TechRadar picks 16GB Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 at £664 in Argos Big Red Sale

According to TechRadar, the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 is now £664 at Argos, down from £829, when buyers use code RED20. The code applies a 20% discount, or just under £166. The 16-inch Windows 11 Home laptop has an Intel Core Ultra 5 322 processor, 16GB DDR5 RAM, and a 512GB SSD. TechRadar said 16GB of memory is enough for day-to-day office multitasking, and that the lower price of 8GB laptops is not worth their sluggish performance. The article described the machine as best for remote workers and students who want good general performance for productivity tasks such as running office software, browsing, and streaming.

TechRadar scored the IdeaPad Slim 3 four stars in its review. It described the machine as 'fairly portable for its size, is attractive enough, and has enough performance for most people's day-to-day needs. With its low price, it's a great value for those that just need a Windows computer.' The publication said the laptop is not a workstation for 3D rendering, gaming, video editing, or running many large language models at once, and was not intended to be. It said the machine handles browsing, streaming, emails, word processing, and similar tasks well enough. In its tests, TechRadar found it was 'a reliable 16-inch laptop' that delivered good overall performance for users who just need a decent Windows laptop for work.

In its price comparison, TechRadar noted that the same model with a 256GB SSD costs only £24 less, so the 512GB version offers double the storage. The closest cheaper alternative in the Argos sale that TechRadar cited is a Ryzen 5-powered 15.6-inch HP laptop at £569, reduced from £579. The article's author said that after owning several HP and Lenovo laptops, he prefers Lenovo's build quality and performance and would choose the IdeaPad over the HP every time, though he added that the HP's specs are good enough. TechRadar also said there are plenty of 16GB laptop deals at Argos, but it chose the IdeaPad Slim 3 because of its specifications and the real-world performance tests it had run. The author wrote that of all the laptops in the Argos sale, he would choose the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3, calling it ideal for working from home and his pick of the bunch on the Argos tech sale.

TechRadar's guidance was to buy the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3 for remote work and general daily business tasks, and to skip it for demanding workloads. The article was written by Steve, B2B Editor for Creative & Hardware at TechRadar Pro, who tests and reviews software, hardware, and office furniture for modern workspaces.