Whew, I almost had to buy this until I saw “A6.” To Pufferfishy, I would say that the AMD Ryzen 5 and 7 based laptops - including better versions of this model - are really good. They don’t seem to be quite as efficient on battery life as Intel Core, but their integrated graphics smoke the Intel UHD crap. Ryzen based stuff is good; A series and E series based systems, though, are outdated and were not really competitive even when new.
Also seems heavy. My Thinkpad, made with all the heavy-duty burglar-stunning components from a decade ago, with a spinning disk, weighs 6.77 pounds (with a 9-cell battery; 5.67lbs with the 6-cell). I’m not sure how they made this so heavy. Maybe it has lead weights in it to keep it from flying away or something.
Reasonable machine, will get the job done as a daily driver for an average user.
Price isn’t great; Comparable machines are regularly available off the shelf at Best Buy for less money. Granted, for $200 you’ll probably get a mechanical drive instead of an SSD, but a 128GB SSD is a <$50 upgrade. Assuming you can’t (or don’t want to) do the upgrade yourself, you could still buy the cheap laptop, buy the SSD, have Geek Squad install the drive/Windows, and put the 500GB spinning disk in an enclosure, at a cost maybe $50 higher than this listing.
Note “<$50”. This is assuming you do all the shopping in a store at one time. Between limited stock and sale status, you could be stuck paying up to about $35 for a 120/128GB SSD. Really it’d probably be closer to $20-$25, or you’d go up to a 240/256GB drive, and in either case <$50 is still accurate.
I mean sure, I’m not going to bring anything in there, but I can do it all myself. If you can’t, and don’t have a tech savvy friend/relative handy willing to donate a couple hours of their time to your new laptop, they’re a fine choice. I’m acquainted with a couple of the Geek Squad guys at my local store, and they’re pretty competent. They do have at least one utterly incompetent employee and one that seems marginal, but they’re the ones that show you how to connect to wifi or download pictures on your phone, not the ones who deal with your hardware/OS install.
Uh, OK, whatever - we can consistently get 120GB SSDs for $19-24.
But not OK for Geek Scam. Read about them and harvesting personal photos.
And from personal experience, have had to undo new PC and laptop Best Buy sales when the in store Geek Scam crew incorrectly diagnosed “beyond economic repair status,” steering friends to replace.
In one case I proved the existing PC wasn’t even broken. And insultingly, the Store director continued to argue and defend.
Best Buy is far better managed than it used to be, but I’d never trust Geek Scam after too many dishonest failures.
@RedOak
I don’t understand why you saying almost exactly what I just said (minus one dollar) warrants an ‘Uh, OK, whatever’. That reads as unnecessarily rude and combative to me.
Your personal experience with Geek Squad doesn’t jive with mine, that’s fine. There are some stupid corporate-level policies that complicate things; For instance, I learned recently that as part of their intake process they run a suite of diagnostics, and any SMART failure means that they can’t work on the machine at all. However, if you think that the real issues with invasion of privacy and/or incompetence that exist within Geek Squad don’t exist for other major players and/or independent repair shops, you’re wrong. There are potential bad actors in every organisation, but bad behavior at an independent shop with a handful of employees and a couple hundred customers a year is simply never going to rise to the same level of visibility as the same behavior at a company with thousands of employees and tens/hundreds of thousands of customers.
Anyway, my intention was not to suggest that everyone one run out to Best Buy and start throwing work to Geek Squad, I simply chose it as an example for price comparison because it’s both consistent with the amount of effort you could reasonably expect from the target customer for this machine, and it’s at the high end of what that customer would pay without shopping components/services around.
You are of course free to never go to Geek Squad and to encourage folks not to go themselves, but if you’re going to engage me in a discussion, please do me the courtesy of not assuming I’m entirely ignorant in this area.
@RedOak All good, no offense taken, and certainly no need to delete posts with valid observations. You have concerns about Geek Squad, you want to share them, that’s totally fair.
I should have been more neutral in the tone of my previous post, which was intended to head off a brewing argument, but upon re-reading comes across more confrontational than I intended at the time, for which I apologize.
I recon that depends on which i3 you’re referring to. Faster than a first gen i3-350M, then yes, you are correct. It is slightly faster than a nine year old Intel i3 mobile processor. Just.
My last two laptops have been Lenovo’s. I like them a lot. If this one was a hundred dollars cheaper, I would get this too (they don’t have the optical drive) and would probably replace the Sony Vaio I am using now.
Got my first one at Woot for $200 (11.6 inch) and my second at Best Buy for $450 (includes backlit keyboard and USB C port). Both have solid state drives so when this Sony is unusable, I have my backups ready to go.
Squarely in Pentium/older i3 territory, and the price is mostly fair (not great) for the other specs… The dealbreaker for me is the screen; I WILL NOT buy anything with a screen that has less than 1080p resolution anymore. I don’t care if it’s not capable of gaming at whatever resolution in this scenario, but when I open a browser or MS Office, and most of the screen real estate is taken up by ribbon or menu, and not content, that’s not very useful. Personally, I love working with my QHD desktop monitors, and seeing loads of columns at once in any spreadsheet, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a decent screen this many years after thin-and-light laptops started offering much more in every other area.
I WILL NOT buy anything with a screen that has less than 1080p resolution anymore.
Couldn’t agree more. I enjoy almost everything about my Dell Latitude 12 incher except the 720p screen. It’s almost criminal laptop companies still sell such dull screens at this point.
@medz that’s what I’ve mainly been doing. Even so, the dull screen is less than ideal when using while traveling or at the kitchen table. Criminal. Lock up. Etc.
Whew, I almost had to buy this until I saw “A6.” To Pufferfishy, I would say that the AMD Ryzen 5 and 7 based laptops - including better versions of this model - are really good. They don’t seem to be quite as efficient on battery life as Intel Core, but their integrated graphics smoke the Intel UHD crap. Ryzen based stuff is good; A series and E series based systems, though, are outdated and were not really competitive even when new.
@sfwineguy the CPU was released mid-2018 however I agree the architecture is dated. Still at $299 these days it’s not a bad machine for new.
@sfwineguy Arguably I cannot speak to current gen CPUs, but my past experiences are such that I will never spend a dime on AMD again.
@Pufferfishy @sfwineguy That’s a shame, because Ryzen is really killing it right now. Jumped ship from Ivy Bridge myself.
If only this was the Intel version with the 1050.
AMD? Hard pass.
@Pufferfishy I was amazed at how low the PassMark score is for this processor.
@Pufferfishy AMD offers far much more bang for the buck than Intel does.
@Dizavid Our experiences in the world of Windoze laptops clearly differs.
@Pufferfishy Unless it’s Ryzen.
Duel core. Not even 1080p. Who uses DVD drives, shitty webcams anymore? Dont bother! If it was $99 possibly.
Only good is the ddr4 ram and ssd
@lilsrm123 SSD is only 128GB by the way. Not sure it’s that good for that either!
@salpo true! At least it will start up fast. Until windows updates will bog it down. Dont count on storing much of anything else in it!
@lilsrm123 Dueling cores! Each armed with a rapier!
@lilsrm123 I still use my DVD drive regularly. It comes in handy quite often.
Also seems heavy. My Thinkpad, made with all the heavy-duty burglar-stunning components from a decade ago, with a spinning disk, weighs 6.77 pounds (with a 9-cell battery; 5.67lbs with the 6-cell). I’m not sure how they made this so heavy. Maybe it has lead weights in it to keep it from flying away or something.
@yeppers Weight is pretty average for a 15.6" laptop, especially a cheap one. Cutting the weight by about 25% will cost you almost double.
Reasonable machine, will get the job done as a daily driver for an average user.
Price isn’t great; Comparable machines are regularly available off the shelf at Best Buy for less money. Granted, for $200 you’ll probably get a mechanical drive instead of an SSD, but a 128GB SSD is a <$50 upgrade. Assuming you can’t (or don’t want to) do the upgrade yourself, you could still buy the cheap laptop, buy the SSD, have Geek Squad install the drive/Windows, and put the 500GB spinning disk in an enclosure, at a cost maybe $50 higher than this listing.
@Aspirant_Fool
@RedOak
@Aspirant_Fool
Uh, OK, whatever - we can consistently get 120GB SSDs for $19-24.
But not OK for Geek Scam. Read about them and harvesting personal photos.
And from personal experience, have had to undo new PC and laptop Best Buy sales when the in store Geek Scam crew incorrectly diagnosed “beyond economic repair status,” steering friends to replace.
In one case I proved the existing PC wasn’t even broken. And insultingly, the Store director continued to argue and defend.
Best Buy is far better managed than it used to be, but I’d never trust Geek Scam after too many dishonest failures.
@RedOak
I don’t understand why you saying almost exactly what I just said (minus one dollar) warrants an ‘Uh, OK, whatever’. That reads as unnecessarily rude and combative to me.
Your personal experience with Geek Squad doesn’t jive with mine, that’s fine. There are some stupid corporate-level policies that complicate things; For instance, I learned recently that as part of their intake process they run a suite of diagnostics, and any SMART failure means that they can’t work on the machine at all. However, if you think that the real issues with invasion of privacy and/or incompetence that exist within Geek Squad don’t exist for other major players and/or independent repair shops, you’re wrong. There are potential bad actors in every organisation, but bad behavior at an independent shop with a handful of employees and a couple hundred customers a year is simply never going to rise to the same level of visibility as the same behavior at a company with thousands of employees and tens/hundreds of thousands of customers.
Anyway, my intention was not to suggest that everyone one run out to Best Buy and start throwing work to Geek Squad, I simply chose it as an example for price comparison because it’s both consistent with the amount of effort you could reasonably expect from the target customer for this machine, and it’s at the high end of what that customer would pay without shopping components/services around.
You are of course free to never go to Geek Squad and to encourage folks not to go themselves, but if you’re going to engage me in a discussion, please do me the courtesy of not assuming I’m entirely ignorant in this area.
@Aspirant_Fool I apologize for offending you. If Meh let me, I would delete all of my observations… ironically, rendering this one moot.
@RedOak All good, no offense taken, and certainly no need to delete posts with valid observations. You have concerns about Geek Squad, you want to share them, that’s totally fair.
I should have been more neutral in the tone of my previous post, which was intended to head off a brewing argument, but upon re-reading comes across more confrontational than I intended at the time, for which I apologize.
No hard feelings?
Lenovo - 330-15ARR 15.6" Laptop - AMD Ryzen 3 - 8GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive (not a SSD, but a TERABYTE!)
$360 at Best Buy.
I say MEH to this, oh digital huckster
BJ’s ? That’s a brand name that advertises itself!
Shit. I want this, but I can’t justify that level of expense right now.
389$ @amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-330-15-6-Anti-Glare-Bluetooth/dp/B07Q2G5T6P/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=81D600K2US&qid=1554160372&s=gateway&sr=8-2
Thanks for the info
Not bad at $299. Slightly faster than an Intel i3. It’s not a gaming machine but it’s a good basic computer.
@Joedetroit
I recon that depends on which i3 you’re referring to. Faster than a first gen i3-350M, then yes, you are correct. It is slightly faster than a nine year old Intel i3 mobile processor. Just.
@ruouttaurmind yea you’re likely right but I did look at some benchmarks just before I posted. But I am no expert.
My last two laptops have been Lenovo’s. I like them a lot. If this one was a hundred dollars cheaper, I would get this too (they don’t have the optical drive) and would probably replace the Sony Vaio I am using now.
Got my first one at Woot for $200 (11.6 inch) and my second at Best Buy for $450 (includes backlit keyboard and USB C port). Both have solid state drives so when this Sony is unusable, I have my backups ready to go.
“whoa” is me?
whether a typo or intentional, that’s funny
@stolicat Maybe that means that mediocrebot is finally stopping? (Whether voluntarily or not.)
Specs
What’s in the Box?
1x Lenonvo IdeaPad
1x Power Supply
Price Comparison
$479 at BJs
Warranty
1 Year Lenovo
Estimated Delivery
Monday, July 13th - Monday, July 20th
Saw some comments about the A6 vs. i3 and wanted to pass this along:
My Sony Vaio is a dual core i3 from 2008 with a PassMark rating of 635.1.
My 11.6 Lenovo is a quad core A4 from 2015 with a PassMark rating of 771.9.
Seems like an A6 would be faster.But hey, I’m loving my 2018 A12; it’s Passmark is 2,472.2.
If you’ve never owned a computer with a solid state drive, Meh’s Lenovo seems like a great introduction.
Perfect for your new laptop
Squarely in Pentium/older i3 territory, and the price is mostly fair (not great) for the other specs… The dealbreaker for me is the screen; I WILL NOT buy anything with a screen that has less than 1080p resolution anymore. I don’t care if it’s not capable of gaming at whatever resolution in this scenario, but when I open a browser or MS Office, and most of the screen real estate is taken up by ribbon or menu, and not content, that’s not very useful. Personally, I love working with my QHD desktop monitors, and seeing loads of columns at once in any spreadsheet, but I don’t think it’s too much to ask for a decent screen this many years after thin-and-light laptops started offering much more in every other area.
Couldn’t agree more. I enjoy almost everything about my Dell Latitude 12 incher except the 720p screen. It’s almost criminal laptop companies still sell such dull screens at this point.
tl;dr: CRIMINAL! LOCK DELL UP! LOCK DELL UP!
@hurtsdonut Probably for business folks who hook them up to dual monitors anyway.
@medz that’s what I’ve mainly been doing. Even so, the dull screen is less than ideal when using while traveling or at the kitchen table. Criminal. Lock up. Etc.