Not everyone has the need (or the money) for a powerful desktop-replacement laptop, especially if you're only going to use it for things like emailing, viewing photos, and checking your Facebook page. For these tasks, a $249.99 (as tested) laptop like the Lenovo G40 will suffice. This 14-inch system is equipped with a capable Celeron processor and will give you around six hours of battery life, but it's hindered by a small hard drive and a stingy memory configuration. If you can find an extra $200 in your budget, the Dell Inspiron 17 5000 Series Non-Touch offers better performance and a more robust feature set.

Design and Features

At 0.98 by 15.1 by 10.4 inches (HWD), the 5.5-pound G40 is a bit too bulky for airplane travel but you'll have no trouble moving it from room to room. Its textured matte-black chassis is plastic but feels sturdy and doesn't showcase fingerprint smudges. Beneath the lid is a glossy 14-inch display with a 1,366-by-768 resolution framed by glossy-black bezels. The screen is bright, and color quality is good, until you move your viewing angle to around 50 degrees from center. At that point, colors begin to shift, and the picture becomes washed out. The panel won't display high-definition at 1080p, but it displays sharp, detailed 720p video.

The full-size, island-style Accu Type keyboard has a firm feel and features spacious keys that provide a comfortable typing experience, but there's no room for a number pad here. The touchpad is on the small side (3.5 by 1.8 inches) and has two mouse buttons that deliver a barely audible click when pressed. The pad is responsive, and despite its diminutive size, offers easy gesturing. The speakers embedded in the base are loud, but a tad trebly.

The G40 isn't exactly loaded with features. Like the Dell Inspiron 15 Non-Touch (3531), it's missing an optical drive, but its 320GB hard drive is smaller than the Dell Inspiron 15 Non-Touch's 500GB, and it only comes with 2GB of system memory (the Dell 15 Non-Touch has 4GB). However, it does have a LAN port, whereas the Dell 15 Non-Touch does not. The G40's ports include HDMI and VGA video outputs, two USB 2.0 ports, one USB 3.0 port, a headphone jack, and a 2-in-1 card reader. It is Wi-Fi b/g/n- and Bluetooth-enabled and has a 720p webcam embedded in the screen's upper bezel.

The G40 comes with Windows 8.1 with Bing and an assortment of Lenovo-branded apps, including Lenovo Photo Master, Lenovo PowerDVD10, and Lenovo SHAREit, which allows you to easily share files with your smartphone. It also comes with Cyberlink's PowerDirector and Power2Go software, trial versions of Microsoft Office 365 and McAfee LiveSafe, and eBay and Amazon shopping apps. Lenovo covers the G40 with a one-year warranty.  

Performance

The G40 has a 2.16GHz Intel Celeron N2830 processor with Intel's integrated HD Graphics engine. Its score of 1,581 on the PCMark 8 Work Conventional benchmark test is pretty much in line with other Celeron-based laptops, including the Dell 15 Non-Touch (1,554) and the Acer Aspire E3-111-C1BW (1,605). However, its paltry 2GB of RAM made for a low video encoding test score; it needed almost 15 minutes 54 seconds to complete the Handbrake test, while the Dell 15 Non-Touch completed it in 11:00, and the Acer E3-111-C1BW finished it in 6:03 (both have 4GB of system RAM). The Pentium-powered Dell 17 5000 Series needed 5:48. The G40 lagged behind the competition on the Photoshop test as well.

Graphics performance is typical for the systems integrated Intel HD Graphics, managing only 3 frames per second (fps) on the Heaven test at medium quality and 2fps at ultra quality. Results were similar on the Valley medium- and ultra-quality tests.

The G40's 32-watt lithium-ion battery lasted 5 hours 56 seconds on our battery rundown test, outlasting the Acer E3-111-C1BW (5:06) by 50 minutes and the Dell Inspiron 15 (I15RV-6190 BLK) (4:10) by 1 hour and 46 minutes. The Dell Inspiron 15 Non-Touch led with an impressive 6:19.

Conclusion

With the Lenovo G40, you get a capable 14-inch desktop-replacement laptop that will handle your basic home productivity workload without putting much of a dent in your budget. It's thin and light enough to shuttle around the house or office and will last the better part of a working day between charges, but its miserly memory configuration means you'll have to be patient while it struggles to complete multimedia tasks. Additionally, its somewhat small hard drive will likely fill up quickly if you use it to store lots of multimedia content. For better all-around performance and features like a DVD drive and a 500GB hard drive, the Dell Inspiron 17 5000 Series is your best bet and remains our Editors' Choice for budget desktop-replacement laptops.