Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I did copious amounts of research and comparison shopping before buying this laptop. Overall I'm very satisfied with my purchase, and hopefully I can share some advice regarding this machine's peculiarities.
When I started shopping for laptops, I was looking at laptops that were upwards of $2000. Then I thought I could get the laptop of my dreams for under $1500, but as I looked around, I realized that if I kept shopping I could save a lot more money. My last laptop was $1000, and though it was a very nice laptop, the wear and tear it showed in a few short years made it seem like a bad investment.
Compared to other laptops in its price range, this laptop has some better features you should be aware of. These features are becoming standard on most machines now, but I looked at countless laptops that was missing one or more of them:
* 14" screen (aka not too large)
* LED backlight
* Greater than 720p resolution
* DDR3 (4GB, not 2 or 3)
* HDMI
* Wireless N (300mbps, 2.4ghz)
* GIGABIT ETHERNET (uncommon on most laptops)
* USB power when the laptop is suspended/plugged in
* eSata
* ExpressCard slot
* SD card reader
* Security lock
* Webcam with built in mic
* Strong performing CPU and GPU (it's no i3, but the GPU performs better than expected and the CPU is desktop-worthy and not too hot!)
* Stylish chiclet keyboard (lol)
You can expect to find nearly all of these in a good $800 laptop, but you start losing them the lower in price you go. This was the absolute cheapest laptop I could find with all of these features.
Things this laptop has that I wasn't expecting:
* Multi-touch touchpad
* In-keyboard mouse nub and additional buttons below space bar
Also, as you would expect, it has the always useful VGA port. I was specifically looking for HDMI, and initially I looked at laptops with DisplayPort, but VGA+HDMI gives DisplayPort a run for its money because it covers most video output scenarios sans having to purchase/use an annoying dongle.
Next, there are things this laptop doesn't have that I wanted, but proved to be acceptable trade-offs, usually with the goal of lowering cost significantly. This would be the perfect laptop if it had these features. These are the trade-offs and my response to them:
* 5400 RPM drive - I wanted 7200, but HD upgrade is an easy upgrade and can be done cheaply in the future. Also, I can accept 5400 performance easily without being bothered by it, as it's quite standard. There is also the possibility for SSD upgrade, and I would assume that a lower RPM means power savings.
* Bluetooth - Really convenient because I use my Bluetooth headset for VoIP, but it's usually the first thing to go on laptops, and most people don't need it. I have a $5 USB Bluetooth adapter that easily works around this issue with just a minor inconvenience, thus saving a ton of money. Also, not having this feature saves power.
* Blu-Ray - This is the one thing I really wanted and that this laptop should have had. It wouldn't have had to be a Blu-ray burner, but since this laptop has an HD screen (better than 720p) and HDMI out, the ability to watch my Blu-ray movies would have been awesome, and this machine is practically designed for that as the Radeon HD 4250 is made to decode HD video, Blu-ray specifically. It seems silly to design a system that accommodates Blu-ray playback and not include the drive. Since Blu-ray is the new standard optical media, it is a forward-looking upgrade that will save you headaches when the day comes that you are forced to open a Blu-ray data disk. A burner would have been a great luxury and provided a real lasting quality to this machine. However, these days optical drives are of waning importance due to increased network delivery of apps and data, and if needed an external drive can be purchased later. I'm hoping that there will be a chance of finding an internal drive for this machine in the future, but I'm not really expecting it to happen. Another issue that might affect some people (and might also explain the low cost of this model), is that the DVD burner is single-layer only.
* Dedicated video - The extra video performance would have made this laptop suitable for gaming, but the money and power you save by going integrated are impossible to ignore if you are searching for a low cost and portable solution. The 4250 GPU in this machine is surprisingly good, and it trounces the integrated Geforce found in my Athlon II desktop. It also outperforms Intel graphics standard on faster i3 laptops, a refreshing advantage. I'm not a gamer or graphics power user, so this is actually the fastest GPU I've ever had. I play games that are a few years old, and of course they run beautifully.
As you can see, the features on this laptop are very strong, and the caveats are few and reasonable. I found this laptop on sale for $499, so it was impossible not to buy it. The price went up shortly after I bought it, but it appears to have come back down again. The features this laptop lacks helps to make it very affordable and have a positive effect on size, power consumption, heat production, and weight. It's not an elite, fancy pants laptop, but it's a robust worker that will serve all but the most demanding users with flying colors. It's light and small enough to be portable, and it's powerful and large enough to use for several hours without fatigue or use as your primary system.
If you have decided to buy this laptop, this is where you need to pay careful attention, because these are the things I didn't notice before actually getting the machine in my hands and using it:
* This laptop also feels sturdy and well made. HOWEVER, at the same time, it feels plastic-y and cheap, which some users may dislike. This was the first thing that surprised me about this laptop, because in my head I was thinking "Thinkpads are very fancy." You can tell this is a budget machine, and it looks a little goofy. However, it's certainly not ugly (hey, it's black), and the silver lining is not as annoying as I thought it was going to be. My last machine was a more expensive machine, so at first I was a little disappointed, but I got over it quickly as the overall design does have an enduring quality that will not age. It's better than having a very stylish laptop that starts to look foolish over the years when it starts to become a last-gen machine.
* Another thing that surprised me was the screen. I was expecting a slightly better looking screen; on this one you can barely make out little lines between the pixels. When I first turned on the machine, it was glaring, but it seemed to lesson over time, and my eyes are accustomed to it now. Overall the display is satisfactory and not a problem, although it is certainly a low-cost LCD. Compared to my old laptop, this was another thing I needed to get used to. On the plus side, the screen feels nice and big--somehow roomier than my old 14", plus it's a higher resolution as well.
* This laptop has practically no LED's, and the ones it has are not that useful. There is one power LED that shows if it's on or off. It's in a weird spot, but it gets the job done. Then, it has a second, pretty much useless LED that lets you know whether the laptop is plugged in or not, but gives no indication about charge! You can't tell whether the laptop is charging or not. Alongside the fact that there are no indicators for HD, caps lock, or num lock, that makes this the most annoying thing about this laptop that I wasn't expecting. At the end of the day you don't really need these indicators except the charge indicator, but the latter thing I'll just have to live with (I usually leave it plugged in to charge for a long time, so I don't need to monitor charge unless I'm actually using the laptop, which I only use on battery occasionally). People who hate LED's might actually love this aspect of this machine, so it could turn out to be a plus. Anything you need to know about the machine's state can be shown on-screen. The only scenario that you are really screwed in is if you are waiting for the laptop to charge fully and you are in hurry, so you'd have to turn it on to check the charge, but then having it on would make it charge slower.
* The keyboard on this laptop is kind of funny. The chiclet keys feel fine, but they don't feel quite as good as the ones I've used on more expensive laptops. I'm a touch typist, and I type fine on this keyboard--the keys are adequately sized and spaced for me to operate at my full capacity, although perhaps because of the spacing, the keyboard feels slightly bigger than what I'm used to, which makes some reaches difficult, particularly the combo "ba". I adapted to this quickly and don't notice it anymore. Also, some users have lamented that this keyboard is one of the few Thinkpad keyboards that has no back-light. Since I touch type I don't really care. Also, this keyboard has now keypad overlay that you can switch to (there is no num lock). I'm OK with that since typically it is an annoying feature to switch on and off, although sometimes I do really want to use a keypad to touch type on (if you're not a touch typist it won't matter to you). Secondly, the F keys are the reverse function, where the laptop media keys are now the primary function, and you have to hold "fn" to press F5 or F4. This can be switched in the BIOS, so I wouldn't really consider it an issue. At the end of the day, it is on par with a standard keyboard and not difficult to type on; it's just unique. Also, I thought the mouse nub in the center of the keyboard would annoy me or hinder my typing as it does on my friend's Dell Latitude, but this one really...Read more›
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