20 Best Windows 7 Laptop (2022 Updated)

I bought a brand new one (original price of $2,600) from Best Buy and the battery completely died after 2. 5 years. I contacted Microsoft and they advised me to install new Windows and the battery did not charge still.

Microsoft said the warranty expired and nothing they could do except selling me a REFURBISHED one (the same model) with a reduced price. I said that offer did not make sense, as even the brand new one did not live long enough for a professional worker, I was worried I would waste my money for a refurbished one that I did not know how long the battery could last.

Bad battery is well-known and common defect of Surface Pro 3, 4, 5, 6 at least (I am not very sure if the problem is fixed with versions 7 and 8). For my professional use, setup a new computer is very time-consuming, I did not want waste my money and time for another short-lived refurbished one with unfixed battery problem.

Before, I used a Surface Pro 4 and had battery swollen issue after a little more than 3 years and also received bad customer service from Microsoft. Microsoft team said they agreed with what I said but nothing they could do, that was the company policies.

After my 2 short-lived Surface Pro and bad customer services, I don’t have any trust for them. Their short 1-year warranty expired and no more responsibility for the bad products; I don’t see any difference between Microsoft and a cheap company anymore.

By the way, here are their quoted responses to my above complaints: – “Your previous email makes sense which made whatever i say seem unreasonable. But these are Microsoft Policies. The options delivered to you are not through my own decisions.

It’s just how Microsoft instructed us to deal with this kind of scenarios. I know it feels unfair and i am totally on your side. But there’s only so much i can do. I hope you understand. ” – “All in all, i agree with 100% of what you say.

Sorry again. “.

I wanted to love this. I had heard awesome things about it when I was looking into tablets and things for drawing. As far as the way it ran when it was working and not heating up, it wasn’t terrible.

I purchased the Surface pen with it and the stability and smoothness of the pen was fantastic. It functioned with the drawing programs. But my largest concern was that it heated up WAY past where it should have and often.

The first time was when I was setting it up. It heated up so bad when trying to simply set it up that it froze completely and tried to auto turn off, but couldn’t seem to unfreeze itself and I had to put a fan on it for fear of it not turning back on if it got any hotter.

Despite the first bad impression, After I managed to cool it down and get it set up, I tried it out to see how it would do over the return period. It seemed like it couldn’t handle things well, especially when you get towards a lower battery.

Not only did it continue to heat up, the screen got very flickery when the battery was lower. When charging, it heats up a lot as well and you definitely can’t use it while it’s charging. Overall, had high hopes and they were dashed really quickly.

After giving it a chance, it wasn’t worth worrying constantly about overheating, so I returned it. I plan on getting an ipad pro instead because of some of my artist friend’s recommendations and good experiences.

I bought my surface after reading many rave reviews and using one in person. I switched from an iPad to this for school, wishing for a more PC like experience while maintaining pen support. And I don’t want to be a part of the Apple universe.

My initial experience was decent, though the pen is mediocre compared to Apple (but that was expected). It did what I needed it to do. However, I had trouble soon with my screen randomly shutting off, and its performance was lacking, beyond other PCs of its type (I switched from an ASUS zenbook with core i5 and similar specs, but my ASUS ran much better.

Fewer bugs, smoother, and faster). I chatted with a tech support agent at Best Buy and downloaded a firmware update, which helped a little. However, 10 months in, my Surface randomly decided not to power on.

Not a charging issue. In talking with Geek Squad, this is not uncommon on Microsoft devices. They couldn’t take it back for me though because Microsoft has tied their hands and I don’t have Geek Squad coverage.

So then I discovered Microsoft has no support line. No live chat, no phone line, nothing. My only option is to send it in under warranty, never talk to anyone about its problems, and I’ll get sent a refurbished one or my own fixed, even though I don’t want it back! My experience with Best Buy has been amazing.

My experience with microsoft has been terrible. Maybe I got a lemon, and maybe the Surface will work for you, but I will never buy another Microsoft device again until they fix their tech support process.

As such, I cannot recommend this. Go for a different laptop with tablet mode (clunkier, but they work well. my wife is happy with her HP envy), or go for Apple I guess. Thanks for reading!.

First off – I love my new Surface Pro 8 preloaded with Windows 11 which I have had for about 45 days so far. I prefer the 16×9 aspect ratio of the Surface Pro 2 for watching movies and such. However, the Surface Pro 8 extra screen height is nice for some applications – most notably TurboTax which always required me to scroll down on the Surface Pro 2.

I do not care that the power switch is located on the side and I’m forever accidentally turning it off when I’m watching a movie or reading while holding the device. It seems like power switchon the Surface Pro 2 was in a better location! I did get the keyboard with the pen although I wish I would have got the keyboard with the fingerprint scanner – which for some reason is only available in black.

I went two Best Buy to look at the Surface tablets and they were out of them and so I had them order me one to be shipped to my place. It was too late once I noticed they ordered the wrong color and since it took so long to receive I just kept it! After all, my Surface Pro 2 was on its last legs – and the battery would barely hold the charge.

I typically buy a higher-end model and use it adjust daily and keep it for several years. If you are like me and coming from a Surface Pro 2 – you will see that it is a nice upgrade. All in all I wish this was a 4K resolution screen with a 16×9 aspect ratio and the power button not located on the sides where it can be easily powered off when you are using it while laying down or on your lap! Seems like I am always turning it off when I’m trying to steady the computer on my lap.

I really love how thin the new computer is compared to my old! The i7 processor has plenty of speed, ram and storage to last me for years to come! Good luck with your purchase, I know you will enjoy it just as much as I do!.

I was so excited when the Surface pro 8 came out, I ordered it within a couple of weeks of it’s release. My God was that a dumb idea. TLDR, great produce but, occasional audio cracking and rare screen blacking out for a few seconds but audio still plays.

First I want to say I absolutely love the device, I love the surface pen and the type cover. I am one where most of my issues with past computers have been keyboards, so I am in love with the whole idea of instead of sending it off to God knows where I can just run and get a new type cover.

The pen really makes not taking and writing a breeze. I’m in education so it really helps demonstrate problems to students. The screen is bright, battery lasts, it doesn’t get too hot, you really have to intentionally try to overwork the processor.

The surface pro 8 itself is a fantastic machine. Let’s address the issues that my guess is because I bought this too early. Granted these issues are rare, not overly detremental to using said device, but are not something you’d expect from a 2k device.

There’s a rare and occasional audio crackle or pop, use to be a lot more but I’ve switched browers for videos and it seemed to cut it down, but it still happens. Occasionally now too the screen will go black for like 10 seconds, but audio will still play.

Bottom line I love my surface pro 8. I just think that there are two problems that shouldn’t be happening on a $2,000 device. I regret not returing for a new model, but frankly at the time it seemed like too much effort when the problems weren’t continious.

Plus didn’t know if the new one would have the same issue. Still annoying though.

I got this for my programming job to be able to work remotely and at the office. I also got it’s keyboard. I had the slim pen 1 and it is magnetically held and charged by the keyboard. The surface pro is of highest quality.

The chasis is solid metal. The screen is extremely bright with near perfect viewing angles. The battery life will last about 8-10 hours with light web use or watching YouTube at 50% brightness or lower.

The hard drive is removable. The face ID works well and along with the encryption built into windows I feel that my data is safe even if device is lost or stolen. It weighs almost nothing and I barely notice the fan turn on.

With heavy usage the battery does drain. The processor is extremely fast. The solid state drive is fast with almost no loading times. I bought this for software development and visual studio runs perfectly with no lag.

I like how I have the keyboard tucks way the slim pen at all times. I bought a 13″ sleeve and the entire package is extremely light. Best buy had $300 off so it convinced me to purchase it. A week later they further reduced the price for me as their website had another $30 off, so I brought in my receipt and had them price match it.

The speakers are the best speakers on a laptop I have ever heard. They are 2 watt speakers and have some oomph and are super clear. I only wish that there were more ports, especially USB A, as I still need those, so purchased adapters for now.

What I don’t like is windows 11. I did not realize it is not a finished OS compared to windows 10 and forces MS One Drive for the desktop.

I bought my surface pro 7 about 15 months ago and am mostly very pleased with it. I also bought the pen and keyboard to go with it, glad I did and am pleased with them as well. I use mine in both tablet and laptop configurations and am not disappointed with either.

The reason it is only 4 stars is because of a couple of caveats. the battery doesn’t last a long as I would like and sometimes the system temporarily locks up. as far as the battery goes, I only get about 8 hours out of it, which isn’t bad but I would like to see it hit the 12 hour mark, although to be fair I usually don’t let it go bellow 20 percent.

That said, it does charge fast, 20 percent to full less than 2 hours. Then there is the lockup problem, and it is common with these. The system will freeze up periodically, usually it is only temporary and will last for up to 15 seconds before resuming normal operations.

Occasionally it will stay frozen and you have to hold the start button until it restarts. there are plenty of articles online dealing with how to remedy this problem, although it seems to have gotten better after upgrading to Windows 11.

Other than that I absolutely love my Surface pro 7, it has a beautiful screen that is vivid, clear, and bright. It is quick and responsive, and the pen, sold separately, is accurate and responsive as well.

Even with these two drawbacks I would still recommend this to my friends or family.

This is the second Surface pro that I’ve owned. The first was a Surface pro X. I love these units for multiple reasons, one of them being that they are a real full on computer not just a tablet. As far as functionality, the pro 7 works the same as the X model, with just a few subtle differences… the 7 has an intel processor vs the X uses a Qualcomm cellular processor.

In rare occasions the Qualcomm will not support certain apps, I ran into this problem when trying to use it for a Cad program. I have noticed that the 7 seems to have less battery life than the X, likely due to the larger processor.

I love having the pen/pencil to go with it! Makes it soooo nice for many activities! The screen is excellent quality, very crisp and clear. The touchscreen is extremely responsive and accurate. The only inconveniences worth mentioning is that you only have a USB and USB-C ports built in.

So if you need to expand memory, it will be rather clunky to use a thumb drive or other external memory device. I do wish it had a built in SD port. But, if you buy it with more on board memory, you can eliminate that potential inconvenience.

Over all I love this unit! And I would definitely recommend it to everyone!.

I purchased an HP laptop several years ago and within a few months I purchased a Dell. Here’s the issue with the HP laptop. Comes pre-loaded with all sorts of HP “stuff” that slows performance. Even after going into the system and removing many of these needless programs, the HP laptop takes hours to recharge the battery, hours to download updates, and runs very slow.

Doesn’t matter whether I connect directly to the internet or use wireless remote the HP laptop has been frustrating from day one. The Dell runs faster and battery chargers faster. Both have about the same amount of data stored on the hard-drive, so the comparison was as close on one could get.

One can only hope QVC reads these reviews and rethinks their choice with HP laptops as HP needs to focus more on the quality of the product on less on the flashy appearance. HP should seriously consider building their parts and products back here in the USA.

These disposal products as killing the consumer.

Side right corner near hinge separated to the point that hinges broke inside – could not squeeze it shut. I had to have full keyboard replaced – hinges replaced. Cost $200. 00. That means this laptop ended up costing me over $1,000.

00. It started before a year old. Fell apart at 13 months old. It has never left the house, it was handled delicately. FIX THIS PROBLEM. I now have no DVD use. It does not pop out. That being said, I did purchase terabyte storage, performance is fine, but this is now happening to a 2nd HP laptop in our home that has never left the house or been abused.

PURCHASE SERVICE AGREEMENT YOU WILL NEED IT!!!.

Pros: As soon as I opened the box, I knew the HP Spectre 360x was going to be special, and I was not wrong. It looked smart and sleek. I could really feel the premium quality. I was impressed with the packaging and it coming with its own Spectre branded box which looked very smart.

The laptop is very well built and sturdy. The screen was very sturdy. The mouse pad and keyboard were solid and firm. The laptop feels solid and premium. I liked the keyboard being backlit which was handy when the room was darker.

The fingerprint reader was also a nice touch and it also had facial recognition which I liked and made logging in quick. I was very impressed with the responsiveness of the touch screen; it was very responsive with no lag and was smooth.

I found using the laptop as a tablet good, and with the gorgeous size of the screen made it very good to do. I did like tilting it at an angle with the keyboard behind in a triangle shape which made viewing movies really good especially on the go.

What really impressed me was the gorgeous 4K screen! OMG so amazing and really impressive. The colours are sharp, the refresh rate is very impressive. Watching Netflix in 4K was a dream and was very impressive.

The B&O speakers were good quality. Photo editing was a dream. The speed of the Intel i7 and the GeForce graphics card made light work of my heavy editing. The size of the screen, resolution and the colour profile were a perfect match for my needs.

The resolution of 4K also made editing very easy with lots of screen space. Applications loaded instantaneously, bootup speed was quick and no lag that I noticed even on heavy use. Battery life was good considering the specs, and little heat came from the bottom of the laptop especially after long use.

Overall, really impressed with this laptop and really exceeded my expectations. Everything from the boxing, styling and build quality was impressive. The laptop itself looks really sleek, cool and smart.

The most impressive aspect of this laptop was the 4K screen, coupled with the GeForce graphics card made this a dream. Cons: Small critic that the power input plug was a bit wobbly, but minor issue. I felt it was slightly too heavy to be used as a tablet alternative.

With the size of the screen, and the weight of the casing, I would say the weight is a little on the heavy side to make it super portable, however understandable with the specs and size of the laptop screen and wasn’t a huge hinderance.

My Lenovo ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 is an outstanding computer. It is configured with the Intel Xeon W-11855M Processor; 64 GB ECC Memory; 2 TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD, OPAL; 16. 0″ WQUXGA (3840 x 2400) IPS Touchscreen, 600 nits Display; NVIDIA RTX A2000 4GB Graphic Card; 170W Power Adapter; Windows 11 Pro 64 for Workstation Operating System; and including Microsoft Office Professional 2021.

I replaced a Lenovo ThinkPad W510 with my new P1 Gen 4. The W510 was still running very well after nearly 12 years of continuous use, but I wanted more processor power and storage capacity, as well as additional features that the P1 Gen 4 offers.

The ThinkPad P1 Gen 4 provides exactly what I was expecting: great CPU performance; device attachment flexibility with Thunderbolt 4 ports, HDMI 2. 1, and USB 3. 2 ports; and a Touchscreen Display with the sharpest images I have seen.

I operate the CPU in a balanced power mode rather than in high performance, and the machine runs very cool. Even running many simultaneous tasks (Firefox browser with several open tabs; Streaming video; Microsoft Access data base processes; Microsoft Word; Outlook E-mail functions; Adobe Acrobat operations; etc.

), the Xeon processor is never taxed. I am still learning the finer points of Windows 11 and Office Professional 2021, as well as the specific operation of the P1 Gen 4. The feel of the keyboard is somewhat different from my W510.

I still prefer the keyboard on the W510, which had more key travel and a better “feel” in my opinion. The placement of the TrackPoint mouse buttons on the P1 Gen 4 is not what I prefer. The buttons are too difficult to easily distinguish from the space bar, and they are too close to the space bar.

Some of the problem with being able to use the mouse buttons efficiently will hopefully go away with regular use and familiarization with the exact location and feel of the buttons. The layout of the keyboard is also slightly different from the W510, and that is a matter of familiarization with use.

I also miss the “second set” of mouse buttons which were on the front edge of the W510 keyboard. One other item I miss greatly is the indicator lights that existed on the W510, visually displaying disk activity and the state of wireless connections.

I realize that the same information can be selected on the screen, but I liked the display lights below the screen. The Touchscreen on the P1 Gen 4 is wonderful! I debated about ordering this display, but I am very happy that I have it.

It works perfectly in every respect, and I would not want to return to a non-touchscreen system. Overall, the P1 Gen 4 fits my requirement very well, and I only hope that it runs as well, and for as many years, as my W510 did over its lifetime.

Thank you for continuing to build quality ThinkPad computers!.

The laptop is great. The exterior finish was a nice surprise: I did not realize the ThinkPad designs for the P series had changed like this, and I like the result, especially with the subdued/minimal style of much of the branding and the way the lid’s carbon fiber style doesn’t show fingerprints as much as on my older T14.

Audio, video, and performance are all great so far, and the built-in, manually operated physical camera shutter is a key selling point. An electronically operated shutter like they advertise for the Z series would not meet my standards.

I wish there were physical cut-off switches for the microphone and wifi, though. I ordered the laptop with Ubuntu, but received it with some kind of Windows auto-install setup on it. This is a definite detriment; they did not deliver exactly what I ordered.

Thankfully, installing my own Linux distribution was part of the plan in the first place, and I did not have to play stupid games with a Windows secure boot to get it set up. The mishandling of the included OS is the biggest detriment, and the reason this review gets four stars instead of five.

As side notes: The way the shipping situation kept changing, and ultimately shipped before I was given an updated estimate of when it would ship/arrive, was quite inconvenient. I know parts acquisition and shipping have been seriously screwed up worldwide in the last couple years, but it would have been nice to be able to plan a little better for arrival.

The laptop for work arrived at home while I was away on a business trip, and there was nothing I was able to do about that other than inform my wife that it was on the way. Ideally, I would have liked to have it delivered to me at the hotel.

I also ordered something labelled as a “dock” for the laptop, and it is not only an annoying USB-C style dock (not a surprise; I just wish there were still docks that did not require the OS to be aware of the dock hardware to work) but also does not provide power to run the laptop — which is a huge annoyance, because it means I need to carry around the rather large/heavy (by today’s standards) power block even when it’s docked.

I’m not sure “dock” is the right word for the device in any reasonable sense, these days.

I’m going over the pros and cons of this workstation after 3 weeks of usage: Pros: 1. Handles high quality renders perfectly (tested with SOLIDWORKS Visualize 2021) 2. Plenty of RAM, can run multiple heavy programs without slowing it down, but Windows will be much more generous distributing your ram to programs such as web browsers.

3. nice battery life for such a high performance system, extremely fast charging 4. camera cover switch and microphone enable button provide further control of privacy Cons: 1. The Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) has been showing up quite often, crashing the system and interrupting my work.

The errors happen mostly when I switch power saving modes (from high performance to battery saver) or when I unplug the charger. The main errors are “video_tdr_failure (nvlddmkm. sys)”, and “video_memory_management_internal”, which are likely due to driver incompatibility of the RTX 3080.

Upon switching power states, it seems like the laptop fails to deliver sufficient power to the GPU or properly turn its power consumption down, which causes it to crash. I have tried a few driver updates so far (NVIDIA Studio drivers), none have helped.

I hope that this issue will be fixed in an update soon. 2. Weird keyboard layout – The fn key is on the left side of ctrl, which takes some time to get used to. It also doesn’t have a number pad, which could be a problem if you need to keep typing in numbers fast.

The touchpad is nice, but the force needed to click it feels above average. 3. The red TrackPoint button (ThinkPad’s joystick for cursor navigation) sometimes decides to point left on its own, which causes a slow but consistent drift on the cursor.

It doesn’t happen often enough for me to want to send it back for a fix though. 4. The laptop is thermally stable and has powerful fans. There is sufficient air flow through the bottom vents when it’s placed on a flat desk, you probably won’t need external fans or cooling pads.

However, it won’t do well on your lap or on a cushiony surface, it gets pretty hot. 5. While the soft-touch rubbery material on the main body is very comfortable, it very easily shows marks from sweat/skin oil.

Note: Don’t attempt to use the laptop GPU for crypto mining, it’s not designed for it! you can damage all sorts of components in the system (GPU itself, battery, cpu, fans,. ). Instead, use this beast for creative stuff, coding, cool designs, engineering simulations, and machine learning.

These activities can potentially make you a lot more money without wearing out your system!.

Pros: Very fast startup and runs my graphic software very well. It’s light weight compared to my previous hp laptop and more slimline. Cons: The ctrl and fn buttons are switched around on this laptop compared to other keyboards.

when you want to hold down the ctrl button you mistakenly hold down fn button. This will take a bit of getting used to but by no means a deal breaker. Great laptop for the price.

Pros: Nice keyboard and mouse pad. The pad is quite sensitive which I like. Easy to set up and seems to be operating well for my needs. Cons: The outer casing has smudged very quickly

This T15G Gen 2 is a beast, as other reviewers have said. Yes, it’s big, heavy, power-hungry, and expensive, but I haven’t come across anything this thing can’t do yet. The display (4K LCD on mine, non-touch) is very sharp, colors are great, and it has a fantastic range of brightness settings.

Keyboard is fantastic, it’s a ThinkPad, after all. TrackPoint works great, trackpad works well too, although I admit when sitting next to someone with a 16″ MacBook Pro whose trackpad is 3x the size, there is a little to be desired there.

Performance is great, runs pretty much everything. The fans are loud when it’s working, but I was impressed by how quiet it is when it’s not doing anything intense. The battery life isn’t great, it’s a big computer with a big screen and a lot of processing power, but again, I am somewhat impressed.

I can get about an hour under full load on battery, and if I’m just browsing, typing, or watching a show, it’ll do 6-7 hours, which is plenty long for me. It also charges exceptionally quickly. Something I didn’t expect to like that has been really cool- the IR camera and the Glance software on this is awesome.

It’s really nice to have the computer lock when I leave, blur the screen if someone is behind me, etc. That said, I do really wish the main camera was 1080p, not 720p. Downsides or quirks I’ve noticed so far: One thing that’s a little strange is the laptop is a little slow to turn on.

Not boot up or wake up, but there’s a couple-second delay between when the power button is pressed or the lid is opened and when the computer comes to life. Not a big deal, but a little strange at first.

The charger- it is big, the cable is thick, and it probably weighs more than an entire MacBook Air. Not ideal, but considering it’s 230W, it’s pretty compact. Keyboard backlighting- it works great, but it defaults to being off regardless of whether it was on when the system was last on, which sometimes makes for some fumbling to turn it on in the dark.

All in all, I really recommend this. A couple weird quirks but really nice overall.

Upgraded to this Thinkpad T14S with AMD Ryzen 7 Pro 5850U, 32GB RAM, 1TB SSD from a 12-year-old Thinkpad Edge that served me very well with a couple upgrades but has finally reached its limit. I’ve had this computer for a couple weeks and here are my initial impressions: Summary: Excellent computer and great user experience except for bloatware and Microsoft pushing its products in a way that makes setup a bit of a pain if you want to get rid of that stuff.

If I could give half stars it would be 4. 5. Pros: –Snappy, light, quiet, thin. Build quality is excellent. –Easy/intuitive bluetooth pairing (coming from a much older computer I appreciated this) –Useful selection of ports despite being thin and light, dongle isn’t 100% necessary.

–Privacy features (privacy screen guard, fingerprint reader, camera privacy features when not in use) are excellent. –Love the experience using a ThinkPad, and the keyboard (though my old Edge has slightly more key travel and I actually find it just a little easier to use.

Maybe that’s from 12 years of being used to it. ) Cons: –Microsoft/Lenovo bloatware that comes installed is a bummer. It meant setting this computer up took me a while. I removed a bunch, then the fingerprint reader started not working, so I created a restore point, went back, and removed things slightly more selectively.

Windows REALLY pushes Microsoft Edge and there are some programs that they make it really difficult to uninstall for the average user without using Powershell. This is the reason I’m giving 4 stars instead of 5.

–On 1-2 occasioins my mouse said it was connected but wouldn’t work (tried turning off and on, etc) and when my fingerprint reader wasn’t working and forced me to enter pin instead, but restarting the computer solved both problems.

–Difficult to upgrade this computer compared to L series or my old Thinkpad Edge, which is why I tried to buy with as much RAM as possible. Overall these cons are pretty minor, and time will tell if this computer is future-proofed enough to last another 12 years like my last one.

Got a good deal on this around the holidays and am excited to use it!.

Replacing a T 480 with no requirement for traveling the T15 was an ideal solution in my search for a new computer. The off the shelf unit had the requisite memory and storage to accommodate needs. Although not related as much to hardware as software this was the easiest transition in my primary computer ever.

The larger screen size provides for a full working keyboard. This did require some getting used to because the “active” part of the keyboard is shifted left by the number pad, which has required getting used to.

I am very pleased with my purchase.

Mostly thrilled with this laptop! Extremely fast, very light, a good set of diverse connection ports. Seems very durable despite it’s lighter weight. My only complaints are small – I was disappointed to see that they no longer allowed for a battery-power upgrade.

My previous laptop could go nearly 8 – 9 hours straight with the upgraded battery. This one barely lasts 5 hours (with the battery performance set to the most power-saving mode). This is a big deal for me, as I travel a lot.

Secondly, a rather small point, but they removed the “hotkeys” at the top-right of the keyboard layout – here, there used to be a lock button, a calculator button, a file explorer button, and an “internet” button.

I used all of these regularly. Great computer overall though. Thrilled with the speed!.

This is the first time buying a Lenovo laptop that is not a Thinkpad. It was chosen because of its exceptional durability and very low price. There is no other laptop close to being this sturdy even for double the price! It really feels quite solid which makes it heavier than average but considering this laptop will be taking around day after day, it is an essential feature.

It is also very impressive how full-featured this laptop is for its price point: – The display is full-HD and anti-glare, giving a nice clear view of the screen in varying lighting condition. The downside is that this is a TN display and it very clear has lower contrast and poor color accuracy.

For our use, it is not a problem but anyone doing digital art with this laptop would need an external monitor. Impressively it has a full-size HDMI port for that. – The keyboard is very nice! It feels solid and the keys have a good depth and very linear movement.

It is apparently spill-proof but I didn’t test this feature. There’s no backlight and unfortunately no trackpoint which is too bad but, again , this is not a Thinkpad , which brings me to my next point: – There is a large button-less trackpad which is very difficult to use.

While it is responsive and tracks finger movements well, it is difficult to move with precision and, more importantly the area that responds to clicks is furthest away from the keyboard which is rather annoying.

Definitely buy a trackball (a good one is much better since there is no need to move it along any surface) or mouse at least for this laptop. – It has a good number of ports and charges via USB-C, so there are tons of options to charge it other than the included 45W USB-C charger.

Now for a student laptop, the Lenovo 14w is certainly capable to handle most tasks. While its processor is acceptable and it even comes with embedded Radeon graphics, memory is tight and so much has to be loaded from storage which is extremely slow compared to everything else.

So, expect long boot times and long restore after hibernation. Once an application is loaded, honestly this is Google Chrome for most things lately, it is hard to notice the slow and limited storage.

I bought this computer after initially buying the Slim 7i (15″) model. That laptop was simply too big and the build quality left a lot to be desired. When I saw that that this laptop, with a 4k display and excellent performance was on sale for $999 (normally around $1800), I jumped on it.

First impressions were, to say the least, not great. First, some of the specs of the model I purchased: Model: IdeaPad Slim 9 14ITL5 Display: 3840×2160, glossy, HDR, 450 nits Processor: i7-1195G7 with Intel Iris Xe RAM: 16GB Of the bat, I was impressed with the packaging – much higher quality than the simple cardboard box the 7i had come in.

It also came with a carrying case so +1 Lenovo. The vegan leather cover is beautiful and the build quality is amazing. It doesn’t flex, creak, or anything else. The glass palm rest/touchpad looks beautiful as well (though it is a fingerprint magnet).

Then I started using it. The touchpad – the haptic glass touchpad. awful. Marketed as Lenovo”s response to Apple’s amazing touchpads – it falls extremely short. There are a lot of problems with this touchpad (enough that I purchased a mouse just in case).

The haptic response is hit or miss, with no clear pressure point that needs to be achieved to “click”. Sometimes if I am scrolling with two fingers it will click. Google it, its an issue being discussed on Reddit and other sites.

The touchpad also has no clear indication of where it starts and ends, meaning that when I am selecting text and dragging and dropping, I will often accidentally leave the trackpad surface, as the textured surface of the rest of the glass just is not enough.

I thought it must just be a driver issue at first with the haptics, or that I could adjust the sensitivity, but no – there are no options, no updates, and no response from Lenovo other than to reboot it or trade it in for a new one (which hasn’t fixed the problem for anyone else).

For a nearly $1800 laptop, I would expect WAY more from Lenovo. The touchpad is listed as HID-compliant mouse under Device Manager, so there is no way to update the drivers or anything. That being said, I have adapted to it fairly quickly and am using it more “correctly?” now I suppose? For the price I got this machine at, I can deal with it, but don’t get this for over $1000.

Now the screen – gosh is it beautiful. And that’s coming from a Huawei Matebook X user. The screen is sharp and detailed, with deep blacks and the ability to stream HDR content. It’s 60hz and 16:9, which is becoming a bit outdated but it works for me.

That being said, however, it has a huge ghosting issue. If I am working on a document and switch over to a different program, I can still see the ghost of the document on that other program. Like, I am still able to see a faint image of what I was just working on.

It’s not terrible, per se, but it’s definitely an issue that seems to have gotten cleared up on other models by a software update, so I am waiting on that. Definitely something to consider when you are paying this much for a laptop (never had that problem on my Huawei with a similarly specced display).

Performance: This laptop is fast. The 1195G7 is a beast for a laptop as slim and light as this one. No stuttering when turning on or logging in, Photoshop, Lightroom, and other intensive programs run smoothly and without a hitch.

The 16GB of RAM is the faster version and is more than enough for my education and work needs. I can play Cities Skylines and Binding of Isaac smoothly at near 60 FPS. No complaints on this part. The Keyboard: Fantastic.

The Huawei I had was basically a Macbook clone so the keyboard was similar – not great, not fantastic. I am loving the Lenovo keyboard here, enough key travel and fairly quiet. The camera: awful. Trash.

Why don’t we have 1080p camera modules in laptops yet? My phone has a 40MP camera on the front – can’t we get more than 1MP on a $1800 laptop – I digress, however. Audio: Not the best, but definitely premium.

It’s got a great stereo system that really is immersive, and the profiles you can choose from are fantastic. I wish it had more base, but one can always wish. Battery life: Definitely shorter than advertised but not bad at all.

The Rapid Charge feature is a life-saver and I can confidently leave my cord at home if I’ve got a few back-to-back classes and its fully charged. But don’t be fooled – if you are using HDR, at maximum brightness, and using the GPU in any way, the battery is going to go fast.

It is also a 4k display so that was a sacrifice I was willing to make as I’m really never far from a wall outlet. The performance modes are great, with intelligent cooling really doing its job and rarely spinning up the fans.

In intensive mode, I can hear the fans but they are really decently quiet. I’m happy to share anything else anyone wants to know. I’m a bit back and forth on this laptop, to be honest, as I only paid $1000 for $1800 worth of computer, and it works well enough for me.

But that being said, if the trackpad could be given an update to give us some control over pressure intensity or haptic feedback and the screen’s ghosting issues resolved, I would update my rating to 4 stars.

So far, not a fan at all. There are some frustrations that may not be entirely fair to put solely on this specific laptop. Setting up is a very frustrating experience as it must be connected to a network first, but (as others have mentioned) there is a bug that will prevent connection if you’re not on an open/public network.

Fun. The new Windows format is awful, but again, that’s not entirely fair to throw solely at this product. But what IS fair to complain about and what really shocked me is that this laptop (only four days old) already froze on me.

Apparently the Ryzen 7 and the 12GB memory isn’t quite enough to handle two open PowerPoints and Mozilla with six tabs open. Nope, that brought the thing to a screeching halt with zero response to any actions that eventually required a full power cycle.

I have a beat-up Dell that has seen abuse over several years and has far less impressive specs, I know for fact that it wouldn’t experience the same difficulty and it really does surprise me that the laptop that I got as my intended “work” computer can’t even handle a few open tabs and office apps.

(I’m genuinely half wondering if I got handed a refurb or something slipped through the cracks. ) I work with large datasets and was hoping for this guy to carry some weight in things like R and Stata.

Now I’m not even sure it can handle opening Excel to do a cursory view of the data. Will keep testing it out over the next few days, but I’m anticipating a return and will – as of right now – advise that the buyer beware.

If things improve, I’ll update the review.

I’ll be honest right from the beginning…I’ve never been a fan of HP laptops. While their desktops have (almost always) been extremely good, their laptops have been…uh…”problematic”. As such, this review, unfortunately, will be ‘incomplete’, as it would take several more months (time I do not have in regards to submitting this review) for me to do a complete, honest, and truly informative review.

As such, I will have to base my finding on the limited amount of time I have been given to submit this review. UNBOXING, SETUP, AND INITIAL IMPRESSIONS: HP, like most companies, has greatly improved on “environmentally-friendly” packaging.

They’ve eliminated the great majority of the (unneeded & unnecessary) plastic & styrofoam, and replaced it (for the greatest part), and replaced it with cardboard…so, at least on that front, I am happy.

As for ‘setup’, there’s really not much to say. When you purchase a new computer (desktop, or laptop), the first thing you want to do after completing the “initialization” process is run ‘Windows Update’…and, not once, but many times.

The best (ok, the ONLY) recommendation I can give is to run ‘Windows Update’, installing everything it finds, then reboot the computer, and repeat the process…and, keep repeating the process until ‘Windows Update’ indicates there are no further updates.

After going through all that, my next step is to go to the manufacturer’s website, to their “Downloads” section, and search-for/install all recently-released updates (ESPECIALLY any firmware & BIOS).

Only once you have completed ALL of the above-mentioned steps can you consider the computer to have been completely “set up”. Finally, as for “initial impressions”, for the screen size, I feel the physical size of the laptop, as well as the weight, are (essentially) what they should be.

This isn’t an ‘ultrabook’, so I didn’t expect it to be “lightweight”, nor is it a full-on ‘gaming laptop’, so I didn’t expect it to be “heavy as a rock”…I expected it to weight somewhere in-between, and that’s exactly where its weight is.

I was greatly appreciative of the relatively-slim bezel along the top, and sides, of the screen…but, at the same time, I felt the bottom bezel was a bit excessive. Comparing against my other laptop (an ultrabook), the bottom bezel is no different than the top bezel (approx 1/4”), which is only double the thickness of the side bezels.

On the “plus” side, I have to give HP huge props on the sound…while the Bang & Olufsen speakers aren’t as loud as I would have liked (or hoped), they do produce better-than-expected sound (for a laptop).

Another “high point” is the laptop’s cooling system. While not a “high-end” gaming laptop, HP did put in a “high-end” gaming laptop cooling system…when I say “it blows”, I mean that in the most positive of ways.

Moving over to the CPU, the AMD Ryzen 7 6800H is on-par with the Intel Core i7-12700H. While the Intel CPU does have (slightly) better specs, benchmarks have shown them to be, essentially, equal. Switching over to a GPU comparison, the AMD Radeon RX 6650M is, essentially, equal to the Nvidia RTX 3050Ti.

The Nvidia has more cores, but the AMD has a higher clock speed (glad this laptop has the cooling system it has). In overall performance, the AMD graphics are more than powerful enough for your best “mid-tier” games, and can even run AAA games (as long as you do NOT set everything to the highest setting…your best bet is to set everything at a nice ‘midpoint’, and then test).

THE LAPTOP IN-USE: I like the colored LED-backlit keyboard…but, I do NOT like that it can only be ‘on’, or ‘off’. The least HP could have done was to have two brightness levels (three would have been even better (for comparison, my Corsair keyboard has ‘off’, and five brightness levels).

While I greatly like the 144Hz refresh rate, the 7ms response time is a bit on the “slow” side. On top of that, they could have gone with a display providing slightly higher than just 1920×1080. I’m not saying they should have gone with a 4K display (that would have greatly increased the cost/selling-price)…but, they COULD have gone with 2560×1440.

Or, better yet, 1920×1200 (ie. WUXGA), which would have eliminated a good portion of that ridiculous bottom bezel. Other than that, the laptop works. As I said near the beginning ofd this review, I am not given enough time to TRULY evaluate the laptop, so I am unable to provide accurately-informative information.

If I could update my review after 6 months (or even 4 months), I would…but, I am unable to do such, thus my “review” will, forever, be ‘incomplete’. “PROBLEMS”: As of yet, I have not run into any ‘problems’…but, based on previous experience with HP laptops, such could, eventually, show.

This is NOT to say that ‘problems’ will, eventually, show themselves. Just as certain other brands have improved the quality of their products, it is equally possible that HP has made improvements in their laptops.

I do NOT want to dissuade anyone from purchasing this laptop based on my previous experience with HP laptops…so, for those reading this, please, take anything ‘negative’ I’ve said, above, with a grain of salt, and understand that, in regards to this laptop, I could be completely wrong.

FINAL VERDICT: This is a ‘delicate’ matter…and, in what I’m about to say (along with everything I’ve said above), understand that part of what I’m about to say is based on prior experience with HP laptops.

First, in regards to the “Would you recommend this” question, I REALLY wish Best Buy would add a ‘Maybe’ option…sometimes, having only ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ as the only options isn’t “realistic”. Given the choice, my answer would have been ‘Maybe’…but, since that’s not an option, I will semi-reluctantly say ‘Yes” again, I have not had any problems with this HP Omen Gaming Laptop…and, I am NOT saying I expect to have any…but, based on prior experience with HP laptops, it won’t surprise me if any (eventually) occur.

If I were to completely ignore my prior experience with HP laptops, and base my answer on only what I’ve actually experienced with this particular laptop (in the limited amount of time I’ve had to use it so far), then, my answer would be ‘Yes’.

This is a great gaming laptop. I upgraded from a 2017 Omen 17″ with a Core i7 7700HQ and RX580 8Gb graphics. So, I knew to expect a solid, slightly more affordable competitor to an Alienware product.

This machine absolutely blows my prior laptop out of the water. I’m a pretty serious gamer, and this laptop provides a roughly equivalent experience at 1080p (90-100+ fps in AAA games) to what my desktop does in wide 1440p with an RX6750XT, which is great for cloud syncing my steam games and taking them in the living room or on the go without sacrificing much in the experience.

It has a handy keyboard button to disable the trackpad which is nice for using a controller and being able to rest your hands on the laptop without errant mouse inputs. The RX6650M appears to perform almost as well as the RX6700M in many games.

Fans can get noisy, but most higher-performance laptops are in that boat. It’s not as noisy under load as my Omen 17 was, but since that was about as loud (and hot) as a first-gen Xbox 360, it’s a low bar to pass.

I’ll say that the “screen wobble” many reviewers point out in Omen 16 reviews online has either been addressed in this latest model, or simply isn’t nearly the big deal they’ve made it out to be because I’ve barely noticed it.

I also considered the Asus ROG Strix G15 AMD Advantage Edition laptop with the RX6800M, which can sometimes be had on sale for about ~$1200 also. While that laptop ostensibly offers more performance and better battery life, it also has a slightly smaller screen, no webcam, and reportedly serious reliability concerns.

To me, sticking with HP was a no-brainer. One negative of note is that while it’s pretty nifty that this laptop is equipped with the newer Ryzen CPUs with onboard RDNA2 graphics which it can switch to for non-gaming (or battery gaming) loads, it means that about 800Mb of your RAM is allocated to it for use as VRAM, so you actually only get 15.

2Gb usable RAM. Not a huge deal, perhaps, but worth being aware of. Battery life is better than older gaming laptops (my Omen 17 got about 2 hours) at around 5-ish hours, but nothing spectacular by today’s standards.

In short, if you can manage to get this on sale below $1200 like I did, it’s well worth the purchase.

The HP Omen 16. 1” laptop does not have a garish lid logo with Demon Horns or a mythical creature with pulsing neon lights announcing to everyone at you company meeting or class room that you might not really be paying attention to a boring class or business meeting.

The logo on the lid is subtle and the normally pulsating swirling rainbow of keyboard back-lighting can be turned to plain white if you want to be in a stealthy mode. None-the-less, it’s a well optioned gaming laptop at a good price point.

I loaded Destiny 2 onto the Omen. I play Destiny frequently on an Xbox Series X. The Omen is every bit as competent to play the game as the Series X console is. FEATURES: • Clean lines and sharp defined corners are attractive.

• Anti-glare display • Up to 9 hours of battery life when gaming, • Supports fast charge of approximately 50% in 30 minutes. • Ports include: 1 HDMI 2. 1, 1 RJ-45 Ethernet, 2 Super-speed USB Type-C, 1 Super-speed USB Type-A (sleep and charge), 2 Super-speed USB Type-A, 1 headphone/microphone combo, and SD card reader.

• FHD (1920 x 1080), 144 Hz, 7 ms response time, IPS, micro-edge, anti-glare, Low Blue Light • Weighs 5. 3 lbs. PROS: • Excellent display with a frame rate (144 Hz) fast enough for very smooth gaming • Surprisingly good sound with Bang & Olufsen speakers and HP Audio Boost • I installed Destiny 2 which I normally play on an Xbox Series X console.

The game played every bit as good on the Omen with smooth colorful graphics and excellent frame-rate of 90-120 fps. • More than adequate cooling no matter how intense the gaming movement. Not too loud under intense demand.

CONS: • The Omen’s power requires some heavy hardware. If you don’t need a gaming or high video processing and you need portability, this might not be a good choice for you. • Lacks a book-keeping style numeric keypad.

• The on-off button is not in a place you can feel for in a dim light. It is just one of many on the top rows of keys and I sometimes had to turn a light on to find it. • Because of the higher power internals, the body is thicker than the average less powerful laptop.

• At 300 nits it’s OK in dimmer evening lighting conditions when I usually game, but in daytime lighting I find the screen a little dim. CONCLUSION: A good choice for PC gamers.

See the title for my first impression. I will first say that the first one of these I received kept giving me BSODs (blue screen of death) every day or so in the middle of doing things. It would then restart and seem OK for a day, then it would do it again.

I took it back to Microcenter, and we switched it out for another one, switching the heard drive in the process. After getting the Bitlocker protection to let me into the moved hard drive, everything was OK from there.

No more BSODs. I did a little research with the MyASUS utility on the laptop and it may have been an incompatible video driver. I’ll add here that right after getting the laptop the first time, it upgraded to Windows 11, and win 11 may have added the wrong video driver.

I manually went in and updated the video driver the same night I brought the 2nd one home and haven’t had any BSODs. It’s been a week that I’ve had it with no problems. My recommendation is to immediately go into the Asus utilities and get your video driver updated.

Now that I got that out there, I am quite satisfied with the laptop with the two exceptions below. It boots very quickly, has a nice sized screen without being too wide like a 17″ screen seems to be for me.

The feel of the keys on the keyboard is nice. They’re chicklet style and fairly quiet, but not totally so. It’s backlit, which is nice, even if you’re in a well-lit room. The screen is OLED. That gives it nice, rich colors and deep contrast.

One thing to note, though, is that OLED screens can suffer from screen burn-in if you have a static image There are ONLY two things I don’t care for on it. One is the “new and improved because it’s bigger” touchpad, which gets in the way when typing.

While typing, it’s all too easy for your palm or the base of your thumb to momentarily touch the touchpad and move the insertion point up or down, sometimes into an entirely different paragraph. I can’t completely work around this, but a free utility called Touchpad Blocker helps some.

You can have it turn off the touchpad while you’re typing and have a time delay of like 1. 5 seconds (you pick the interval) before the touchpad becomes active again. It prevents most of these inconveniences, but not all.

The other thing I don’t like is that the number pad is a bit strange, as it’s squeezed horizontally but not vertically, so the relative distances between the numbers and +,-, /, etc. , is strange if you’re used to a standard keyboard.

This, along with the touchpad, could have been better implemented by eliminating the number pad and centering the letter keys over the touchpad, which would make it less likely to bump the touchpad by accident while typing.

The touchpad is offset in relation to the letter keys, making it likely your right palm or thumb will hit the touchpad while typing.

My previous two laptops were both made by Acer and lasted almost 10-years each. ASUS has a good reputation and I was very impressed with the $499 price of this 17. 3″ screen laptop! It arrived in two days and was easy to set up.

I thought I lost a lot of pics and documents on my last computer, but I was surprised to find my items transferred over via the cloud once I clicked on the import bookmarks option on the Microsoft Edge browser! There are a few things that I don’t like, the biggest being the keyboard is not backlit; apparently, it’s an option on the ASUS Vivobook K712E laptops.

If you have the backlit keyboard, there will be a keyboard icon on the F7 function key; if the F7 function key does not have the icon, then the laptop does not have a backlit keyboard. Having read one of the reviews that mentioned the backlit keyboard, I thought it was standard.

I was wrong! The letters, numbers, etc. , are VERY hard to see, especially with the keys, mouse and keyboard cover all being the same, silver color! The letters/numbers on the keys are not painted on, they are translucent and I assume they are so to let the light through on those with the backlight option.

It’s a real disappointment in design! Next, there is no optical drive, but I knew that when I purchased it and know it’s more “the norm” these days than the exception. External optical drives can be had for around $20, so not a deal breaker.

The User Manual provided with the laptop is just a few pages; if you want the full manual, you’ll have to go online to ASUS’s site and download it. Again, not a deal breaker, but it would have been nice to have.

This ASUS K1712EA comes with the Intel i3 processor rated at 3. 3 GHz and one of its two, memory slots filled with 8 GB of RAM, which is expandible up to 32 GB of DDR4 RAM, but that will add about another $175 if you do the labor, or, about a third of the cost of the computer.

That said, the processor speed and RAM is more than enough for all but those that do gaming. and if you want to have a gaming computer, I would not recommend this model if you want to do the newest of games.

I would recommend you spend a little more for a gaming computer. This laptop is good for work, education and most business functions. The screen displays well, but not on par with the best, however. The speakers are adequate for most tasks and on par with most average laptop speakers; you can always pair a wireless speaker like Sonos if you want better sound.

Battery life isn’t much, but if you’re like me and run your laptop off of the AC adapter 99% of the time, it’s not a big issue. If portability is a major concern, this may not be the best choice. I say this not that there is anything particularly wrong with this particular laptop, but any 17″ screen laptop might be a big clumsy for carrying it around and I would recommend a 14″ or smaller screen if you do a lot of traveling with your laptop (and something with a better battery life).

Not bad for $500!.

Four things that I hate about this computer: (1) The lighted keyboard is useless as it is not bright enough or the lettering on the keys does not conduct the light properly. (2) I have never had a laptop with a silver keyboard and I’d suggest that this is not a color that complements the background lighting and makes it difficult to see what the keyboard key is (for those keys that you use less frequently).

A dark keyboard (black) would provide a greater contrast and enhance the lighted keyboard feature. Tilting the screen forward helps, but it is the wrong direction for viewing as one typically tilts it back slightly.

(3) The mouse touch pad sensitivity is adjustable, but sliding your finger across the touch pad does not work well unless your finger is moist. If it is dry, it just slides across the face of the touch pad without moving the mouse correctly.

If you moisten the tip of your finger it seems to out more drag on your finger and the mouse responds correctly. (4) The battery life is the worst that I have ever had. The sticker on the keyboard says long battery life and that is misleading.

Anything with only 2. 5 to 3. 0 hours is pathetic. My previous Dell Latitude computer was 6+ hours and other computers are even 8-10 hours, so this is definitely at the bottom of the scale. worst of all, it is an internal battery and you can not replace it with one that has an extended life or greater mAh.

(Milliamp Hours) The price for this computer was good and I don’t want to go through the conversion process again, but I greatly regret ever making the purchase, and would not recommend it to anyone.

Asus has other models with a black keyboard and I would strongly recommend one of them and not this one with the silver keyboard. There are other features that I like about this computer though. The larger screen size (17.

3″) was achieved by having a smaller frame and the overall size of the computer was essentially the same as a computer with a 15. 6″ screen.

God this will feel good to vent my frustrations. I elected to get the i7, 16gb ram pro 7 model as I wanted a surface that would last and not become frustratingly slow after 2 years like my previous surface pro 4.

Fast forward 1. 5 years and its so. much. slower to operate than day 1. Chrome is sluggish, slow to recognise me on windows hello etc. BUT my number one quarrel with my device is windows 11. DO NOT UPGRADE TO THIS AWFUL operating system- seriously.

It is a quantifiable downgrade from windows 10 by every metric, I hate how the apps are clustered in the middle of the screen on the bottom, makes it more difficult to navigate to home button as you can’t just go all the way to the bottom left and land on it you have to actively aim for it, the actual windows start menu itself looks atrocious! It look’s like it is an interns beta prototype! The side menu on the right hand side is gone and now, needlessly, split into two different sections, the calander and the device info section.

and don’t even get me started on the calendar- now, you cannot and i repeat cannot open up the side menu, navigate to a day on the calendar widget, and then add an event to that day. You have to open up the calendar app, waste time waiting for it to open and then add events that way, I can’t tell you how annoying this has been when uni professors spout off important dates as a I wait for the calendar app to open after forgetting that windows 11 got rid of this very, very necessary feature.

Unbelievable. Heuristically, Windows 11 has completely and utterly failed at the most basic requirements of good UI design. I use my computer far less nowadays because of windows 11, because of how bad a taste it consistently leaves me with.

If i discovered a genie bottle in the wild, one of my wishes would be to have windows 10 on my laptop again. The surface itself is fine honestly, good quality build and excellent screen (but jeez, for the money it is not worth it), just suffers from the terrible software unfortunately.

Surface devices have always struck me as overpriced and lagging behind in tech features versus other Windows 2-in-1s, not to mention Android or iOS tablets. I would never have considered this device were it not deeply discounted.

I even tried using a Surface Go at one point, and the Pentium chip in it was a huge let-down. This one has been an entirely different experience. The 11th gen i3 has not skipped a beat. Everything is smooth and snappy.

I have a big heavy gaming laptop for games and work, but I’m now convinced that this could be my everyday workhorse. Just plug in a USB-C hub at your desk and you’re good to go. You could even do a little casual gaming here – despite some confusion in the product info, this does have the new Iris Xe graphics (confirmed in Device Manager), not the useless old Intel HD stuff.

The display is crisp and bright. It may not be 120 Hz or OLED, but you won’t feel like you’re missing much once you start using it. This version also has a replaceable SSD in case you find yourself running low on space.

The Surface Pen (not included but can be found affordably as open-box or refurb) is also a top-notch writing experience. The iPad has definitely caught up in recent years software-wise, but the Surface pen just feels so much better touching and moving across the screen, and the eraser tip on the other end is a nice touch.

OneNote is still king for free note-taking apps. I always enjoyed Windows 10 well enough, and I’ll miss the live tiles, but 11 really does bring a lot of nice little changes for touch-based use. The new widgets are probably more useful than the live tiles anyway.

You’ll probably find everything you need comes with Windows or is available in the Windows Store at this point, but if not, Windows 11 now supports Android apps, so once the Amazon app store is fully populated you’ll have options there in case something you love on your phone isn’t available for Windows.

You also get the full flexibility of installing whatever you need from the massive amount of Windows software out there. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can even install the Google Play store. I hate to say it, but I think Microsoft has me convinced, and I might stick around for awhile.

Between the integration with Android phones, the built-in Android app support, Windows Ink, Microsoft 365, and all the flexibility and legacy of Windows software, I finally feel like I have an alternative to being locked in to Apple where I’m not missing out, both for personal and professional use.

If, like me, you grew up using Microsoft software, but were drawn away as they fell behind Apple and Google in the mobile-first era, I think you’ll find enough to love here to come back and give them another shot.

This item is great if the person has light work or casual use such as streaming Netflix. However, it is not the ideal product for you if you plan to use it for gaming, college/uni documents or online school, and digital art/illustrations.

The laptop does lag and glitches often, which can be a hindrance when doing schoolwork. It does not handle pressure well, such as opening multiple tabs, streaming tv shows and zoom meetings all at once.

The laptop sometimes restarts on its own during your work on the web and when starting the computer, it suddenly opens its background software programming and the screen flickers during your work. Taking lecture notes or notes in general, the best application for this is Office Notes as Good Notes do not support Windows and Microsoft Whiteboard is also affected by the glitches.

When using an iPad, the computer glitches and slows down, especially when rearranging tabs on the screen and the screen keyboard takes up half the space of the screen as well. Battery life wise, it lasts about 5 hours only.

Some pro this laptop offers is the convenience of switching between the keyboard to tablet option [once purchased the keyboard and surface pen separately]. Microsoft Edge offers free editing tools for pdf documents, which is great.

Overall, it is best for casual usage, do not recommend it for heavy-duty use or you will be disappointed. [Based on my 1-year use of the product for school].