Lenovo IdeaPad 5 15.6" 15ALC05 Graphite Gray 2022

The Lenovo IdeaPad 5 15ALC05 is a budget 15-inch laptop with a decent Ryzen 5 CPU and backlit keyboard, but it stumbles hard with only 8GB of non-upgradeable RAM and a 256GB SSD. It's fine for very light daily tasks, but most people will outgrow it quickly.

The Lenovo IdeaPad 5 15ALC05 is one of those laptops that looks like a solid deal on paper until you dig into the spec sheet. For around $650, you get an AMD Ryzen 5 5500U, a 15.6-inch Full HD IPS display, and Windows 11 Home, all wrapped in a fairly clean Lenovo chassis. It's got a backlit keyboard, a decent port selection, and even a 57Wh battery that should last a full workday. If you just need something for web browsing, Office apps, and streaming video, this machine can absolutely get the job done.

But here's the catch: 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD are pretty tight in 2025. That RAM amount lands in the bottom 14% of all laptops in our database, and the storage isn't much better at the 26th percentile. It's not a dealbreaker for lightweight tasks, but it means this IdeaPad 5 will feel sluggish if you try to juggle a dozen Chrome tabs, a Zoom call, and a couple of background apps at the same time. So is this budget 15-inch laptop right for students, casual users, or anyone hunting for a simple home machine? Let's break it down.

The 6-core Ryzen 5 5500U is still a competent chip for everyday work. It falls a bit below average in our CPU rankings (around the 35th percentile), but that's more a reflection of the competitive field than any serious slouch. For Office, streaming, and light photo edits, it's perfectly fine. The integrated Radeon Graphics are better than Intel's older UHD options, landing well above average at the 69th percentile for GPU, so you can even do some very light gaming like Stardew Valley or older titles on low settings.

What really chokes this system is the memory and storage combo. 8GB of soldered RAM means you're stuck with what you get, and that 256GB SSD fills up fast once you install a few programs and sync some cloud storage. In our testing, multitasking took a noticeable hit once we opened more than a handful of browser tabs. If you plan to keep this laptop for more than a year or two, the hardware feels like it's already gasping for air.

At $650, the IdeaPad 5 15ALC05 is priced right in the budget sweet spot, but the value gets undermined by the RAM and storage corners. There are plenty of sub-$700 laptops from Acer, HP, and ASUS that offer 16GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD right out of the box. If you can live with 8GB and don't mind occasionally offloading files to an external drive or the cloud, it's a serviceable machine. But for most people, spending fifty bucks more gets you a laptop that feels far less cramped and will age much better.

Stacked against the high-end competition in our database like the Apple MacBook Pro M5 or the ASUS ProArt PX13, this Lenovo isn't even playing the same sport. Those laptops cost three to four times as much and deliver wildly better screens, performance, and build. But that's not really the IdeaPad's fight. Where it does compete is with the Acer Aspire 5, HP Laptop 15, and Dell Inspiron 15 series. Against those, the Lenovo holds its own in keyboard feel and general sturdiness, but it consistently falls behind in memory and storage capacity at this price point. For example, a similarly priced HP Pavilion 15 often packs a 512GB SSD and sometimes a brighter display. If storage and future-proofing matter, the Lenovo looks like the skimpy option.

Skip this laptop if you need more than a handful of apps open at once, do any kind of development work, or rely on local storage for large files. The soldered 8GB of RAM and small SSD will become a headache. If you can stretch your budget a little, grab something with 16GB RAM and a 512GB SSD like the Acer Aspire 5 or HP Envy x360. Power users should look elsewhere entirely.

I'd only recommend the Lenovo IdeaPad 5 15ALC05 if you find it on a steep sale or if you are absolutely certain your workload will never grow beyond a few browser tabs and Word documents. It's a pleasant laptop to use for short bursts and basic stuff, with a keyboard that punches above its class. But the soldered 8GB of RAM and tiny drive feel shortsighted for a 2025 laptop, even a budget one. Unless the price drops another $100 or so, there are simply better-equipped options in the same aisle.