Lenovo IdeaPad S540

5owners with an opinion

80%of verdicts positive

1/0positive/negative since 2024

5.5 yrslongest happy owner

2happy after 3+ years

Praised for repairability and performance; criticized for durability.

What people wrote

Likes itOwned 5.5 years

I have used an IdeaPad S540 for about 5-6 years. Upgrading RAM, WiFi modules along the way. Was bummed when Apple’s Mac Pro died on me 11months with no warning. And went back to IdeaPad again (this is where I gave up on Thinkpad). So I would swear by it. Not the current one, it’s got soldered RAM and I am less of a fan, but it just works - no issues.

Likes itOwned 3 years

The (quite cheap) Lenovo Ideapads are quite good. I've upgraded my S540 with 32 GB of RAM (instead of the base 8) myself, it can receive a second M.2 SSD, and the first one is also upgradeable. The only small problem is with the keyboard : the most used keys are completely blank after 3 years of use :)

Likes it

I have it's cheaper cousin, the IdeaPad S540 with Ryzen 4800U - running Fedora 37 and it works great.

Doesn’t like it

My lenovo experiences thus far have been mixed. Had a work-provided s540 which was rubbish. Fragile case with blemishes straight out of the factory, so-so performance and battery life, and the main board cracked (literally) just outside of warranty. Replacing that I got a t460p which I’ve had for 2 years now, and that is an amazing machine. Very good build quality, light and compact, while having excellent performance (i7 6700 hq, 32 gb, dedicated graphics), quiet under load and excellent battery life. And it looks like those old-school thinkpads, which is cute. I had heard the T series is good and the S is not, but it’s amusing to experience that myself.

Likes it

I'm running a Lenovo S540 (the line has been discontinued but it is an ultrabook). It's processor isn't as good as the 4th gen X1 carbon you can check the comparison here: https://www.cpubenchmark.net/compare.php?cmp%5B%5D=2608&cmp%... My S540 has an SSD,16gb ram and the slower processor and it churns through work fine, I mainly do Java development and on top of that I use the Play Framework which compiles to both Java and Scala so it's more CPU intensive. I can easily run one or two IDE instances alongside 10+ chrome tabs,several terminals and mongo/mysql db GUIs.

Recommends it

I own a Lenovo Thinkpad S540 and I just bought my second yesterday in the black Friday deals. For me it's been the perfect Linux Laptop, practically everything works straight out of the box, good performance and I use it for home and professional programming. It's slim and light, I've used it for travelling between Europe and the US and it's been fine on the move (definitely not as petite as other ultrabooks though). The specs are below: - Intel Core i7-4510U Processor - 15.6" FHD (1920x1080) Anti-glare Display Black - AMD Radeon HD 8670M Graphics 2GB - 16GB RAM - Keyboard Backlit - UK English - 256GB Solid State Drive Serial ATA3 OPAL2.0 I managed to get it for just over $1000 dollars yesterday so I know it's a little out of your price range but I find the keyboard solid, screen is pretty good and I don't notice any performance issues. (I mainly do Java development and that can be resource intensive). Perhaps you could pick one up on ebay even cheaper, happy to answer any other questions you've got about it!