Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsOK, but could definitely be better
Reviewed in the United States on September 29, 2016
After searching tirelessly online for a laptop within my budget range, I settled on this one. I managed to snag it right when the price dropped down to $599 which, honestly, is the amount I'd put this laptop at to begin with. I've had this laptop for about a week now.
To be fair, it's a fast and responsive rig - I got the one with 12 GB RAM and a 256 GB SSD, although I ended up with around 190 GB thanks to a "Lenovo" partition which had nothing but prepackaged drivers. After changing the partition sizes myself I managed to get around 200 GB free.
The sound quality is decent since the speakers sit on top of the laptop (heaven knows why so many laptop companies put speakers on the bottom), but there is a problem I have with it (below). It runs quietly and is pretty lightweight.
But there are many negatives that I have:
For one, the keyboard is not great. The keys are the "chiclet-style" pretty much every laptop is going with nowadays. Many "chiclet" keyboards are fine, such as the Macbook Pro and Dell Inspiron, but this one feels cheap - I am a fast typist, and I have never had as many problems with errors as I have had with this laptop's keyboard. The keys must be pressed DIRECTLY on top - pressing the corners of them will not work, even if the key is completely depressed. I've constantly ended up with missing letters and spaces thanks to this. It confuses me too, because many have hailed the keyboard for being very good... maybe it's just my personal experience. But I've used many other "chiclet" keyboards on many other laptops and have had less problems than this laptop has given me.
The second issue is the sound quality. Although it is loud and clear, there is far too much bass. I've tried every driver available and it still sounds far too bassy. I didn't have this problem with the Dell Inspiron i7559 that I used to own. I'm guessing that it is the Lenovo sound drivers, since I have the problem with headphones as well.
Lastly - and I know a lot of people have complained about this - the keyboard is not backlit. I didn't mind the keyboard itself not having any backlit keys... but for the POWER BUTTON to not have a light was surprising - when I turn this laptop on, nothing on the top of it lights up at all. When I first began to use it, I was baffled at this because I couldn't tell if it was on or not. There ARE two tiny lights on the right side that light up whenever there's a power cord plugged in and when the laptop is powered on, but I still find it odd that nothing on the TOP of the laptop indicates this.
*Also, as a small extra: I have a problem where the computer will randomly tell me my battery is at "6%" despite it being mostly or fully charged. This usually happens when it is unplugged. I've seen others having this problem with this laptop, but I haven't found a solution for it yet.
Summary:
The laptop is fast and handles most of the things I throw at it, but it is definitely lacking in some areas. Somehow, it feels... cheap, especially compared to the older Lenovo models. The keyboard isn't great. The design isn't much to right home about either. I wouldn't purchase it again, but that's just me - if you're serious about a decent keyboard for work (if you do a lot of typing) then perhaps look elsewhere.
