Lenovo's 13-inch IdeaPad S540-13ARE ultrabook with Renoir-U APUs now available in Europe

13-inch notebooks are currently among those models that are not getting enough attention from big brands, especially now that AMD is offering so many great laptop APU solutions, plus prices tend to be a bit higher than the 14-inch siblings. While it is true that AMD is in a bit of trouble with the Renoir supply chain, there are OEMs such as Lenovo that offer 13-inch options like the IdeaPad S540-13ARE model at least in Europe (tough luck for the American Lenovo fans, though).

The new 13-incher gets Ryzen 5 4600U and Ryzen 7 4800U APU options with integrated Vega GPUs, which can be coupled with either 8 or 16 GB of DDR4-3220 RAM. Unfortunately the RAM is soldered, so no upgrade options here. Storage is handled through an M.2 2242 or 2280 NVMe PCie 3.0 x4 SSD up to 1 TB in capacity.

On the display side, we find two very good 13.3-inch options. First is a QHD (2560 x 1600) 16:10 IPS screen with 300 nits luminance, glossy finish and 100% sRGB color gamut. The other is similar but has a low power consumption mode.

There is support for Wi-Fi + Bluetooth through two M.2 card options, yet the port selection is quite limited, as it only includes 1x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 with Always On function plus 2x USB-C 3.2 Gen 1 with Power Delivery and DisplayPort modes, and an audio combo jack. It also comes with a 56 Wh battery and the light aluminum chassis keeps the total weight at around 2.76 lbs.

Lenovo France has a special offer now for the Ryzen 7 4800U model with 16 GB RAM and 512 GB SSD for 1299 Euro, but if that seems too expansive, one could always go for the Ryzen 5 4600U model with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB storage that is currently priced at 800 Euro.