Customer Ratings & Reviews

Could be faster. Then again….I only paid like 130. Fine for BASIC task that you don’t mind waiting in. Email, office/excel docs & spreadsheets. Fiddle around and easily transport.

She was a great laptop for the last four years, but she has slowed down a lot. The fan has always been relatively loud and nothing I ciuld do much about. She struggles ro run games with Medium-Low requirements like League of Legends and definitely cant run games like Ark or Rocket League. But the first year or two she did well. Had to get a new laptop. I’d recommend a more recent laptop. I

Too slow, it’s not bad for work. The screen is very nice, and at times it can be fast but overall too slow

The labtop came in great condition it just runs very slow and it won’t connect to certain apps

With an admirably long battery life, decent build quality, weight less than 3 pounds, and reasonable serviceability for web browsing and Office apps productivity, this laptop is actually a decent deal if you can get it on one of these crazy sales where it is $100-$120 off in price! Otherwise, when you approach its full retail price, I would skip it and spend an extra chunk of money on a machine with a tad more modern specs like 8GB of RAM to minimize your frustration, even if you must buy refurbished or renewed. If you do decide to buy this laptop, I feel I am obligated to first advise potential buyers on how to setup this laptop so that they do not pull out all their hair and then immediately return this laptop or set it on fire out of frustration. Steps to setting this laptop up in a manner that maintains your sanity: 1. Take a deep breath and let go of your initial 2023 speed expectations. This is going to take a while, get ready for the marathon, because this will be no sprint. 2. Plug it into power and preferably perform this setup while you have a movie or show or two in a row playing in the background to distract your attention while this machine slowly proceeds through its setup. Satisfactory setup and usage took me nearly three hours waiting on the machine to slowly update and set up. 3. When you get through the initial Windows installer setup and first boot onto the desktop, DON’T TOUCH THE MACHINE. It is likely going to be pegged out at 100% of CPU and RAM usage while it is first booting up and doing a ton of background processes and tweaks. Any actions you try to perform are going to feel so slow you will think the laptop is busted. It is best to wait for maybe 10 minutes and follow whatever prompts that pop up like Edge settings before you go clicking around too vigorously. If you have OneDrive from another Windows computer and you have logged in with your Microsoft account, this can add another long and indeterminate amount of time that you need to let this sit idle while it retrieves all your cloud information and makes it available for access via the native OneDrive folder. 4. Next, go into the settings to Windows Update and have it check for updates. Install all updates and then restart the computer as instructed. Then check AGAIN for updates, and install all of those, restarting if need be. By doing that, you are making sure you have the latest Windows updates and drivers for your computer installed so you know that none of those issues are bogging you down during your first real use of the machine. 5. Uninstall McAfee Security. The Windows security software installed on this operating system is sufficient for most and McAfee is a memory hog and will constantly pester you with security program offers and coupons. 6. Check Windows Update ONE MORE TIME or TWO MORE TIMES for updates, just to make sure nothing has been missed. 7. Now, you are ready to start your real use of the machine! Now to the lengthier part of my review. I am going to be honest: I was ready to give up on this laptop. Through the entire length of this 3 hour or so set up and update process, I was ready to huck this laptop out the window. It was slow as all get out in every metric while it was slowly and laboriously updating, with the RAM and CPU pegged at 100% utilization almost the entire setup process. That was not a good sign. Much to my surprise, this machine almost had a sort of “break-in” period, where it was initially clunky in its usage through all of its updates, but now has managed to actually be enjoyable enough to use that I am incorporating it into my daily usage for this review period! This laptop is incredibly lightweight at less than 3 pounds on my scale (2Ibs 14.8oz) and is only a half an inch or so wider than my 2021 MBP 14. The top shell is metal and feels high quality, even if it is a little prone to fingerprint accumulation, and the bottom shell of the chassis is strong feeling plastic and the keyboard deck is also metal, although it is a little flexy. Perhaps the best part of this laptop is the keyboard and trackpad. Although the keyboard is not backlit, it is an appropriately responsive keyboard with a good layout and excellent tactile feedback from the keys. The keycaps themselves are covered in a sort of eggshell textured matte finish that keeps the finger oils and prints off the keys and makes for a nice grippy feel while typing. I am indeed typing this review on this laptop, and it is a great experience. The trackpad is a real surprise on this laptop. It is, I kid you not, better than the trackpad of a $2300 dollar gaming laptop I just tested. It is an almost glass smooth trackpad with nice left and right built-in buttons at the bottom left and right of the trackpad that are clicked in a springboard fashion. The touchpad is perfectly responsive and precise and responds to Windows multitouch gestures like three fingers swipe up to give a view of all the windows and programs open on your desktop. I have been using this trackpad for over 4 hours on this laptop just today and I have not had the slightest inclination to pull out a mouse to use with it. Another aspect of the hardware of this laptop I am content with is the screen. This screen is not the brightest, sharpest, or highest definition capable screen out there by a long stretch, but it provides users EXACTLY what I think they need on a laptop of this price in the way of being reasonable for some good-looking YouTube or Netflix videos. It has relatively good viewing angles and also hinges open almost just a few hairs shy of flat to the keyboard! The speakers on this are another case of being reasonable at the price. There are two tiny speaker grills under the front lip of the laptop and the sound the speakers emit is neither loud nor high in clarity, but they are serviceable. Gratefully, Lenovo absolutely knocked the input and output ports of this laptop out of the park. The include charger is tiny, juices the laptop up quick, and super easy to pack up and take on the go. The 3.5mm barrel port for headphones works great and delivered plenty of volume to my Apple earbuds I still like to use from time to time. The laptop includes an HDMI port that was capable of putting out a beautiful, buttery smooth image to my 32” 1440p (2K) display at 60Hz refresh rate. The USB-C port is data transfer only as far as my testing can tell. There is no charging through it (bummer) nor was it able to send a display out to my monitor via an HDMI to USB-C cable.. Also included is a full-sized SD card slot (take some notes, Dell), and two full sized USB-A ports for connecting a mouse, flashdrive, or any other USB-A accessory you might be considering (take some notes, Apple). This has all the I/O most any average light laptop user could want! The battery life is absolutely excellent on this laptop. Unplugged I ran intensive setup tasks, benchmarks like Speedometer 2.1, watched multiple YouTube videos, and had many apps open and installations done for almost 4-1/2 hours, and I still had 63% of the battery remaining when I turned in for the night! It is incredible to me how efficient these laptops are getting now. While the Intel Celeron is not my favorite family of processors historically for raw computational power and multitasking, darn if they don’t make for an efficient chip in this laptop! As for the EMMC flash memory in this laptop, 128GB is just serviceable for having the OS installed on it and some of your favorite pictures, music, and documents stored on it. It is reasonably speedy to with a 310MB/s read and 230MB/s write speed on my CrystalDiskMark desk from the Microsoft app store. The best use of this laptop is light web browsing use and working within the native Microsoft Office apps. Microsoft Word opens relatively quickly in about 5 seconds after your first time setting up and operates very smoothly with no stuttering of character population while typing and demonstrates very smooth scrolling. I have reviewed higher-end gaming laptops that couldn’t get this right! This is most definitely an appropriate selection for young students in middle school or elementary school who just need to write some basic essays, or older adults who are looking to generate some basic letters or fill out documents. Microsoft OneNote is likewise very smooth to type in and navigate. It can be a tad slow to populate some of the pages and my bigger workbooks I use for taking school notes, but it is nothing insufferable, even for someone who is used to much higher end PC’s for day-to-day use. Microsoft Excel is likewise admirably quick for very basic use. I have a one-page sheet I use for our household budgeting that only has a few simple equations built into it and there where no stutters or issues at all while browsing that workbook. I can imagine that the pitiful 4GB of RAM would be a major choke point for larger workloads on Excel, but I was at about 72-82% of RAM utilization and 62%-95% CPU utilization while I had a Word document open, OneNote notebook open, and my excel budgeting spreadsheet open. This left enough headroom for smooth switching between and I also had Microsoft edge on a YouTube page playing some music in the background. Altogether, I am surprised at the end of this review to actually be able to recommend this laptop given how much of a hastle it was to set up in the year of 2023. Thus, if you buy this, know that for the first day of owning it, you are going to be engaging in a very frustrating setup and pseudo-break in process to get this machine feeling smooth. But once you do, it is well worth it to any low-key laptop buyer looking for a simple machine with great portability and great battery life packed into a bargain of a new laptop, especially at sale prices!

When you are selecting a laptop, it's really important to make sure you are getting the right machine for the job you are trying to complete. This is what I kept telling myself as I tried out this Lenovo Ideapad. I've used Lenovo computers in the past and been very impressed with their build quality and performance. This laptop, however, is built to be an entry-level machine and only used for basic tasks like email and light web surfing. This was completely evident to me as I started setting it up. To be fair, I am used to computers that are set up for tasks that require advanced performance. That means they usually have ample RAM allocated to the build and they can multitask. So for me, using this laptop was like picking a smartphone that is several generations old. It still works for basic tasks, but because my daily-driver phone is the current generation smartphone, the old one just feels sluggish. That said, for what it is, this laptop works fine. Here are my main takeaways. Pros The laptop is very lightweight. It's easy to carry from place to place and can be packed in a bag with no problems. The webcam comes with a sliding privacy cover preinstalled. This is useful for ensuring privacy when you aren't actively using the camera. It's very quiet. If I wasn't actively using it, I wouldn't have thought it was running. Battery life is wonderful. The keyboard was comfortable to type on. The trackpad seemed responsive. The screen had a nice clear picture. Cons Hardware requirements are the bare minimum for running Windows 11. Processor: Requirement - 1GHz with two or more cores on a 64-bit processor // Lenovo Ideapad - Intel Celeron N Series, 1.1 GHz, 2 cores Memory: Requirement - 4GB or greater // Lenovo Ideapad - 4GB Storage: Requirement - 64GB or greater // Lenovo Ideapad - 128GB Graphics Card: Requirement - Compatible with DirectX 12 or later, with a WDDM 2.0 driver. // Lenovo Ideapad - Intel UHD Graphics 600, supports DirectX 12 In addition to standard Windows startup prompts, Lenovo has its own set of questions and preferences to walk through, too. The default desktop image was of a Red Bull ad, which seemed odd to me. Everything ran slowly. It took an exceptionally long time to get everything updated (I'm talking hours) and ready to actually use the laptop. I wasn't able to run Edge without it stuttering. Nothing else was operational except for system apps and background tasks and the computer choked on the web browser. Uses a proprietary charger and not something standard like USB-C. Overall Impression Using this laptop was a frustrating experience for me. While I am a patient person and understand that certain systems may take longer to do tasks than others, I was shocked that the native web browser couldn't even run smoothly. I attempted downloading Geekbench to complete a benchmark test but because the Windows OS was in S mode, I wasn't allowed to download anything that wasn't in the approved Windows App Store. So, I used Nero Score, which provided a score of 385 for this Ideapad. I looked up other benchmark scores for the same processor and they averaged right around a score of 1000. I am assuming that the lower performance is likely due to the 4GB of RAM since other benchmark scores were based on 8-16GB of RAM and they were much higher. Something to think about when shopping for a computer is the age of the processor in relation to the current year. The Intel Celeron processor used in this Lenovo Ideapad was released 3 years ago and is actually discontinued by the manufacturer. You should also consider whether or not the operating system is the best option for your given processor/RAM combination. As I mentioned, this machine just barely meets the Windows 11 hardware requirements, but it might run better with Windows 10 or an alternate OS. As always, bloatware could also be playing a part in this machine's sluggish nature. Because I had such a difficult time navigating through basic tasks, I wasn't able to do a thorough analysis of applications that may be weighing the system down, but that could indeed be a factor. Final Thoughts There is a place for every type of computer and this one does have some redeeming qualities. Out of the box, it may not be the best performing PC, but with some customization, it might do really well for the right user.

The product was slightly damaged on the outside. Poorly packaged, and it sometimes randomly disconnects from the WiFi.

I was looking for a replacement device for a Chromebook that failed me it was old and fell apart. I decided to go with the IdeaPad by Lenovo. I overall trust Lenovo because they make great products. But I will be completely upfront before I complete my review this Ideapad is a product that could have been a whole lot better. That being said let us get to the meat and potatoes of this review. :::General Thoughts::: This product looks and feels premium and that is a plus but this is one of the few good things that can be said about the IdeaPad. If you have ever owned a Lenovo laptop then you know what I mean they all share a similar DNA the keyboard and panels and design are very similar across the board. Setting this up was one of the most frustrating experiences I ever had. This runs a modified version of Windows and while there are benefits to that I must admit that the cons outweigh the pros. This runs Windows S mode and I feel as if the S moniker means Windows “Slow” mode, no matter what I did on this device it just takes ages to do and I can not tolerate it anymore. I can not imagine myself using this daily, even for lightweight use like web browsing and e-mail this device just takes too long to do anything. I do not want to fault Lenovo for this because it is running Windows and you are very limited with what apps you can run as well it will not allow me to use Microsoft Family app to monitor my kid’s computer use. Do not get me wrong this device does what it is intended to but at what cost? It nearly cost me my sanity I will not reach for this because if you are in a hurry to do something forget about it you will be waiting for long periods of time for basic tasks. :::Pros & Cons::: Pros: - Sturdy - Premium feel - Strong battery life - Good Display - Decent Webcam - Good keyboard & trackpad Cons: - SLOW - SLOW - Modified Windows S - Proprietary charger (Not USB C) :::Closing Thoughts::: This is a well-designed product but the Achilles heel is Windows S Mode. The hardware is much like a netbook low power, and low spec device. I really wish this were a better product, it can NOT be compared to a Chromebook because they are fast unlike this. If you are a patient individual then perhaps then this product may be right up your alley. It just does not meet my needs, nor does it meet my expectations for a Lenovo product. Maybe a software update can fix these problems but as it is in its current state this is a a headache to deal with. :::TL;DR::: I was hoping for a lot more and this product did not deliver on any front. Take a wait & see approach with this. Maybe a future software update would fix the issues that plague it in its current state.

This Lenovo - Ideapad 1 14.0" HD Laptop - Celeron N4020 with 4GB Memory - 128GB eMMC in Cloud Grey has a lot of features that any student would like and need for simple tasks, like taking notes, typing papers, and light research. When I started the laptop, it was setting up pretty quickly, at first. It then became extremely slow. As I proceeded through setup process and applied all the necessary updates. I restarted the laptop, and discovered that I couldn’t do anything at all on it. When I clicked on the Internet browser icon, it took 4.5 minutes to completely load. When I typed in a web address, it never loaded. I kept getting an error message that it had timed out. I will note that the internet on all other devices was working fine. I decided to switch out of Windows S Mode, clean up the apps that automatically start each time you turn on your laptop, and make sure there were no unnecessary apps loading. I then restarted the laptop, went back and did the Windows Update again, installing more updates, then restarted again. This time the laptop was working fine. It’s still a little slow, but I was able to get into apps, browse the internet, and play a couple of games. So, if you decide to get this, remember to check your start up apps that load each time you start up. It’s not a bad laptop by no means, but it’s not something you would want to edit photos, and do a lot of things that utilizes the processor and RAM a lot.

This laptop is notably aimed at being a simple, practical, sturdy, and budget-friendly computer. While it exceeds in some of these aspects, it falls shorts in others. To begin, it is definitely budget-friendly and sturdy. Honestly, I love the feel and construction of it. It is very well-made and feels like it can withstand the bumps and thumps of travel well. The keyboard has large and springy buttons that are satisfying to press, and the mouse track is reactive, with built-in springy right/left buttons as well. It terms of simplicity; it is the simplest you can get. At 4GB it is as slow as dial-up. Really reminds me of the 90’s. More often than not, the usage is at around 70% simply from background applications. Leaving very little room for apps of choice to run. A test in patience, this laptop is not for the multi-tasker. The graphic component is also simple, Netflix ran just fine, and the quality was okay, nothing like watching on a tv though. Do note that it does not have an ethernet port so it must be used with Wi-Fi. It comes with Windows Home 11S. This is a frustration on its own, specifically because it has limitations that I find hard to circumvent. This issue can be resolved by removing and replacing the operating system with a preferrable one though. Overall, this is a budget-friendly option for someone who really needs a laptop and is determinedly patient.

Slow, and filled with useless "bonus" features. I bought this laptop just to run an automation task in the background. That's literally it's only purpose. But it doesn't work for that because of all these "bonus" updates, news alerts, weather alerts, mandatory software updates etc, that I can't seem to turn off. On the plus side, it was cheap, and could be useful to someone using it in a normal daily fashion, but it's also SUPER slow (probably due to all the bonus software that the hardware can't handle).

Nice, lightweight and awesome price. However, has little to none available memory, straight geared towards Microsoft and only Microsoft, CPU constantly at 100% because of this. You can do BASIC functions/tasks. It's a nice price and laptop if you don't do much but if do more then don't waste your money.

I purchased this for my daughter as a way to complete her online school work as the virtual platform was not optimized to her iPad. Let me tell you, it’s slow. HORRIBLY slow. And 100% don’t try to install Chrome on it. But all that aside when I ran her virtual platform through the Microsoft Edge browser it worked as well as I needed it to work. For the purposes of a second grader being able to do her virtual school work…it works fantastically. For the purpose of teaching her patience, I think it will work even better. All jokes aside, if you plan to use it in a similar fashion as we are (elementary school virtual work), then I would recommend this computer because it meets that need for a very low cost. Outside of that, it won’t meet your needs.

This is a budget laptop that is mainly targeted at people who will use it for surfing the web, checking email and watching videos on YouTube/Netflix. If you need a laptop for work or school and run many applications at once then this is not the laptop for you. At 4GB Ram and not upgradable this laptop runs super slow when a few applications are opened. If intended use is minimal then I recommend this laptop because it will serve that purpose.

It is a bit slower than expected. I also had issues connecting the integrated camera for the podcast I do. It also had troubles connecting to the program we use to record the podcast. We purchased similar Lenovo laptops and they ran flawlessly. I'm not completely happy with it but I'm still playing with it to try and optimize it's performance for what I need

Really thin and light weight good screen but could load a little faster

Light weight and easy to use, but very slow when loading and searching.

It has a nice look however the processor is very slow. There is always an error when on the internet like it freezes. I only use it to complete school work and it slows me down a lot. When I first started to use it, it would take me at least 10-15 min for it to get it up and running. Would recommend but it depends on the use.

Nice lightweight laptop. It was reasonably fast the first several days i had it. However after i loaded in Ms Word, Excel, and Powerpoint, it slowed down to unexceptable. I need to stop by Bestbuy Geek Squad to see why.

Ver inexpensive but slow. The processor is dual core, unlike some other cheap computers that have four-core processors (or so i am told). Until you do all the initial software updates it is so slow as to be unuseable. But it is otherwise serviceable, and has more storage than other budget laptops.