Newegg - Lenovo IdeaPad 1 14" FHD 1080P 4GB 128GB SSD AMD 3050e Athlon Silver 2C/4T $199

[VirtualLarry]

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AFAIK, these are new and not refurb. 1080P, 4GB / 128GB, 2C/4T AMD APU, what's not to like (for this price)?

Was using one of these (with the eMMC) as a daily-driver for like 4-6 months, before my rough handling took it's toll on the plastic chassis. At this price point (and these are, IMHO, fabulous entry-level laptops), I keep some spares on hand, and I sporadically give them away to people with 10-year-old "clunker" laptop. They are usually overjoyed, once they get it set up.

Note that these probably come shipped in "S mode", which requires an MS ID and MS Store sign-in to remove, and revert to "normal" Windows (and be able to run Firefox).

These just blow away a Chomebook in functionality, IMHO, at this price-point.

Edit: Before I forget, battery life is excellent as well. (7 hours web browsing)

Edit: These are NOT "Gaming laptops" like some of the AMD APU laptops. The 4GB of overall RAM (DDR4), is going to be a serious limitation for playing games. I have no idea if it will even play RoBlox.
But for web / YT, they are GREAT, IMHO.

Edit: Here's a very similarly-specced 11.6" IdeaPad Flex 3 with Touch for $259.99:

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DON'T buy this one, it's the 768P version for $269.

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[burninatortech4]

I have an Ideapad 1 11" (1336x768) with 3015e. Perfectly capable of 1080p Youtube and local 4K media playback on an external TV (what I bought it for).

Pros (besides the above):

1) 64GB eMMC (SanDisk DA4064) is actually not as slow as I figured. I've seen 300 MB/s sequential writes during updates. Random performance is very low.

2) Weighs nothing. Feels like holding a small book. Very pleasant to use for media consumption in bed.

3) 2c/4t at 6 watts! Battery lasts 7 hours while playing media. 10+ hours text only (moderate brightness)

4) USB-C charging.

5) USB 3.0 microSD card slot. Pretty much mandatory for storage expansion.

6) WIFI 6 (Intel AX200). Better WIFI than my main machine (lol). I believe the 14" version has it too. Not sure why Newegg isn't marketing this (definitely a value add).

Cons:

1)The 4GB (3.5GB usable in Windows) single channel RAM is the biggest bottleneck to anything more intensive. Pretty much maxed out on desktop doing nothing. There is no way to change the dedicated VRAM in BIOS from 512MB to 256MB (the BIOS essentially has zero options).

2) The keyboard is sluggish and feels cheap (can't complain too much in this price category).

3) About ~20GB of usable space after a Windows install.

4) 3015e definitely feels slow doing anything more intense than media playback. I wouldn't even consider gaming on this machine unless it's 2D only. Photo and video editing are out of the question. Even if the 2c/4t and Vega 3 could barely manage it - the 4GB RAM kills it. There's literally nothing left to play with.

5) 6-bit color depth. Definitely cost cutting.

I can't see 128GB making much of a usability difference when the main issue with this platform is soldered 4GB DDR4. As far as I can tell it's the same motherboard with a 14" version of the same panel.

Unless the 3050e is significantly faster (I doubt it) it's actually hard to recommend it for $199. I'd want 8GB of dual channel RAM for that price.

Not trying to rain on your parade. It's 100% a better deal than many of the Celeron / Pentium Atom machines out there. I would take the 3050e over any of those platforms any day.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Unless the 3050e is significantly faster (I doubt it) it's actually hard to recommend it for $199. I'd want 8GB of dual channel RAM for that price.

I recall that the 3050e (with eMMC 5.0) was noticeably faster than my 3020e laptop with eMMC. I would imagine that it would be faster still, with a real SSD, and could comfortably handle more commit charge that 4GB.

Have you messed with VSR? You can get 4K desktop res (great for watching 4K YT) on the 1080P models.

 

[burninatortech4]

I haven't tried VSR with this particular machine. I'll mess around with it.