Lenovo IdeaPad 1 14" 82LV0075US Cloud Gray

A $200 Windows laptop that feels every bit its price. Fine for one tab of email, a nightmare for anything else.

What surprised us most is how this thing even boots Windows 11. The Celeron N4500 sits in the 2nd percentile of all laptop CPUs we've tested, which is a polite way of saying it's one of the slowest processors you can buy right now. Paired with 4GB of RAM (also 2nd percentile), multitasking is a slideshow. Opening more than three browser tabs will have you staring at a spinning wheel. The 128GB eMMC storage is in the 7th percentile, so app launches and file transfers feel sluggish. On the bright side, the 14-inch screen landed in the 91st percentile, which sounds great until you realize that's for color accuracy on a 1366x768 TN panel. It's not a looker, but it's better than most screens in the sub-$250 dumpster fire category.

The IdeaPad 1 14 doesn't really compete with the MacBook Pro or ZBook Ultra G1a, those are in a different universe. Its real competition is a used ThinkPad or a Chromebook. A refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad T480 with an 8th-gen i5 and 8GB of RAM will run circles around this for about the same price. If you need a new machine and can stretch your budget, the ASUS Zenbook UX3407QA is a massive step up in performance and build quality, but it costs several times more. For pure web browsing, a Samsung Galaxy Book4 gives you a better screen and snappier feel without breaking the bank.

At $190, this is a Chromebook competitor that happens to run Windows. At $479, it's a scam. The price spread across vendors is wild, and you should absolutely not pay more than $200 for this machine. Newegg currently has the best deal if you're set on it. For basic cloud-based tasks and Office 365, the value is there at the low end. Just don't expect it to do anything more.

Let's be real: the Lenovo IdeaPad 1 14 is a $200 laptop that feels like a $200 laptop. The one thing you need to know is that it's built for exactly one job, and that job is light web browsing and maybe typing up a document. The Intel Celeron N4500 and 4GB of RAM are a combo we haven't seen perform well since about 2015, and the 128GB of eMMC storage is painfully slow. But the screen is surprisingly decent for this price, and it includes a year of Microsoft 365, which sweetens the deal if you just need a basic machine for school or email.

If you're looking for a laptop that can handle more than a few browser tabs, this isn't it. Go get a refurbished Lenovo ThinkPad T480 or a Chromebook with 8GB of RAM instead. Anyone who edits photos, codes, or even thinks about multitasking should look elsewhere immediately.

Buy this only if your budget is absolutely capped at $200 and you need Windows specifically. It's a single-task machine for students or grandparents who live in a web browser and Word. For everyone else, save up a little more or buy a used business laptop. The performance ceiling is so low that you'll outgrow it within a year.