Building upon its IdeaPad range, Lenovo has just revealed the IdeaPad 5 Pro, a powerful but slim laptop that comes with AMD’s latest mobile processors at its heart.
The Ryzen CPU-sporting model that’ll come to the U.S. ditches the 15-inch display of the standard IdeaPad laptops, and instead opts for a 16-inch screen; there is a 14-inch version but that’s not coming to America. Unsurprisingly, the IdeaPad Pro 5 looks to have drawn some inspiration from the success of the MacBook Pro 16-inch.
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While there are plenty of Windows 10 laptops that try to draw upon the design essence that makes the MacBook Pro so special to use, few have really mastered that blend of industrial design and ease of use. But the IdeaPad 5 Pro could be a contender; read on to find out why.
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro price and availability
Starting at $1,149, the 16-inch IdeaPad 5 Pro comes with a price tag that’s up there with other premium laptops like the Surface Laptop 3, Dell XPS 15, and MacBook Pro with M1. As such, it’ll need to deliver a solid high-end laptop experience if it's to distract attention from the aforementioned computers.
The IdeaPad 5 Pro is slated for a May release, though Lenovo hasn't narrowed down the date any further than that. We’re expecting to see the Microsoft Surface Laptop 4 arrive around the same time, so the IdeaPad 5 Pro could face some stiff competition.
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro specs
| Header Cell - Column 0 | Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro |
|---|---|
| Starting price | $1,149 |
| Processor | Next-gen AMD Ryzen mobile |
| Display | 16-inch IPS (2.5K), 120Hz refresh rate |
| Memory | up to 16GB |
| Storage | Up to 1TB PCIe M.2 |
| Graphics | Laptop-grade GeForce RTX |
| Ports | 2x USB Type A, 1x USB-C with Thunderbolt 4, SD reader, HDMI, 3.5mm audio |
| Battery | 75WHr |
| Weight | 4.4 pounds |
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro design
The Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro looks like the lovechild of a MacBook Pro 16-inch and a Lenovo ThinkPad X1. It has the rounded corners, narrow display bezels, and clean-looking keyboard deck and lid of the Apple machine, and the reasonably generous port selection and keyboard design of the Lenovo laptop. And the lower half of the IdeaPad 5 Pro is more of a trapezoid shape on the bottom than the MacBook Pro.
What appears to be a relatively large trackpad sits slightly off-center below the keyboard. And it uses a single seamless pad, rather than one with separate clickable buttons above it, as is the case in some Lenovo laptops.
Post selection comes in the form of a pair of USB Type-A ports, a full-sized SD card reader, USB-C with Thunderbolt 4 support, and an HDMI connection. And there’s still a 3.5mm audio jack for people without wireless headphones.
Clad in an all-metal chassis, the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 comes in Cloud Grey and Storm Grey colors; again not dissimilar to the MacBook Pro. Overall, the laptop looks like a slightly smarter and more premium take on the standard IdeaPad 5.
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro display
As mentioned earlier the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro has a 16-inch IPS display. That screen delivers a 2.5K resolution across a 16:10 aspect ratio, and comes with a 120Hz refresh rate and kicks out 350 nits of brightness.
The aspect ratio, 90% screen-to-body ratio and a fast refresh rate should make it a rather pleasant display to watch movies on or flit between a variety of apps. Lenovo claims the IdeaPad 5 Pro covers 100% of the sRGB color gamut, which could make it suitable for some video and photo editing, though we’d have to see how well it covers the Adobe RGB gamut before we’d recommend it for professional-grade photography work.
There’s also an IR camera in the top display bezel that will facilitate facial recognition logins through Windows Hello.
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro performance and battery life
Lenovo hasn’t mentioned which AMD Ryzen processors the IdeaPad 5 Pro will come with. But AMD is expected to have new Ryzen 5000 laptop CPUs on the horizon, so we’d expect them to make an appearance in the IdeaPad 5 Pro. Expect chips with eight cores and impressive core speeds, to crunch through demanding tasks and handle multitasking with ease.
With up to 16GB of DDR4 RAM on offer, as well as an optional Nvidia GeForce RTX dedicated GPU. The graphics options are notable, as they could include laptop versions of Nvidia's new GeForce RTX 3000-series, which we're expecting to see at CES 2021.
As such, the IdeaPad 5 Pro should have more than enough power to handle day-to-day professional computing tasks and some light gaming when work stops. Up to 1TB of PCIe M.2 SSD space should give plenty of speedy storage from which to access files and boot up apps rapidly.
There were no metrics for battery life, but the IdeaPad 5 Pro has a 75WHr battery pack that supports Lenovo’s Rapid Charge Express. That means a 15-minute charge in standby mode can deliver battery capacity for up to three hours of continuous 1080p video playback, depending on the display brightness.
Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro outlook
The Lenovo IdeaPad 5 Pro doesn't exactly push out the boat in terms of innovation. And arguably one could call it a basic MacBook Pro 16-inch inspired laptop. But it's set to sport a powerful specification, and if its keyboard and trackpad are up to scratch, then we could look at a strong Windows 10 take on the MacBook Pro.
We’d need to put the IdeaPad 5 Pro to the test before we can make any proper judgment. But as it stands the new Lenovo machine could be a pretty strong premium laptop to take on the finest from Apple, Dell, Asus, and Microsoft.
