Lenovo Ideapad 530S offers beauty and brains in a compact device

Lenovo's Ideapad is a beautiful laptop. Its aluminium finish may be a smudge magnet, but it looks sleek and feels smooth. It will need some tender loving care, but treat that as just one of those things we do to look good.

The 14-inch display with its narrow bezels is almost a full screen. A powerful yet compact design seems to be the demand of the season, so Lenovo has decided to fit its 530S models with the best of everything.

Take the WQHD (Wide Quad High Definition) display. With a 16:9 aspect ratio (16 pixels horizontally for every 9 vertically, therefore wide), the display is packed with four times more pixels than in a 720p display, totalling 2560×1440. The general theory is that more pixels equal better display, but it does depend on the screen size. And it works for the 530S. The colours are deep and the screen is bright but not excessively so. Watching video on it is a treat by laptop standards.

The one I reviewed comes with an Intel i5 processor, one below Intel's best, the i7 (available in higher-end models). Coupled with 16 GB DDR4 memory, the laptop is swift at everything — installing and opening applications, switching between windows, transferring data, etc. Initiating it gets even faster with the fingerprint sensor.

The device can open to a full 180 degrees and the tab view encourages you to use the computer as a tablet too, especially because the screen is so vivid. But at 1.49 kilograms, it's not the lightest of laptops, which seems to defeat the purpose.

The 530S is a fast machine, and the NVIDIA GeForce graphics make sure it runs the most graphic-intensive games. I tried the Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag for a couple of hours and Rise of Nations for an overnight match. The games played along with a few tabs on Google Chrome running in the background and Cortana, the voice assistant, taking occasional commands when the play paused. But in a few minutes, the laptop started showing signs of buckling. Although its air vents are smartly placed, where the screen connects to the keyboard to avoid warm air burning you if you keep the computer on your lap, it started heating up pretty quickly. The cooling fan also made a whistling sound, which is likely to annoy in a quiet environment. Though the user is advised to place the laptop on a table top during heavy usage, it's still disappointing for a premium laptop to give in to pressure so easily.

Lenovo claims the battery can last up to eight hours. While it charged from 0 to 100 per cent under two hours, it discharged to 15 per cent in four hours of moderate usage.

530S has the drawbacks of a quintessential Windows 10-powered machine. Which makes it somewhat expensive at Rs72,999; there are comparable laptops in the market for less. But if price is not a deal-breaker, the Ideapad 530S is a near-perfect combination of fast machine in a pretty package.