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Lenovo IdeaPad S540 Hands-On

Written By Alejandro Maquinto
Published • November 20th, 2019
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The Lenovo IdeaPad S540 was launched alongside the Lenovo S145 back in September for people who wanted a bigger and better display, more powerful hardware and a full-sized keyboard. Today, we’ll be showcasing the laptop, as well as give you our initial thoughts.

Starting with the display, the Lenovo IdeaPad S540 is equipped with a 15.6-inch IPS display capable of 300nits of brightness. While it’s good enough for everyday use, creative professionals might be better off looking elsewhere as it’s only rated for 72% NTSC. The side bezels are slim, and the chin is reasonably sized.

On the top bezel sits the webcam, which can be hidden with a shutter.

On top, the Lenovo S540 has a clean design with only the Lenovo branding sitting on the lower right side.

Below there are three rubber feet, a large intake grill, as well as the two speakers sitting on the front on both sides.

Following the clean design, the front has nothing on it. While there are no comfort grooves to swivel the lid, opening it is easy and can be done with one hand.

On the left, you can find the charging port, HDMI port, USB Type-C, and a 3.5mm headphone jack.

Situated on the right are LED indicators, SD card reader, and two USB Type-A ports.

There are no vents at the back, only the big hinge that spans across the laptop.

The keyboard is almost full-sized, with the nav keys sharing the arrow keys and can be accessed using the Fn key. The switches are the standard scissor-switch, chiclet-style keyboard with great tactile feedback, no noticeable pretravel, and around 1mm post-travel. There’s no key wobble, but the regular keys feel inconsistent when pressing on the side. The long keys feel like there are stabilizers, though, which is a big plus. The keyboard has two levels of white backlighting that is activated by pressing the Fn key + spacebar.

The touchpad is smooth and responsive, with tactile buttons underneath.

Lenovo also added a fingerprint reader along with the webcam shutter for added security.

In terms of performance, our model came in with a 15.6-inch 60hz IPS display, Intel Core i7-8565U, NVIDIA GeForce MX 250, 12GB of RAM and 512GB of SSD storage. On paper, the laptop seems like a great productivity machine for students and on-the-go professionals. Stay tuned for our in-depth review to see how well the Lenovo IdeaPad S540 performs.

The IdeaPad S540 is now available in all major electronics stores for PHP 65,995.

Lenovo IdeaPad S540 specs:
15.6-inch FHD IPS display
Intel Core i7-8565U
NVIDIA GeForce MX 250
12GB 2400MHz DDR4 RAM
512GB PCIe SSD
WiFi 802.11 AC (2X2)
Bluetooth 4.2
Webcam with Shutter
Microphone
Fingerprint Reader
USB 3.1 Type-C
2 x USB 3.1 Type A (1 with charging support)
HDMI 1.4b
SD Card Reader
Headphone/mic combo
52.5Wh battery
358mm x 245mm x 16.9mm
1.95kg