Lenovo IdeaPad 1i 11.6'' Laptop – Intel Celeron

Slim and lightweight laptop
Lovely little laptop, lightweight and slim and does the job. It is like brand new and wouldn’t of thought it would be this good for the price.
I needed a cheap one as my laptop broke due to water damage so needed it for work and so far so good

Good basic computer for school at a value price point. Solid build too.
Things to note – RAM cannot be upgraded on this model (at 4GB) BUT it seems to run okay though on this streamlined version of Windows 11 S… and I was actually quite impressed by the speed. Also note there is only just under 20GB on the 64GB solid state hard drive after all the standard installed stuff. Should be enough for my child’s school projects and watching videos etc… they are not a gamer so the low spec shouldn’t be an issue, at least till it gets sat on/broken 🙂

5.0 out of 5 stars Nifty little notebook
Did think I was buying a laptop so bit surprised by small size but it delivers on all levels for my needs.

5.0 out of 5 stars in expensive and great on the go
pleased with this good for small jobs and on the go.

Smooth, sleek and easy to use
This is my sixth laptop, and in all honesty I think it’ll be the one that I will get the most joy out of using. I bought it as a last resort as the one I would have gone for (and my first choice) from Argos – an Acer blue 14-inch model – kept coming up on their shopping app as out of stock each time, which was little short of frustrating. So it was eventually out with the Acer and I decided to go for this Lenovo instead.

One thing I have discovered since buying this laptop is that yes, there is truth in the rumour that installing third-party anti-virus protection software DOES slow your computer down after all, and so having suffered this particular problem many times I made the decision not to do so with this machine, and so far there haven’t been any issues with the performance whatsoever in that it’s been brilliant. I also made the choice to downsize to a 14-inch screen as the last Windows computer I used had a 15.6-inch display and that felt maybe just a little too big, that plus the larger keyboard had keys I never used at all.

Although it doesn’t quite have a full HD-quality screen in that that the resolution is only 1366x720p it looks good, feels smooth to the touch and the keyboard is super responsive. As someone who had never used a Lenovo product before buying this and having used it now for three months, I can safely say it was a wise decision and a worthy purchase.

Fantastic value for money - but no upgrades possible
An impulse buy as the price was just too good to miss for a small and lightweight laptop that would fit in to Ryan Air’s definition of a small bag (40x20x25cm) when I make a day trip to the UK — and if its stolen or lost it’s not a disaster (at least financially). The included one-year subscription for Microsoft Office 365 essentially reduced the price to below 100! I doubt if there is any slower or lower spec “new” notebook for sale on Amazon, but I knew this when I purchased it. It’s fine for email, browsing and modest use of Office 365 — the screen and keyboard may be small but my productivity is vastly greater than battling away on the touch screen of my iPhone — which cost many times more! One disappointment is that Lenovo’s brochure for the IdeaPad 1 lists a M.2 SSD as a storage option. I thus assumed that I could supplement the modest 64GB of built-in storage with an M.2 drive for my data files, but when I went to install this I discovered that whilst space had been allowed for this, no M.2 socket had been fitted to the circuit board. Presumably Lenovo decided at a late stage to save a few cents in manufacturing costs by omitting this, and to be fair it’s not listed as part of the specification by Amazon. I’m instead using a 256GB SanDisk microSDHC card for data and videos – it’s not the fastest or most reliable storage option but acceptable for non-critical data, photos and videos. It is otherwise impossible to upgrade the hardware — CPU, memory, storage, et al. When you first use the IdeaPad, loads of W10 software updates will be installed. I also get the message “This PC can run Windows 11” but I haven’t installed the update as W10 meets my needs. Also W11 insists on having the taskbar along the bottom of the screen – which would take up valuable space on a screen with only 768 pixels vertically. An annoying “feature” I’ve discovered after a few months of use is that the small delete key is beside the on/off key – almost every time I use the laptop I end up accidentally turn it off when intending to delete a character. Secondly, there is no easy way to access the BIOS menu and change settings. You apparently need to use a paperclip (or similar) to depress a button hidden in a pinhole, but my attempts to do this have had no success.

Some teething problems
Lovely little laptop, very lightweight, nice colour case. Very quick to boot up, speakers are good, video quality is fine.

**My beef with it is, it comes with Microsoft 365 installed, and as part of the package you get OneDrive, so the laptop started uploading everything I had on my external hard drive to a cloud. And I couldn’t stop it. As a result I was having problems opening Word and Excel documents because they weren’t on the laptop they were in the cloud. it’s taken me 48 hours to sort it out! **

**Have now gotten these issues sorted, very happy with the machine, it updated to Windows 11 a few weeks ago, and is running nicely. 10/10 would recommend!