storage - Windows 11 Home

**update: this laptop can at times, be powered on, but have a black screen. No matter how many times it's reset, it will not work. I had to take it apart and remove the ram and reinstall it then it would boot up.I believe I figured out the cause, using hibernation mode! So I changed hibernation mode to sleep mode and haven't had it happen again.That's the only problem I've had, it still works perfectly.****This laptop came perfect, new and not damaged. On its own it was a nice laptop but I upgraded the laptop ram with teamelite group ddr5 4800 2x16gb = 32 gbThen I upgraded the ssd to crucial p5 plus 500gb, used the cloning software to clone existing ssd then switched boot order and formatted the old drive. Everything is super fast and works great.One thing about the backlit keyboard, it does have it but it needs to be turned on in the lenovo software that comes installed.Also great feature if the ethernet port which would be great for gaming I imagine, tho I don't game with this laptop

I've had this Lenovo ideapad gaming 3 Ryzen 5 6600h rtx 3050 version with 8gb ddr5 ram & 256gb ssd for about a month now and so far the performance has been spectacular. There are a couple irritations rather then cons ill get into shortly. I was hesitant not knowing if this setup would run the games I play at the highest resolutions and frame rate this PC offers.This laptop has been flawless at running call of duty MW 2(2009), COD black Ops and GTA 5 on the highest settings with out any hiccups, choppy video, freezing etc. For me it has been lightning fast and silky smooth. Yes there are higher frame rates out there but the costs are astronomic for what little upgrades you get.I love the fact I haven't found any bloatware in this PC. Although not recommended by Lenovo it does allow overclocking. It stays cool even with heavy gameplay for hours on end. The fans work great at dispersing heat and are not so loud you get distracted while gaming. When just casually running browsers or streaming the fans never kick on it just stays cool enough to not need them.I've read users think its not sturdy enough? I think its very sturdy. The keyboard doesn't flex while pushing keys and its quite hefty. The screen doesn't feel wobbly or weak. Its not made of aluminum like an Asus tuf f15 but it does the job well.Other users say the brightness and colors are dim but that has not been the case for me. Its not 4k but I had to turn the brightness down. The colors are great for me. If you are a professional photo editor or video editor just get an external monitor. You shouldn't be editing professional work on a 15.6" screen anyway haha its a gaming laptop not a photo/video workstation. You'll need more power to render huge files.The only cons/ irritations-256gb ssd is just an outdated size for storage. GTA 5 alone is 142gb. Yes it can be upgraded but at least a 512gb should be standard. Crucial says it will support 2tb but I have not personally added that size. I will definitely be upgrading to at least 1tb.8gb ram has worked flawlessly with the aforementioned games I have installed. But it would have been nice to see a standard 16gb (2×8gb ddr5) cards installed. I will be upgrading to 32gb ddr5 2x16gb cards just because. The price jump for 16gb factory is crazy! Upgrading to 16gb costs like 40 bucks verses a $200 price jump for 16gb pre installed.So far I have not found any other cons to this system. I love it and am very happy with its performance and price. I don't think you'll find a better laptop at this price for gaming.Note I do have lightroom installed and it runs flawless. But its just for casual photo editing.I couldn't be happier. A+ purchase.

The model I received comes with a Ryzen 5 6600U, RTX 3050 4GB, 8GB of DDR5-4800 (I added another 8 gigs before doing much else so bear that in mind for performance reviews), and a 256 gig internal storage drive (I use an external 1TB SSD for games).Not a bad laptop overall. Had some issues but some were caused by Windows, not the laptop itself.If you're upgrading the RAM or storage, be extra sure to make sure Windows doesn't have any updates waiting. Windows 11 made the great decision to no longer tell users if their shutting down of a PC would also be applying updates. So unplugging the battery and adding more RAM unknowingly mid-update despite having shut down the laptop bricked my operating system and I had to reinstall. Downside is that you need ethernet upon a reinstall so you can download wifi drivers. Upside is it gets rid of the bloatware Lenovo tries preinstalling with the laptop.The inside is pretty simple, RAM is covered by a small metal tray with thermal pads on it for heat dissipation. A free M.2 storage slot is right in the open, ready for you to add storage as needed (you will need it). Thermals seem pretty solid, fans ramp up in gaming (I barely hear them over my headset which I don't run very loud and is an open-back headset, meaning I can hear noises outside of the headset fairly well) but rarely get too extreme.For gaming, it's a mixed bag. Needless to say, ray tracing will not be something you'll use on this laptop for playable frame rates. I doubt even 30 fps is achievable without dropping to 720p or less. Rainbow Six Siege was able to handle 1080p 120 fps consistently with mixed graphics settings (90 fov, ultra LOD, Medium textures and Shadows, most else set to low) with or without DLSS enabled. Though I did experience a bug where the render scaling option said I was running at ~850p even with the render scaling set to 100... an oddity to be sure. Halo Reach struggled to achieve similar results on Forge World, with bad tearing when the fps cap was set to 120. I lowered it to 60 and all was well, though drops may not be out of the question in high-intensity situations like custom games or campaign. Minecraft Java ran mostly above 60 fps on a modded server without Optifine or any other performance enhancers. Even in a particularly-taxing area it was mostly fine when the render distance was turned down. I'm sure with the use of Optifine or Sodium it'd be a very solid gaming experience.Windows 11 is a bit of a chore. Upon first installing Steam, I realized that my default Documents folder pinned to my Quick Access in the File Explorer was labeled under OneDrive. I never gave OneDrive permission to backup anything on my PC, as the measley 5 GB it gives you isn't enough for anything I would use a computer for. But it forces a backup, and deleting from the OneDrive cloud deletes it from your PC as well for... some insane reason. So be wary if you use Windows 11, make sure you remove the tabs from the Quick Access bar in File Explorer and replace them with the actual local file locations (Documents, Pictures, Music, etc).The keyboard is... weird. I've used mechanical and membrane alike in plenty of scenarios, but this one just feels weird compared to either. It's not unusable by any means but it takes getting used to. The trackpad is fine, I prefer having mouse buttons with my trackpad but it's not unusable even without them.The speakers are tinny. For 2W speakers it's not bad but it's not going to have the amazing sound quality the description would lead you to believe. Would suggest using headphones.The I/O is alright. Type-C with full DisplayPort functionality is nice to have, HDMI 2.0 is plenty for what this laptop is capable of, and the back-facing Ethernet and charging ports are quite handy in most situations. I've always been a fan of Lenovo's chargers as well, for some reason the reversible square shape just feels right. My only complaint would be a lack of USB ports, and the lack of SD/MicroSD. I know the latter is getting up there in age which makes it more a personal preference, but the former can make it difficult to use with numerous external devices (keyboard, mouse, storage, controllers, etc) since you are limited to 3 max only if you have type-C connectivity, otherwise you get two ports for peripherals and nothing more. An extra USB 2 port would have been nice to have.Overall it's a solid deal. Boot times are fast, gaming feels alright, the wifi signal is solid (though I did notice some lag while using a bluetooth Xbox Series controller with wifi, need to test and see if the lag is still present while using ethernet) and the laptop is easy to modify for basics like RAM and storage for the most part. A solid system from Lenovo.*Update 2/11/2023 - Found out that this laptop actually does support VRR via AMD Freesync. However, this is not listed anywhere the laptop can be found. I had to install AMD's graphics software in order to enable it, despite the laptop having an Nvidia GPU inside. This helped immensely with stuttery FPS in various games, though issues with Nvidia control panel's FPS limits caused other issues unrelated with the laptop itself.