Rodrigo Andresen
Even with the emergence of Nvidia’s next-gen mobile GPUs, RTX 3050-powered machines will likely remain the cheapest options on the gaming notebook market for quite some time. Therefore, bargain hunters who are looking for a budget gaming laptop from Lenovo may want to take a look at Amazon’s current deal for the IdeaPad Gaming 3i.
The online retailer has put the cheapest base configuration of the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i on sale for US$649, which constitutes a US$350 or 35 percent discount in relation to its MSRP, and also marks Amazon’s lowest price to date according to Camelcamelcamel. This gaming laptop is equipped with an Intel Core i5-12500H Alder Lake CPU, 8GB of upgradable DDR4 memory and a 512GB SSD. As already mentioned, the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Gaming also sports a GeForce RTX 3050 dGPU with a TGP of 85 watts, which is the most budget-friendly RTX model in Nvidia’s Ampere lineup of mobile graphics cards.
As with many cheap gaming laptops, the most obvious weakness of the Lenovo IdeaPad 3 Gaming is its 15-inch 120Hz IPS display with a regular Full-HD resolution of 1920 by 1080. In our comprehensive review of a comparable AMD configuration, we found the screen to be pretty dim and also limited in terms of color reproduction. Nevertheless, this budget gaming laptop deal is a quite reasonable purchase in the sub-US$800 price range, in which practically all machines are equipped with a more or less poor display.
Grab the Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3i on sale for US$649 at Amazon
My fascination for technology goes back a long way to the Pentium II era. Modding, overclocking and treasuring computer hardware has since become an integral part of my life. As a student, I further developed a keen interest in mobile technologies that can make the stressful college life so much easier. After I fell in love with the creation of digital content while working in a marketing position, I now scour the web to bring you the most exciting topics in the world of tech. Outside the office, I’m particularly passionate about motorsports and mountain biking.
