Battle of the Laptops: The Pursuit of Coolness

The Lenovo Ideapad Slim 5 Gen 10 (model no. 13ARP10), with its 13.3-inch WUXGA IPS display and Ryzen 7 processor, is perhaps the Windows laptop to buy for those who want an M4-powered Apple MacBook Air but don't want to spend Rs 1.20 lakh

Last month, I’d written about my son’s laptop. Or rather, the fact that the old one was broken and we were looking to buy a new one. Having told my son that I’d been using computers for close to 40 years, had set up and run an animation, video editing and computer graphics training institute in the mid-1990s and had once headed the writers’ team at CHIP (a leading computers/technology magazine back in the late-1990s), I assumed he would be sufficiently impressed. And that he would not question my wisdom in selecting a laptop that would be best suited to his requirements. Clearly, I was clueless about just how hard - perhaps even impossible - it is to impress the young these days.

My son has finished school about a month ago and will soon be starting college. Which would mean some homework, maybe a few college assignments. Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel sheets, web browsing, emails, video chats and watching videos. That should be about it, right? So, I suggested we get something with an i3, i5 or Ryzen 5 (hexa-core) U-series processor, 16GB of RAM, 512GB SSD, 15.6-inch screen and a good display, ideally a full-HD IPS LCD. A fair number of such laptops are currently offered by manufacturers like Acer, HP, Asus, Lenovo, Dell and MSI, at prices ranging between Rs 35,000 to 45,000. Laptops with an IPS display are a bit more expensive than those with non-IPS displays but still cheaper than OLED displays.

I suggested 4-5 different laptops, all within the Rs 35K-45K range, and asked my son to take a look at those and let me know which one he’d like to get. Secretly, I hoped he’d choose something that would be closer to the Rs 35K mark and I would get to save some money. I should have known that was never going to happen. For my 17-year-old son – and, it seems to me, for most kids of his generation – phones and laptops and other electronic devices are not just about the utility factor or only about getting things done with those devices. It’s also the ‘cool’ factor. In addition to being able to do stuff, devices must also be cool. If it isn’t ‘thanda thanda, cool cool,’ it isn’t worth having. And when it comes to cool, Apple is supposedly the undisputed king. My son wanted an Apple MacBook Air, with the latest M4 chip and 13.6-inch screen. Suitably spec’d, the damn thing costs Rs 1.20 lakh and I told my son there’s no way I was going to spend that much money. So, it had to be something that would at least be close to an M4-powered MacBook Air – in spirit if not in actual performance. A Windows laptop that wouldn’t feel out of place when placed next to an Apple MacBook Air.

After doing a great deal of his own research (and after having rejected all of mine), my son settled on the undeniably cool Lenovo Ideapad Slim 5 Gen 10 (model no. 13ARP10), powered by the Octa-core Ryzen 7 7735HS processor, with 16GB LPDDR5X RAM, 512GB SSD, 13.3-inch WUXGA IPS display with 400Nits brightness and all-metal chassis. A stylish, compact, ultra-portable, high-performance laptop, albeit one that’s priced at Rs 62,000 – almost twice as much as I’d been hoping to spend and get away with.

My son’s argument was that the Lenovo costs only half as much as an M4-powered MacBook Air, yet has most of the MB Air’s benefits in terms of light weight, portability, performance and sheer style. My firm belief was that frugality is a virtue, being cost-conscious is a good thing and that a Rs 35K-40K laptop would have all the power and functionality that my son could possibly need, at least for the next three years that he’d be spending in college. And so my son and I went to war, quoting performance figures and processor test results and laptop review results from all over the Internet.

In the end, I gave in. We went to a Lenovo store, saw the svelte little Ideapad Slim 5 and even I had to agree that it looked very cool, though I still wasn’t entirely convinced that getting a laptop with a 13.3-inch screen, rather than the more conventional 15.6-inch display, was a very good idea. Paying much more for getting much less (in terms of screen real estate) wasn’t something I understood, but sometimes the child’s happiness is more important than logic and reasoning. And so, we got the cool little Lenovo that my son wanted.

Personally, I still use a desktop PC at home, with a 27-inch monitor, full-size keyboard, wired mouse and a powerful pair of Edifier speakers. My PCs have gotten ever more powerful over the last 3-4 decades but the basic format has remained the same – a separate table and chair placed in one corner of my bedroom, a full-sized monitor and keyboard, and a good pair of speakers. I have, of course, used laptops provided by my employers in different workplaces but given a choice, I still prefer full-sized desktop PCs for getting work done. Still, I did try my son’s new laptop for an hour or two and found it surprisingly good. The keyboard is easy to get used to and the typing experience is pretty good, the display is sharp and bright with great viewing angles, the Ryzen 7 with 16GB RAM is a snappy, reasonably fast combo and gets things done without complaining, and audio quality is generally good – watching movies, listening to music and video chatting etc. are all perfectly fine. Gaming? I’m not a gamer so can’t say much about the laptop’s gaming capabilities. But it does come with AMD Radeon 680M graphics, which along with the Ryzen 7 processor should mean that at least basic gaming shouldn’t be a problem.

If I were to ever migrate from my trusty old desktop PC and get a laptop for myself, I think I’d still get one with a 16-inch display. I need a big display to keep my 52-year-old myopic eyes happy and if that means a bit of heavy lifting while travelling with a laptop, I’ll live with that. But to each his own. My son still dreams of buying the latest iPhone and latest MacBook Air someday but until the time that happens, he’s finally happy with his almost-equally-cool Windows laptop and for that, I’m grateful to Lenovo for making the Ideapad Slim 5 Gen 10, model no. 13ARP10.