Lenovo 81D1009LUS Ideapad 330, 15.6" HD Display, Intel N4000, 4GB RAM, 1TB HDD, Win 10 Home, Coral Red

Packed with nice features for the price! I am very impressed with this recently introduced (around May 2018) entry level laptop. It has a full HD screen at 15.6", HDMI port, a wired Ethernet port (in addition to the fast 802.11AC WiFi), a large 1TB 5400rpm hard drive, as well as a 1.1 GHz dual core Celeron processor that turbos to 2.6 GHz. It comes with a DVD writer. Not many entry level laptops carry this. The touch pad has hidden buttons (like Apple Macbooks), which looks nicer than those with visible big buttons. The power supply cord wraps up nicely into a small cube (the tie wrap is enough t go around the power cube). Some other brands' power supplies have a bulky detachable AC cord and are not as easy to store and carry as this one. There are many 11" and 14" laptops out there, including Ideapad 100 series and other brands using either Windows or ChromeOS with much less capability, but not a lot cheaper. I decided on this Windows 10 laptop as I wanted to use dual boot to run Ubuntu Linux. This laptop worked out fine with Ubuntu 18.04. You will need a driver for the touch pad, but the mouse works fine as is. The 330 family of laptops also include a quad-core Celeron model that turbos to a lower 2.4 GHz. That model comes with a smaller 500 GB hard drive. Both the 500 GB and the larger 1TB hard drive are traditional drives, therefore they are not going to be completely quiet like a Solid State Drive (SSD). The large 1TB drive was the main reason I opted for this model. If you need higher CPU speeds and do not mind a smaller but faster drive, there are Ideapad models with Intel Core CPUs and solid state drives at higher price points. There are models with touch screens too if that is what you like to have. Lenovo puts only several applications on the laptop, including McAfee LiveSafe anti-virus software. Therefore the system comes with almost a bare install of Windows 10. It is very clean compared to some other brands with all kinds of ad wares. A headache I noticed is the Windows 10 Home Edition that came with this computer. It kept downloading random apps in the background, without my permission, and installing them on the computer behind my back. It's awful! I need to find some way to disable it. I did not need to worry about this with MacOS. The Ideapad 330 is a great value at the price point. The large hard drive allows you to install Linux or use the and have room to spare, or use the space for all your pictures, videos, books and music. It is a recent, up to date style and is a great entry level laptop at the price point.

Overall the quality is very good, performance is a little slow until the processor warm up. It seems to be somewhat heavy in weight.