It might be OK for your budget, but don’t expect much. By that, I mean it will run...but be prepared to wait a lot. There are several potential areas where After Effects might slow down:
Graphics. With AMD integrated graphics instead of discrete graphics, it won’t be able to take full advantage of GPU acceleration, especially if the system only has 16GB RAM total.
Storage: With 512GB of storage, there might be limited space for the Media Cache and other temporary/cache files unless you are able to keep roughly 200GB or more free on that internal storage. Larger After Effects projects may slow down if there isn’t room for the cache files. You can get around this by attaching a fast external SSD and assigning Adobe caches to that volume.
RAM. If it has 16GB RAM and AMD Integrated Graphics, that means a portion of system RAM must be given to graphics, so it really has less than 16GB RAM to give to the system + applications. This may limit performance of After Effects. There may not be enough memory to do a real-time preview of an After Effects composition except for a very short length of time, unless you lower the preview resolution, skip preview frames, etc.
Cooling. I do not know how effective the Ideapad cooling system is, but if that laptop was designed for casual home/office use and can’t throw off the CPU/GPU heat generated by running video effects/editing applications, it will have to throttle down for thermal management. Meaning, it wouldn’t matter how fast it could be, it would have to slow down just to stay cool. Serious workstation laptops have beefed-up cooling to allow extended high performance.
The Ideapad is a more general-purpose (home/office) computer, not really designed to run software like After Effects. I have heard that (for general use, not necessarily for After Effects) the Lenovo Legion line is much better, with discrete graphics and other enhancements. I haven’t used either the Legion or Ideapad with After Effects though.
But if you looked at the price of the Legion line, you are starting to get into Mac price territory, and that underlines an unfortunate truth: After Effects is one of the most demanding applications that Adobe makes, so it is difficult to get a computer that can run it well for cheap. Running After Effects well on a laptop tends to require CPU, GPU, RAM, and storage upgrades that always push up the price, whether PC or Mac.
Again…for student work that Ideapad might be OK, especially for simple introductory exercises. But as compositions become more complex, expect more lagging and waiting. If you decide to do After Effects work professionally, then funding an appropriately powerful PC or Mac laptop must be included in your business plan.
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