Lenovo IdeaPad 300-15IBR Notebook Review

The chassis of the Ideapad 300 is typical for Lenovo notebooks. The design is simple and the matte black plastic elements offer enough grip to hold the notebook securely. Closer examination reveals many sharp corners end edges. Some of the gaps between the materials are not even and the maintenance hatch on the bottom isn’t quite flush with the rest of the unit. Another negative aspect: the back of the display lid flexes easily when pressure is applied.

As we mentioned earlier, the notebook comes with a maintenance cover. The cover, which is attached with two screws, allows access to the HDD, the wireless module, the RAM slot (1/1 slot occupied), and the CMOS battery. The battery is also removable, but requires tools as well. The 15.6-inch notebook is 23.4 mm thick and weighs 2.3 kg, so it is pretty easy to transport.

The port selection is typical for this type of notebook. Quite disappointing is the fact that only one of the USB ports supports USB 3.0. The ports are located towards the front on both sides, which makes accessing them quite easy, although plugged-in cables could potentially get in the way. The SD card reader is sufficiently fast. With our reference SD card Toshiba Exceria Pro SDXC 64 GB UHS-II, we registered 61.4 MB/s when transferring 5 MB JPEG files. The tool AS SSD posted even higher read and write rates of 76.77 MB/s and 73.65 MB/s, respectively.