Lenovo IdeaPad 1 Student Laptop, Intel Dual Core Processor, 20GB RAM, 1TB SSD + 128GB eMMC, 15.6″ FHD Display, 1 Year Office 365, Windows 11 Home, Wi-Fi 6, Webcam, Bluetooth, SD… by Lenovo

At first glance, this seemed like a decent product for a lightweight machine to take on trips. It could be used to keep up with email and social networks and watch a few video streams while in hotels. The memory and drive space looked good, as did battery life and weight.
But boy! Was I ever wrong!
This has to be the absolutely, most abysmally SLOW machine I have ever used – – and I have been computing since 1978! The 1.1GHz Celeron processor is totally inadequate to support Windows 11 or any modern website or application. It stays pegged at 100% usage from the moment you boot the machine. Speaking of booting, can you believe this machine is still loading apps and functions after TEN MINUTES from a fresh start? Not just from a new OS update, but EVERY time you do a restart.
Trying to use the browser is an exercise in frustration. For example, bringing up more than one window to compare products on a store website results in locking up the browser to the point it can’t even show the browser’s menu or other toolbars on the 3rd page and beyond, let alone displaying the actual page contents. And forget trying to watch a “YouTube Short”. You can hear the audio (sometimes), but the video stays frozen on the first image until the short has completed. Even on the repetition, the image and audio spits and stutters like an old slide show instead of showing a steady video stream.
Give up any hope of playing any interactive game on this dog. You can actually count the seconds between a key stroke or mouse click and the game’s acceptance of the input.
In fact, this laptop is SO SLOW, that I can routinely type ahead of the display when doing things like submitting this review, chatting on Discord, or creating a Word document. I haven’t been able to do that since I worked on old green-screen Hazeltine monitors 40+ years ago!
Bottom line: This machine is inadequate for even simple tasks like keeping up with your email or sending chat texts through social apps like X, Discord, etc.
I would be rid of it in a second if circumstances hadn’t prevented me from returning it prior to the 30-day window expiring!
Save your money and look elsewhere for a machine that performs better than an antique 386!

This is a great laptop, it does what I needed to do, the speed is pretty fast, and I’ve had it for several months now, and I’ve had no issues. I think it’s a great deal for the money.

So Hubby has needed a laptop for a good minute. We usually buy his refurbished bc he doesn’t use a computer as much as I do. A #TB hard drive and top-shelf or even mid-level graphics card would be wasted on him, but he does need a laptop to access work files from home and general computer tomfoolery.

So his last system was a refurb/open box Lenovo Ideapad, 4g RAM, and 1T hard drive. We got it from BestBuy Outlet a few years ago. It was so nice I told my sister about it and she got the same one.

Fast forward to last December and the age was showing. I think the manufacture date is 2019, and it’s showing the age. I was using it for work (WFH) bc he didn’t need it. But then he DID need it so I had to go to a backup until he got me a desktop (see review).

The BB Lenovo was slow, so very slow it was like Chinese water torture. Booting it up took time, yeah, 2-5 minutes depending on its mood. I’m not talking from shutdown. I mean from sleep/hibernation to lock screen to desktop. Painfully slow, so we needed to upgrade him. We couldn’t shell out a lot of money for it, though, so I went shopping.

This system has good storage for him. He doesn’t take enough pix or do enough browsing to need more than 512G so the extra 128G is just gravy. The 12G RAM is a major step up and he’s no longer grumbling about how slow his computer is.

Yay.

I’m a little jelly. This thing is sleek. At this price, we could afford to grab another. I just got a gamer desktop, though (see review!) so it’s not practical.

Pros: See above
Plus: That card slot is a good thing since it doesn’t have a CD/DVD tray at all (see pic).
The camera cover/lock is NICE (see pic). I always tape a little paper over webcams but there’s no need with this.
One of the USB ports is a USB-C (see pic), which is nice since things seem to be moving that way.

I thought I was settling for the 15.6″ screen but it’s not as small as I thought it would be. My desktop system monitors are 22 and 24 inches respectively and my last laptop was 17″, so 15″ feels small to me until I actually see it.
As stated: Hubby doesn’t care. This laptop is the same size as his old one and even the same manufacturer, so yeah. He’s good.

Cons:
No disc tray. Anything he needs to physically add has to be on an SD card, thumb drive, or downloaded. Please note: Hubby doesn’t care.

For my geeky/gamer heart, it’s not nearly enough HD space, but for Hubby it’s perfect.
The preinstalled bloatware insists on being used even when you uninstall it, but isn’t it always?

Minimal ports. I need way more USB ports and no ethernet is a deal breaker for me.
Caveat: This laptop isn’t for me, since I have a gaming/work desktop system. Hubby doesn’t care about this at all, so it’s just a “that would be nice” thing.

Anyway, I like this machine a lot. It’s light and clean and a fantastic value for the price. I think it will serve Hubby well.

9/10 would recommend.