Lenovo IdeaPad 1 15.6" HD Anti-Glare Grey

A terabyte of storage and 20GB of RAM in a laptop with a screen and processor that belong in a museum. It's a weird parts-bin special that only makes sense at the absolute lowest price.

The 20GB of RAM and over 1TB of SSD space are genuinely impressive for a budget laptop, landing in the 89th percentile for storage in our database. It's the one spec that made us do a double-take. But that's where the good news ends. The dual-core Celeron N4500 is a known quantity, and it's a slow one. It sits right at the median, which sounds okay until you realize the median includes a lot of ancient hardware. Multitasking is a chore, and the integrated Intel UHD graphics are a weak spot, making anything beyond Solitaire a slideshow. The 4th percentile screen ranking is a real letdown, it's dim and the 1366x768 resolution on a 15.6-inch panel looks soft and cramped.

Stacked against something like an ASUS Vivobook or Acer Swift, this IdeaPad 1 gets demolished on processing power and screen quality. Those competitors offer vastly superior displays and CPUs that don't wheeze under pressure. The HP OmniBook X Flip and Samsung Galaxy Book5 are in a completely different universe of performance and price. The only reason to pick this Lenovo is if you absolutely need over a terabyte of local storage for under $250 and can tolerate a glacial CPU. For everyone else, a used business laptop with a better screen and processor is a smarter buy.

Pricing on this model is all over the map, with a wild spread from $219 to $4698 across vendors. At the low end, you're getting an absurd amount of storage and RAM for the money, which almost makes up for the terrible screen and slow processor. Almost. Anything over $300 is a hard pass. You're paying for storage, not speed, so make sure you're getting the absolute lowest price you can find.

Lenovo packed a surprising amount of storage and RAM into this IdeaPad 1, but don't let the big numbers fool you. The Celeron N4500 processor is the anchor dragging this ship down. It's a machine built for one thing: basic, patient computing. If your day is email, web browsing with a few tabs, and streaming video, it'll get the job done. Just don't expect it to be in a hurry about it. The 15.6-inch screen is its biggest sin, a dim, low-resolution panel that feels like a relic from a decade ago.

If you're looking for a snappy machine for school, work, or any kind of creative task, this isn't it. Go find a used ThinkPad or a Chromebook with a better screen instead. You'll sacrifice the massive local storage, but you'll get a laptop that doesn't make you want to pull your hair out every time you open a new browser tab.

Buy this only if you find it for around $220 and your primary need is a massive file dump with a keyboard attached. The Celeron processor and dreadful screen make it a tough daily driver for anyone with a hint of impatience. It's a niche machine for a niche buyer, and most students or office workers will find it more frustrating than functional.