APRIL 2019 PCWorld 53plug in a mouse and keyboard, and use it on
a desk without straining your neck. (If only
Lenovo offered a docking station specifically
for this purpose.)
A couple of gripes: The laptop’s hinge
isn’t stiff enough once it bends past about
120 degrees. As a compulsive leg shaker, I
often found that the IdeaPad 730S display
would gradually tip back with the computer
on my lap. The 16:9 widescreen display is
also a little too cramped vertically, at least with
the 150% default display scaling. Dialing it
down to 125% helped, but I’d love to see a
taller version of this laptop altogether.
KEYBOARD AND TRACKPAD
Despite the laptop’s thinness, the IdeaPad
730S keyboard offers a lot of travel, along
with two levels of backlighting when you
press the Function key and space bar. In a
typing test, I averaged 90
words per minute, versus 96
words per minute on my usual
mechanical keyboard. The
730S keyboard’s frame does
bend easily under pressure
toward the center, and I
would’ve liked the keys to be
a little less rigid, but it’s a solid
keyboard overall.
The trackpad,
meanwhile, provides a large,
practically frictionless surface
that supports Microsoft’s
Precision Touchpad drivers. This allows you
to tweak the trackpad’s sensitivity and assign
actions to three- and four-finger swipes. The
only thing holding this trackpad back from
excellence is the increasing pressure
required to click on it as you move further up
the surface. Folks who prefer tapping over
clicking should have no complaints.PORTS, CAMERA, SECURITY,
SPEAKERS
Buying the Lenovo IdeaPad 730S means fully
committing to USB-C and abandoning legacy
USB-A. The two ports on the right side
support Thunderbolt 3 for data transfer and
external displays, and one of those ports
offers always-on charging as well. The USB-C
port on the left side is primarily for charging
the laptop with the included power brick,
though you could technically power up theThe Lenovo IdeaPad 730S can fold flat, though we’re not sure why
we’d use it that way.