The casing is made entirely of black plastic, and left an edgy, rather futuristic and appealing impression on the tester. The matte surfaces are very sensitive to fingerprints. Not much force is needed to twist the base, producing quiet grinding and squeaking noises. The not very pressure resistant display can be opened with one hand, and is fairly solid. The gaps around the rim of the base are not evenly spaced. Otherwise, we did not notice any other manufacturing flaws. A large maintenance hatch is on the underside.

Lenovo installs the usual, standard interfaces, including a VGA out in its B50-45. There are no surprises. Two of the three USB ports support the USB 3.0 standard. Unfortunately, the ports are all concentrated in the front area where connected cables and USB sticks might prove interfering.

Windows 8.1 (64-bit) is preinstalled on the laptop, and a corresponding partition is available for system recovery. Lenovo does not include external recovery media.