The good:
Surprisingly good sound (JBL speakers), decent keyboard (but it took me about a day to get used to it) , good performance

The bad:
The touch pad is horrible compared to what I had before (on HP and NEC), the viewing angles are a bit wonky (even for me)

I have not yet tried:
Battery life.

Price: 3,500 lei / $850.54 (discounted when I got it)

Switching from a Core 2 Duo to an i7 and from 2 GB DDR2 to 8 GB DDR3 may make me praise the laptop a bit more than what you find online. Which is totally ok, because this is my experience.

I got this laptop for work (I work from home) and my day-to-day writing on the blog. I do not intend to use it for gaming but may consider watching movies on it.

Connectivity and multimedia

I hog USB ports since I need a bunch of them for various things so having 3 of them is not exactly enough. What suffered? My FitBit dongle , of course, which I didn’t get to plug in. I also have a card reader, a combo audio jack, VGA, HDMI, and LAN.

The laptop has three (!) cameras. One is IR and all have 3D capability. For me , it means I eventually look decent in the work meetings. Combine that with the wifi and I am a happy gal. There’s also bluetooth available.

I also have a DVD writer on it and the speakers are JBL (and really load!) . The microphone is decent , but I need to position myself close to it to be heard well. Or just speak louder .

Other tech stuff

I have 1 TB of storage (from 140 GB, I feel like I have too much) and a 4 GB video card (plus the on board intel graphics for the day to day stuff, like writing). The laptop comes with i7 processor and 8GB memory.

The display is 15.6 inch and full HD and it really makes a difference as to the general feel and use, especially compared to the old one I was using.

The looks

It’s sexy and girly! Which I didn’t care about before but when I saw I could order a white one, I went for it. The inside is “aluminum gray” but obviously a mix of aluminum and plastic.

My experience

I ordered the laptop and an operating system (Windows 7 Pro – don’t judge, I need Windows for software at work) and luckily it came uninstalled. So Alex installed the operating system and drivers, and then I installed my other software I need (included but not limited to: Open Office 4, Zoner Photo Studio, Amadeus Selling Platform, Zoom, Jing).

I got used to the keyboard by the middle of the work day. Yesterday evening , it was a bit of a pain to adjust but thanks to the full UK key board , numbers pad and my small hand, the adjustment was painless. Not so much for my neck which I feel is a bit in a weird position (I also use a cooling pad and an external monitor).

The touch pad is terrible. I debated shipping it back to the seller but figured I don’t use it anyway at work and if I need it when I travel, I’ll bitch about it and then just adjust. Or bring my tiny mouse with me.

All of the browsers and software I use work very smoothly on the laptop ; and some of them really love eating memory (8×8 anyone?) so that was a nice change.

Update Dec 20:

I have installed Swordcoast Legends on Friday and Ubisoft’s Might and Magic VI on Sunday. I played both and the laptop was super smooth but it does heat up. Sure, any aluminum laptop heats up quite easily but it cools down just as fast. Still, I only play over the weekends when I don’t work so I am not *that* concerned. I do love how smooth both games worked especially after scrambling to play them on my desktop ( worse specs than the laptop but all I got so far for gaming)

The laptop doesn’t overheat when I work or do other things except playing games – but I do have a cooling pad which is on all the time – and it is really silent. I am debating using an external keyboard so that I don’t kill this one ahead of its time.

Update Feb 28:
Meantime I switched to the onboard graphics card even for the above two games and the laptop doesn’t heat up at all now. But, I do play only over some weekends…

And I also got an external keyboard (US!) because I didn’t want to kill its own way too soon. I do a lot of typing. And I really mean a lot: I write emails and reports for work, I do work in the Amadeus console plus my own blogging and writing.

Do I recommend it?

So far , certainly yes! It is not as pricey as you’d think when you add up all the tech stuff and you get to use it. And I have a feeling it’s even better on Windows 8 or 10.

>>For a really technical review of the i5 processor version, go to this page

Update: Feb 11, 2017
My laptop died a sudden death as I was trying to change, in bios, to use the ATI graphic card. Once I saved bios, all hell broke loose and I got a black screen. And so I have to figure out where to take it for repairs…oh the life.
But , one thing is for sure, do not EVER buy a Lenovo laptop!