01-30-2016
I have had this laptop for a very short time, three days to be exact. So far, I am very pleased with the way that the laptop has been working. The laptop runs pretty fast browsing the web and running programs. Keep in mind when reading these reviews, a good porting of these individuals either don't care to research what they are buying and/or they have no clue about computers. Sure, there are people that have had these laptops fail on them, that is an eventuality. However, many of the reviews talking about the laptop running slow, being bad for gaming (this is just sad), or having bad storage raises a red flag to me. I have been building computers for years and can tell a good review from a bad one. This is all explained later in my review. I will try to continuously update my review as I experience this laptop over the coming months. Hopefully this laptop will continue to impress for a long time to come.
Construction/Feel:
The first thing that I noticed was that it is very slim and light. It feels like it has been constructed with good material despite it's very affordable price point. The exterior portion of the laptop has a finish that is a little coarse or rough feeling. It is actually nice because you don't feel like it will slip out of your hand and it seems somewhat scratch resistant. That's huge for me as I will be taking this laptop pretty much everywhere including work. The interior aspect of the laptop I made of aluminum with classy etching to it in various shades of blue (purple if you get that color). It looks really nice, I would never have looked at this laptop and thought it was barely above $200. It looks and feels like it was much more expensive than that. The keyboard is designed with the buttons protruding through the aluminum plate which is nice. The buttons are white and textured in a similar way to the exterior of the laptop allowing your fingers to grip nicely as you type. It will be interesting to see how dirty the buttons look after months of use. Hopefully the texture doesn't make it hard to clean. Only time will tell. Anyway, is very comfortable to type with, you could use this laptop for hours without problem. The touchpad feels somewhat bouncy to me, but that's because I am use to a "stationary" touchpad that has buttons at the bottom versus a clicking touchpad. Sometimes clicking seems a tiny bit inaccurate, but it is nothing to really gripe about. It is more likely that I am hitting the touchpad too lightly (I have a very sensitive Alienware laptop). Other than that, this is a very nicely constructed laptop.
Battery Life:
Another huge part of what makes this laptop so great is the battery life. I have never owned a laptop that can be under constant use and last as long as this. I have literally used this laptop for the last 4.75 hours straight browsing the web, I watched a Jurassic World, and now I am typing a review on a single charge. That's pretty amazing for a 13.3" laptop. According to the battery life indicator (which is actually very accurate unlike some), I still have 30 minutes left with 8% battery life. Right now it is in power saving mode making it last longer than normal. Until it reached 20% battery life (that's when battery saver setting turn on), I have been running it as if it were plugged in with the screen on 100% brightness. At 10% battery life, a warning comes up stating "you might want to plug your laptop in" and at 8% another comes up with a similar statement. If you were running this laptop from the start in battery saving mode, you could probably get a whole lot more use from it. In fact, maybe that will be my next test.
Storage:
This laptop only comes with 32GB of storage from the factory, this is not a secret and is clearly stated in the product details. It surprises me that people bought this and then give it a one star for storage capability. This situation is easily addressed as you will very soon see. The majority of that storage is used up by a combination of pre-installed programs and of course, the Windows 10 operating system. I have removed a few programs and installed one small movie player program leaving me with only 2.66GB free of 27.8GB. As you can see, there is pretty much nothing left in the way of storage. The first problem is that people don't READ and expect that this laptop (technically a netbook) has tons of storage. Not to be harsh but reading seems to be a diminishing skillset in our society. That's why I went ahead and ordered myself a 128GB micro SD card. That way anything else I may need more permanently can go there instead of on the factory internal storage. You can pick any brand you want, I decided to go with this one because it seems to be the best price for the speed:
Silicon Power 128GB up to 75MB/s MicroSDXC UHS-1 Class10, Elite Flash Memory Card with Adaptor (SP128GBSTXBU1V20SP)
. I have officially been able to install programs on this micro SD card with zero problems. I am not sure why I have seen people say that you can't, because you can. When it comes to more storage capability and INSTALLING PROGRAMS, I went with a 4TB (4000GB) portable external hard drive made by Seagate:
Seagate Backup Plus 4TB Portable External Hard Drive with 200GB of Cloud Storage USB 3.0, Blue (STDR4000901)
. What's nice about this particular hard drive is that it that it is very small, and requires no external power supply, meaning that it is powered via the USB cable connected to the laptop. This is where I store my heavier files such as movies programs. I have seen people say that you can't install any programs on added/external storage. This is not always the case. I just installed a music program on this Seagate external hard drive called Guitar Pro 6 and it runs fine. It doesn't run as fast as it would if I had it on the internal storage, but it does work. I will write the steps down on how to do this below. Another cool thing about the Seagate hard drive is that there are multiple colors to choose from so that you can match it to your laptop. As you can see, storage really isn't something to be concerned about in any respect. If you want more internal storage on a laptop this size expect to spend a couple hundred more on a full-blown laptop. Now on to the computer running slow issues. This issue can have many variables. If you know your computer is clean from malicious software (cause 1), and doesn't have a lot of programs installed that boot up as your computer turns on (cause 2), it is often directly related to storage (cause 3). A computer should have a few GB (preferably more) free to operate at full capacity. Without going into detail, my custom built gaming PC will run slow if I fill the hard drive with the OS on it completely. This is not a problem with the computer, but more so that there is no "breathing room" for the operating system and other components to work. Throw a micro SD card in, make sure you save your files there, and save some room for your operating system. This is the main problem people run into when their computer is running slow and they aren't infested with adware/malware and other infectious programs that automatically run when you turn on your PC. If you have eliminated all of these variables, then you may be unlucky and actually have a hardware problem.
****IMPORTANT**** I have discovered a way to save you 8.9GB of storage instantly and it is very easy. This computer comes with a factory reset that looks to be a way to revert it to the previous version of Windows (8.1). It will automatically delete this after a month of using this laptop. However, you can remove the files right away if you would like. Currently, with Office 365 installed, I have 9.63GB free. Plenty of space for the computer to run efficiently. From this point on, you can use either the added micro SD card for storage or your external hard drive. Keep as much space as you can free on the internal hard drive so that the laptop will run better. Keep in mind that you can use this technique do keep track of storage and delete things you don't need such as temporary files, here is how you do it:
1: Go to the "ask me anything" search box AKA Cortana and type in "storage".
2: Click on "Storage- In system settings" which will have a little gear symbol.
3: Click on "this PC (C:) and let the system load the information
4: Scroll to the bottom of the list and delete the 8.9GB recovery file.
5. Restart your computer, and you will see the space is now free on your hard drive.
****Installing Programs On Your External Hard Drive and Running Them On This Laptop****
1: Make a folder in your external hard drive. I prefer to name the file "Program Files (x86)" because that is what the file is named where you normally save programs to anyway.
2: Get your program, you need to either have a download code from the internet, or since this laptop has no disk drive, you need an external disc drive to initially install the program you want. Treat it as you are installing anything else you would normally install.
3: When installing the program it will ask you where you want to install it which is set at Drive (C:) Program Files (x86) by default. All you have to do is change the location of the programs installation which now will be on your external hard drive under the new file you named "Program Files (x86)"
4: Proceed with the rest of the install.
5: Repeat these steps for other programs it is literally that easy.
You can use this very same method to install smaller programs on your micro SD card as well. I also found out that you can change your storage settings to automatically store apps, documents, music, pictures, and videos to your micro SD card. All you have to do is go to your system settings, storage, and scroll down to the tabs that allow you to change where these files are automatically stored. Easy right?
Speakers:
The speakers on this laptop are actually surprisingly loud. They certainly are not the loudest on the market, but for what you pay for the laptop, they get the job done.
Gaming:
If you are seriously considering a laptop like this for gaming, you are in the wrong place. This doesn't have the CPU, RAM, or Processor capable of giving you a good gaming experience. Sure, it will run the simple tablet games such as Angry Birds, but it simply is not designed in any way for AAA gaming. If you want a gaming laptop, be ready to spend well over $1000 for a decent one.
That is currently all that I have for now. I haven't been able to use the integrated web cam yet. I will try to get to that soon. Hopefully this review helps someone. This really is a bang for your buck laptop and I am extremely satisfied this far.
| Standing screen display size | 13.3 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 1366 x 768 pixels |
| Max Screen Resolution | 1366x768 pixels |
| Processor | 1.6 GHz celeron |
| RAM | 2 GB SDRAM |
| Memory Speed | 1600 MHz |
| Hard Drive | 32 GB SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | Intel HD Graphics |
| Chipset Brand | Intel |
| Card Description | Integrated |
| Wireless Type | 802.11bgn |
| Number of USB 2.0 Ports | 2 |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 1 |
| Average Battery Life (in hours) | 8.3 Hours |
