This is a long review. Here’s the summary for the impatient – this laptop has excellent specs for the money, and I would definitely recommend. More info below. I almost never take the time to write reviews (in fact, this is only my 2nd review for Best Buy) but I’m doing so now because of how pleased I am with this laptop. This is a great laptop for the money (I paid $399.99 during a one-day sale, but I still think it’s a great deal at the current price of $429.99). I haven’t found a less expensive laptop with these specs – AMD Ryzen 5 with integrated Radeon Vega 8 graphics blows away the most comparable Intel i5 offering, and 8 gigs ram and SSD also help ensure this is a pretty fast computer for most tasks. Out of the box, this laptop had 93.8GB free of its 128GB SSD. I immediately installed a fresh copy of Windows 10 from USB using Microsoft’s Media Creation Tool to get rid of any bloatware and that freed up over 10GB – I had 105 GB free after this OS re-installation. Next I completely updated Windows and built-in Microsoft store apps, and then uninstalled those things that came with Windows 10 itself for which I have no interest (Candy Crush, Office apps, etc.). At this point you’ve got a nice clean foundation onto which you can start adding all of your applications and files. I use Revo Uninstaller and CCleaner often to keep the SSD and registry tidy and to prevent unwanted things running at startup. I’m also using Windows 10 built it antivirus software. My thoughts so far are below. Positives: *Bang for the Buck* – excellent specs and performance for the price. The Ryzen 5 2500U is most comparable to an Intel I5 8250U, but as I wrote above, the Vega 8 integrated graphics blow away the integrated graphics on the Intel offering. *Build quality* – very good. Aluminum chassis, little flex, nice firm hinge, small bezels *Weight* – I don’t know the exact weight of this model, but I own many laptops (and have access to many more) and this seems to me to be on the lighter side of 15” laptops. *SSD* - it’s PCIe (not SATA) *Wifi* – dual-band wifi is quick and without issues Neutral *Port selection* – it’s OK for the price, but I would always be happier with more *Audio* – these speakers are not fantastic (even with the included Dolby profiles), but you can use the EQ to tune the sound to something you’ll like, and I’ve heard much worse. So, they’re not wonderful, but they’re not terrible either, and they get the job done. Clarity is OK, and after boosting some frequencies with the EQ, volume is not too bad either. Don’t expect any bass, however – I listen to acoustic music on this (lots of classical guitar, lute, etc.) and it sounds fine. *Display* – it’s 1920x1080, which is exactly what I think it should be on a 15” laptop – lower resolutions really start to become noticeable on a screen this size and higher resolutions just crank through battery life (about which I’ll have more to say below). It’s also matte, which I prefer to glossy screens. The bezels are pretty small for what I consider to be a budget laptop, which is nice, and helps to keep the overall size down. But it could be a little brighter. It’s 250 nits, I believe, which is not terrible, but I do wish I could crank up the brightness occasionally. *No backlit keyboard* – I wouldn’t really expect one on a laptop for this price, but it would’ve been nice to have. *Trackpad* – Does not have separate buttons for left and right clicking. Some people prefer them, others prefer to use the trackpad surface itself, but there is no issue with this; the trackpad works just fine. *Storage Size* – having an SSD vs a traditional hard drive is nice, but 128GB is getting pretty small these days and I wish it were larger. Still, it is what it is so I am not calling this a negative. *Looks* – this is incredibly subjective, which is why I put it in the neutral category, but this laptop is very nondescript. I personally appreciate that minimalist approach, but others may think differently. *Keyboard* – chicklet style with no (or very little) curvature to the top of the keys. Depth is a little shallow, but it’s easy enough to get used to. It’s not a bad typing experience, but it’s not like typing on a great mechanical keyboard either, hence the neutral category placement. Negatives *Battery life* – it’s not good. I know Lenovo says this computer is good for about 7 hours, but I think you’d really need to baby it to stretch that far (low screen brightness, limited use, etc.). It’s not a problem for me personally, owing to the way I use this laptop, but if you are looking for an all-day travel companion and don’t want to bring a charger, this is not the laptop for you. *Speaker placement* – this is one of the many laptops that has speakers near the front edge (actually on the side edge toward the front) facing down. This is never the best placement for sound quality as the surface the laptop sits on will serve to muffle the sound to some degree. *A word about gaming* – so many times I read reviews of laptops where someone then asks “can it run game X?”, only to be told that “no, it’s not a gaming laptop.” While it’s definitely true that you're not going to run the latest AAA titles on high settings with a laptop that lacks a discrete video card, I think people would be surprised at just how much you can do without one. As I like to say, any laptop is a gaming laptop if you choose the right games. :) I haven’t pushed this laptop to the max with gaming since I have other hardware for that (very high spec gaming laptop and a triple-screen + virtual reality desktop setup) but I **have** been testing a number of older games on it and all are running beautifully. These include: Skyrim Counterstrike: Global Offensive Unreal Tournament 1999 Unreal Tournament 2004 Pinball Arcade No One Lives Forever 1 & 2 Freespace 2 Painkiller Deus X Total War: Medieval II Civilization IV Silent Hunter III Undying And more... *A word about throttling* – I had read in a couple places that this computer had had some pretty conservative temperature limits set in the BIOS, and that as a result, the fans would come on loudly when doing pretty much anything and performance wasn’t sustained as the computer throttled itself to keep temps down. I had also read that some new BIOS updates may have at least partially addressed that issue. My experience has been this – My computer appears to have been manufactured (or shipped) 11/2018. When I was first setting it up, there was a BIOS update from Lenovo. I have not had any fans spinning up loudly and I have not noticed any performance drop off over time. Having written that, please note – I did not really use the computer before that BIOS update, so I have no benchmark. I also have not performed any real testing to look for throttling – I have only my anecdotal experience. My gaming sessions with this laptop (which would push it more than anything else I’ve done on it so far) have been for 45 minutes or less, and even video watching has been for an hour or less at a time, so it’s also possible that this just wasn’t enough to push the laptop into throttling. Final thoughts- same as the summary above – this laptop has excellent specs for the money, performs well (apart from battery life) and I would definitely recommend it. Hope you found this review useful.