Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Hi All, So I purchased this laptop with the hope of replacing my almost 10 year old dell xps L501x. I've been using this system for around two months now, here are my views: The system is quite capable of demanding workloads( Matlab/Simulink etc). The catch : the fans (there are two of them at the bottom) make quite a racket on full throttle, especially if you change the thermal management to performance. If the setting is left to intelligent you can hear the fan roaring every now and then. Having said that, I've used the laptop on my lap and never felt the heat for normal workloads. The laptop comes with 8gb ram @2400mhz. There is only one ram slot. However, the configuration is interesting: 4gb ram is soldered onto the motherboard and the remaining 4 gb is provided by the ramstick. Keep in mind that the vega graphics will consume 2gb of the 8gb, you'll be left with only six. The good news is that the ram is upgradable. I swapped in a 16gb stick, so now I have 4+16=20Gb of ram, 18 of which is usable. I would highly suggest upgrading the ram as it makes a lot of difference. The stock ssd is 256gb is good for regular use. I swapped in a 1tb NVMe m2 from crucial which sorts my data needs. Don't expect the battery to last as long as mentioned, especially under stress. I got about 3 hours. If you set the laptop to cool & quiet in lenovo vantage, and best battery life under windows power options then it's possible to get around 5-6 hours, although you're taking quite a performance hit. I like that the laptop came with a stylus. What I didn't like is that the stylus holder uses one USB port and blocks the use of the other ports. I purchased an adhesive based pen holder and stuck it onto the back cover. Another peeve I had was with the power brick. It's not very bulky but it directly connects to the wall socket without any cord. If you are using a slim power strip, you'll definitely run into space constraints. Again this can be rectified with the purchase of a two prong extension cord. The build quality is quite good. It feels solid with no creaks. I like the keyboard. The speakers are downward facing, however, this helps in tent and tablet mode as they end up facing you. I hate that the keyboard backlight doesn't dim automatically - it did on the xps. You have three settings: Low, High, Off with you can toggle with the fn+spacebar keys. I'd suggest getting a screen protector (a matte one), the glossy screen which is beautiful to watch movies on, is a fingerprint magnet and is quite reflective. Something I'd like to highlight is the usb c port. It does not support power delivery or video ports. It's good only for data transfers and Ethernet ports. Please be careful while purchasing expensive hubs as even the one lenovo recommends comes with an hdmi port that will not work. Please google for more on this issue. For those that are interested in using this laptop for a multi display setup, I'd suggest using the onboard hdmi port and getting a usb to vga/hdmi display adapter. Some issues that I've faced: 1. High cpu usage cause by Windows Audio Device Graph Isolation (check service in task manager) - This was a strange issue. I had really high cpu usage spikes (noticeable by the roaring fan) at idle. The task mentioned above used to consume 30to 80% of the cpu. I tried everything from driver swapping, disabling sound enhancements, hardware acceleration etc. The solution was to uninstall Skype!!!! Everything is normal since. 2. WiFi dropping: Another persistent issue that plagued me was frequent wifi dropping. Apparently this issue is caused by faulty drivers for the Realtek 8822E wifi chip. All users with laptops containing this card have faced this issue, so I can't fault lenovo. I've tried playing around with the drivers and various settings. Some users have swapped the wifi chip for an intel one - it will cost around 10 to 20 usd. The best results I achieved are with the 2023.xxx driver. Do not update to the 2024.xxx version!!! Hopefully Realtek rectifies this issue with new drivers. You can also change the chip altogether. For those looking for a more oomph, lenovo has practically the same laptop with a ryzen 7 3700U. It might be worth looking into. Keep in my that you don't get a free stylus with that. Hope you like this review. Have fun with this laptop. ---------------- Update on 5th September Here is an update on my experience so far. Keep in mind that the links shared are of items purchased in June/July, you might get better/cheaper products now. I finally grew weary of the wifi drops and the workarounds. I swapped in an Intel 9260 chip. No problems since then. (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079QJQF4Y/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1) Here's the upgraded ram and NVMe SSD that I swapped in: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B019FRBHZ0/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07J2Q4SWZ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o03_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 The alternate pen holder: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H8DYNGF/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 The Power brick extension cord: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0784JNFFJ/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 If you guys are looking for a usb c NVMe SSD reader for the cloning process, this is the one I used: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MNFH1PX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1 For those wanting to hook this laptop up to more than 1 screen, you can have a look at this: https://www.amazon.com/Plugable-Universal-Docking-Station-Ethernet/dp/B00ECDM78E/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=plugable+hub&qid=1567693621&s=hi&sr=1-1-catcorr It has usb 3.0, usb 2.0, ethernet, HDMI, DVI, (DVI to VGA converter included), mic, and headphones ports. The drivers are really iffy with some of the things on this laptop esp the display if you have them updated with AMDs most recent. Right now the stable optional driver that I'm using is 19.6.2. AMDs optional drivers are quite buggy (BSODs etc). I'd suggest sticking to the stable ones only. For those suffering from the yellow tint on the screen. It's a software/driver issue. Update to one of the stable drivers and make sure lenovo eyecare and windows night light are both off. for those having a laggy/erratic mouse/keyboard issue, it's allegedly an audio driver issue. Download the latest Synaptics connexant audio drivers online and select that as the target folder for device manager to update the Synaptics audio device (under sound). Some users have found success with this method. -Keith