It's a conflicting time to be a tech enthusiast, or even just to need a new laptop for work. Stratospheric pricing has made it tricky to recommend anything with onboard memory or SSD storage, and terms like "budget" and "good value" all carry caveats about how they relate to the overall market. Until today. The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11 is a fantastic value, with a snappy processor, good screen options and a premium feel.

For $850, you get a Snapdragon X2 Plus chip, a crisp and colorful touchscreen, and phenomenal battery life, and you can't say that about almost any other laptop under $1,000. Seriously. If that's your budget, this is the laptop to get.

It's not a perfect device, but nothing at this (or any other) price point is. The trade-offs to get to that price point are all ones you can live with, as long as you don't want to play the latest games at high frame rates or chew through video editing.

About this review: Lenovo loaned XDA the IdeaPad Slim 5x used in this review, and had no input into its contents.

Price, specs, and availability

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11 is one of the first laptops to feature Qualcomm's Snapdragon X2 Plus chips, although I should perhaps say "chip," because the only option right now is the lowest-end X2P-42-100, which has a 4GHz boost clock, six cores, and Adreno X2-45 graphics. It's paired with 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD for $850, and increasing either of those would take it out of budget territory. Seriously, the jump to 32GB RAM costs $290, and doubling the storage costs $150.

The rest of the upgrades are very affordable. You can choose the OLED display option for $30 more if you don't want a touchscreen and want a brighter display, and only $10 gets you a 70Whr battery over the included 54.7Whr. The battery life on the base model is great, but we can all do with more capacity.

The only value here is good

The IdeaPad grew up

The Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11 might be at a budget price point, but it feels surprisingly premium. 15-inch laptops tend to be heavier, but this one isn't, and it's under 0.61 inches thick, which makes it super easy to carry around. It looks good too, with an off-gray color and rounded edges.

It no longer opens past 180 degrees, unlike last year's model, but that's fine. Being able to use the touchscreen flat is a helpful feature; the keyboard is nicely spaced and has good key travel, and the trackpad glides well. I don't like that it clunks when you press on it, but that's a minor gripe.

The webcam is functional enough and has IR for Windows Hello, which worked well. It's not a great webcam, but that's the case with any budget laptop. The speaker setup gets loud enough, but can sound a little tinny, especially on video calls.

And while ultra-premium laptops are removing ports at a great rate, you get two USB-A, two USB-C, HDMI 2.1, a headphone jack, and a microSD card reader. I can't pick at the design or utility here, not at this price.

Qualcomm's X2 Plus is surprisingly good

The lower chip keeps pace with last year's X Elite

The Snapdragon X2 Plus used in the IdeaPad Slim 5x is the lower-powered version, with six cores instead of ten, and the Adreno X2-45 iGPU runs at only 0.9 GHz. Even then, it performs similarly to last year's Snapdragon X Elite, and you've got plenty of processing power for everyday tasks.

Single-core performance is only slightly behind the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme, and multicore performance is what you'd expect from a six-core chip. Snapdragon laptops are in such high demand that the 10-core X2 Plus chip is probably delayed due to stock levels, but I'm not sure if you need to wait. The six-core chip is surprisingly capable.

You can game a little, too, if you don't mind working through your backlog of older titles. I've been happily looting my way through Borderlands 2 at native resolution and medium settings, with minimum frame rates never dropping below 60. That's impressive, given that last year's Plus chips could barely manage double digits.

Battery life is phenomenal. That's it, that's the real story here. Performance numbers only matter if you can use them away from the wall, and I'm happy to say that you can. With looping video, the IdeaPad Slim 5x lasted 20 hours, only a few shy of the Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme and its 70Whr battery. If you upgrade the battery in the IdeaPad, you'll possibly beat that.

The choice of displays is simple enough

IPS with touch, or OLED without

The IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11's LCD touchscreen is better than I expected. It only reached 354 nits in my testing, short of the 400 listed on the spec sheet, but it covers 100% sRGB, 71% AdobeRGB, and 73% P3, so it's colorful (and is accurate in those colors), and the 1200p resolution is crisp enough for the 15.3-inch size.

I found myself using the touchscreen more than I usually do, perhaps because I disliked the touchpad's feel and noise. But you lose the touchscreen if you spend $30 to upgrade to the higher-resolution, higher-refresh rate OLED panel, making it a harder choice than usual.

Should you buy the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11?

You should buy the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11 if:

• You need a basic laptop to handle everyday tasks
• Your budget is less than $1,000
• You're a student and need excellent battery life

You should NOT buy the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x if:

• You want to play graphically intensive games
• You have a smaller budget (go for the MacBook Neo)
• You have programs that won't run on Arm

For $850, the Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5x Gen 11 understands the assignment. Let's not forget that when the Snapdragon X Elite launched, you had to pay $1,300 for similar specifications and performance, and that was two years ago. The IdeaPad Slim 5x is a good value through that lens, and a great value in the current market.

This is a solid choice for students or office workers who value battery life and need performance where it counts. Oh, and I forgot to mention that it's nearly silent, even when running benchmarks on loop. For Windows laptop users, it's so far above the alternatives under $1,000 that it's hard to recommend anything else.