Review - Lenovo IdeaPad 1 14AMN7

We have another low-priced laptop again – and this is the Lenovo IdeaPad 1 with the codename 14AMN7. It’s priced at $629 AUD (or $845 SGD) and we’re also getting a rather powerful slew of hardware. We have the Ryzen 3 7320U, 8GB of RAM which we’ll get into later – and 256GB of SSD.

Sounds compelling? What’s the catch? Let’s find out in today’s review.

We’ll have to start out expectations straight. This is a 14-inch laptop and it does look good. It also feels good to touch as well but is indeed using a plastic body. That’s okay for me since that means the entire laptop is rather lightweight.

One thing that I realized and liked is the bottom piece of the laptop. It feels like unpolished plastic coming directly from the molding press and it has a rather rough texture on it – and I actually like this. It provides more grip if I want to hold the laptop like this, and it also looks good. Yeah, I’m not a fan of shiny glossy plastic.

Now, let’s jump to the specs. It has this list of hardware – and looking at the specs alone, this should be a rather powerful laptop, right?

Actually, yes but here’s where AMD is at fault. The Ryzen 3 7320U is actually based on the Zen 2 architecture, which first debuted in 2019. In short, this chip is using some rather dated technologies at this point – but that’s to be expected for a rather low-end Ryzen 3 series chip.

Nonetheless, its quad-core processor with its AMD Radeon 610M integrated graphics can actually push out quite a lot of frames when we tried games like Genshin Impact with its lowest graphical settings. I mean, we’re getting around 30fps and I’d say it’s playable overall – so I think it’s okay.

We are testing the laptop using the high fan speed mode, by the way – we can press Fn+Q keys to toggle between the 3 profiles.

Even at the highest fan speed mode, it won’t ramp up to the point that it’s loud and whiny because the entire system won’t be that power-hungry anyway. While on the specs sheet, it says that this is a 15W chip, we actually saw it consistently taking in above 15W.

In this mode while playing Gensh Impact, the temperature is always below 70°C. Doesn’t really matter – but I’m just pointing it out.

Let’s talk about the RAM again. This laptop does come with 8GB RAM but we can only use 6GB of it. The remaining 2GB is permanently allocated to be VRAM for the Radeon 610M integrated graphics – and that is why when I’m browsing the web on Google Chrome, my tabs are always getting suspended.

The keyboard is also quite okay. It’s springy to type on and there is quite a deep travel distance too. The thing I like the most is the AccuType keycap design with that overhang at the bottom of the keycap.

The trackpad is also okay and no complaints overall. The palm rejection is great and that’s all that matters to me since I use it with an external mouse anyway.

Speaking of external mouse, I like the port selection and its placement on this laptop too. It has all the ports that we need and more – like the SD card reader. We do have a USB 2 port on the right side and that is dedicated to the external mouse. Which is why I’m okay with it – and the placement is good.

The battery life isn’t exactly the best since we can only get about 5 hours. It’s rather good despite its relatively small 40Wh battery.

Now, as for upgrades, we can’t do anything other than swapping out the SSD. This is the second time that I encountered a Lenovo laptop that is not using the standard M.2 2280. However, we can swap it the standard M.2 2280 SSD but we’ll void the warranty. This is also the first time I’m seeing a warranty sticker on the SSD screw.

And finally, for the price of So, at the price of $629 AUD or $845 SGD, this laptop should be around ~RM1,800. The reason why we don’t know the actual Malaysian price is that this laptop with this specific variant is only available in a few countries. As far as I can find, it’s available in Australia, Singapore, and Indonesia.

Regardless of the availability issue, the only issue I have regarding this laptop is the screen. It’s a 14-inch 1080p screen at 60Hz but it’s a TN panel. Yeah, TN panel. The screen never looks good because the viewing angle is just not good. When we tested the color accuracy – sheesh, it only covers 59.79% of sRGB color gamut. And the max brightness is around 250 nits brightness only.

Everything else about this laptop is actually very good. Still, I wouldn’t mind if Lenovo increased the price of this laptop by a little just so that we can get a 1080p IPS LCD screen. Doesn’t have to be the most color accurate screen, but that viewing angle is important.

But, we are planning another video talking about how to upgrade your laptop’s screen. Yes, it’s possible – because we did it on another laptop. This laptop is the Lenovo V14 that we reviewed a few months ago, and I just upgraded the screen. We’ll dive into that later. Stay subscribed to our YouTube channel.