People may say that this CPU isn't that good but with the extra threads for hyper threading it really makes a huge difference and pair it with an ssd and it would be a snappy little fkr
I want to know why, me having 8GBs of ram and a dual core Phenom II 3.2 Ghz processor on one of my pcs, can't reproduce youtube on chrome at 1080p60fps but this laptop can. I have an older gtx card that can game certain games at 4k 30fps. This shouldn't be a problem but it is.
@@HoloScope that would be true if I didn't have this problem before 2015 and not on Edge. Video playback is perfectly fine on Edge, I can even put 1080p60 videos at 2x with no hiccups at all. Like it was before 2015. WTF is happening?
Frequently these low tier systems are held back by lack of RAM and poor storage. If you have a proper SSD and 8GB of RAM you see much better performance. Still, one of these with 4GB of RAM should be acceptable as ETA is showing.
@@Servaas DOES THE BLACK ATTRACT AND NOTICE DUST EASILY NEEDS TO BE WIPED REGULARLY ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
I just upgraded (8Gb RAM & 256Gb SSD) and gave a AMD Ryzen5 version of this to my daughter yesterday! It's a super fast notebook, especially for it's price range. The only downside I saw was that the cooling intake and exhaust are on the bottom near each other.
I bought one! After some research I found that many BB stores have at least one or more of these Pentium based S145 laptops still in stock but you have to ask about it. I got one someone returned and that staff certified is just fine for $227 plus tax. Was HUGELY surprised and impressed that this little machine has an M.2 slot for an NVMe drive in addition to the SATA slot. Max RAM is 16GB by changing the DDR4 module. There is no RAM soldered onboard. I have installed Debian Buster on it and, although the Wifi/BT adapter is not detected, I was able to use a USB ethernet dongle to access the internet for updates and such. Am working on finding the driver for the WiFi/BT module or changing the module to a known Linux compatible one. This computer is surprisingly quick for a less than $250 computer. I am using a Samsung SSD instead of the Toshiba HDD which came with it.
Just an update after using this as my daily driver for a while now, it’s very nice and reliable. I added an M.2 Samsung 970 EVO NVMe for Linux Mint 19.3 MATE and kept Win 10 on the SSD. Dual booting through GRUB. I’ve been able to test out other distros using VirtualBox with good success. Also, one of the USB ports is 3.1 which is quite fast so I got an external HDD/SSD enclosure that is 3.1 also and plan to use that for more VMs, backups, data storage, etc. Battery life is amazing. Almost as good as a Chromebook.
@@markconger8049 So how much have you invested in this laptop at this point? I'm thinking of buying it with the GSP and/or upgrading the ram, but I'm trying to weigh my costs here.
Allan Colorado - I think I paid around $80 for the 256GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe. Got it on Amazon. The memory in this IdeaPad model was 4GB and only one slot so I replaced it with an 8GB module but can’t recall the exact amount paid. It was not much though. Memory is a limit with these low end Lenovo IdeaPads. 8GB max on mine. The 256GB SATA SSD is a Samsung EVO (800 series) as well but I already had it so no expense for me there and the Intel wifi/bluetooth module I used was from an Acer Chromebook so free also. That said, the RealTek module that came in the Lenovo is supported by Linux Mint I later found out so you may not need to replace it. So I guess that brings us to around $400 total including the NVMe and RAM stick. Am still using it to this day as my daily. I initially installed Linux Mint 19.2 MATE and have since upgraded to 19.3 with the built in Mint updater and all is well. I do get a bit of tearing in the video when playing videos or scrolling a web page too fast. That has always been present with Linux on it. This is an issue with the Intel video driver for Linux. I found out how to fix it was disable the video acceleration but that made video performance too slow so I switched it back on. I don’t mind the tearing. Almost unnoticeable anyway. External HDMI connection to our Sony TV has no tearing! I’ve watched two hour live streams that way no issues at all. Hope this wasn’t too much info! Note I also purchased the smaller version of this IdeaPad with the Pentium Pro for a terminally ill friend of mine and he’s using Windows on it - really nice performance, but not as fast as mine running Linux. His came with an SSD 128GB. One added benefit of NVMe and SSD is they power down when not being used and you never notice any delay. The battery life is sick! I can run it for several ours with no need to charge. And hibernate never drains the battery.
@@markconger8049 That's a good chunk of info, thanks! Follow up time: The model I'm looking at is a 1tb HDD and 4gb Ram. It's already cheap-ish at 279, but I want to know if there's an issue running dual SSD and HDD. I found that Samsung stick you mentioned and I want to buy it too, currently looking for an 8gb RAM stick; is 8gb the max for this laptop?? Much appreciated, this is my first foray into tinkering with computers :D
ETA PRIME, YOU DA MAN! My wife and I are going nuts in what to get my daughter for her 13th birthday. She has an old Samsung 7" tablet that I installed emulators and actually thought to buy her a 10" tablet that's so much faster then the tablet she has now. We also thought about getting her a Chromebook but limited for her in doing school work and if I wanted to add games for her there isn't much I ca do. Then saw your new post.... I think you just helped us find her present... Plus I have a MacBook only so limited in doing stuff with Launchbox for my Android Tv.. Thank you for all these AMAZING video's and teaching me how to do all these great things for emulation & games
I’m 13,and I’ve had problems with stuff I could only do on a laptop,for the past couple months,I’ve thought of making an arduino voice activated mask and gauntlet for cosplays,and I really need to code for the next year for school,this laptop is the best budget laptop I’ve seen,Thanks for the review
You can run emulation on a 10 year old laptop that costs $25, I don't see why people are even mentioning it. Of course this laptop (and nearly all laptops) run emulation just fine.
I bought this laptop for $199 as well. I've had it for around two months. I installed "NVIDIA Geforce NOW" and play Destiny 2 on 1920x1080, on Medium settings, with 105FPS, and 200% Rendering. (Alternatively, it can run 1920x1080 on High settings, with 60fps at 100% Rendering.) It will get you extremely far for Microsoft Word, Emailing, Netflix, & Web Browsing. What you cannot do on this laptop; Run Photoshop, or any Adobe software, or editing software. You can, however, upgrade the Ram and the Hardrive for pretty cheap, then, give it a try with basic editing. The only con I find (so far) is the viewing angles on the screen are not superb, but it won't bother most people. I wish the keyboard had a little bit more grip/ rubber feel to them, but honestly, it's something I can overlook. Highly recommend this laptop for daily use. Don't hesitate to buy. (P.S. You can replace the OS with Mac OS on this device if you know what you're doing. Just in case you want a cheapo-depot Mac.)
But if you put it on low settings go to the command console and type fps_max 80 you will get great performance trust me I did it and my I have the same exact laptop and I did the fps_max 80 and I can play online and offline without it slowing down and also put r_cleardecals so you can clear the blood and that slows down the game and you might wanna bind a key to it so it would be easier but it clears blood and not make your game slow down
I'd love to see Linux running on it. The first thing I do when I get a peecee is wipe it and install linux. I usually try 5 or 6 different ones before I settle on one.
I'm tempted. I'm using a Thinkpad T420s running Linux Mint as my daily driver and while I can do things like listen to music and watch videos, playing games is a whole different animal. Minecraft will play fine on low settings (most of the time) but sometimes I'll get some serious slowdown. If this Ideapad is playing MC just fine, perhaps it's time to consider making the investment.
Nah, just spend the money on a used laptop instead if the budget is tight. Something like a Lenovo 320s with an 1080p ips screen, 8 GB of RAM and a 128 GB SSD can be found as low as 150 dollar even in perfect condition.
when you put Linux on it, make sure you use kernel 5.2 or later and MESA 19.3 or later. They made a large number of improvements for Intel and AMD gpu's recently with the last few releases. Wine/Proton 4.11 n later should see a nice bump in performance with these changes. I've even seen a difference on my super old Vostro 1510, even on windows I wasn't able to playback 1080p youtube, but now on Linux I can (haven't tested game performance yet). This is the first time I've seen better laptop GPU performance on Linux vs Windows. I hope this is a good sign for the future of gaming on Linux.
Linux Chad Too 🔥🔥💪👌🔥👍💥 Currently playing Apex Legends on 1080p with 30-40fps (is Unthinkable on it with Windows) Upstreamed system to 5.15.25 - the best maintaining kernel line for this, never been that stable
Just got the 14 inch version for my girlfriend's cousin, with a 128gb ssd and 8gb of ram and gotta say it's amazing for the price, mostly any modem cpu (4th gen and beyond even Pentium 2/4) will be just fine for mostly anything with a ssd and at least 8gb ram
Well I bought a refurbished laptop from eBay, but it was from ACER's storefront so it is a trusted seller. I paid $70 more and got a Acer Aspire 5 AMD Ryzen 3200U due to it having a better GPU than the Intel 610 and a M.2 SSD. I spent a additional $70 for a Crucial 3200 16 GB Dual Channel Kit so it runs like a featherweight champ now. Still for $200 it's still a good price for a new system. Just slap in Mint (or any Ubuntu based Distro), and turn it into a Retropie x86 machine.
Great review-am a fan of entry level Lenovo laptops, mine is a Ideapad S130-14IGM with a 14" screen and a Intel Celeron N4000 processor. Of course, I also took a look at the S145 n some stores and online.
I've had good luck buying used laptops. I had the same concerns you brought up, and they are valid concerns. It does help to stick with off-lease business machines, in my opinion. Their hard drives can't be trusted, so that should be factored in if buying used. With that said, this machine being about $200 is a good deal for the performance on a new machine. That 5405U looks to have similar benchmark numbers, at least on the CPU side, to the old Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge Core i5 machines I got used a while back. It is great to see the budget chips providing the same power as old i3 and i5 machines that are still very capable, especially if you go with Linux, which is what I would do. I just had a sudden, catastrophic SSD failure last week, so I'm currently distro hopping to see what I want to stick with long term, as I'm getting less satisfied with what I've been running. Good review.
I purchased this, added an HP M.2 250GB drive and installed a fresh copy of Windows 10, then swapped to 8GB of RAM keeping the 500GB hard drive for extra storage.
@@jac1011 well that's a load of crap. I'm not gonna say that Linux will massively boost battery life, because Linux isn't witchcraft. However it will be at least 10% better just because of the sheer fact that most distros (even the big ones) are less intensive than windows. In my experience, Linux (OpenSuse tumbleweed XFCE and Ubuntu 19.04) gets me like 10-20 minutes more than Windows 10.
@@jac1011 It really depends on the supported powersttes. Intel is a little better in this regard. This is not 2010 anymore, most laptops (currently have 2 with linux) do really well with batterylife. Typing on an older laptop with Intel/linux right now and it is equally good on batterylife as Windows.
I have the Lenovo Flex Ryzen 3 laptop, two So-DIMM slots, 1 PCIE NVME drive slot no sata. Upgraded the RAM and i'm going to swap the included drive for a 250GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus. Actually a pretty good emulator since it has the Ryzen APU. These things make great emulator laptops on the go, I looked at the Intel based ones first and saw how much more they were charging for them with only the older intel integrated graphics. So I went for the ryzen based one just because I want to support AMD atm since they made intel and NVIDIA lower and change their pricing. I have as of yet too try anything higher than N64/3DO games on it yet.
ETA, when you replaced the mechanical drive with an SSD, did you just clone the contents of the mechanical drive to the SSD or did you start fresh with the SSD and were you able to track down all the drivers needed from the Lenovo website? It can be quite a chore or almost impossible to start fresh, get Win 10 to activate, and find all the drivers when dealing with a consumer grade laptop like this.
My daughter needed a windows laptop for college. I bought her the same laptop from Best Buy. I put an extra 4GB and a 256 GB SSD M.2 NVME because there is a slot for it. You can use the extra SSD space for more storage.
linux is solid. Ubuntu Gnome is running pretty well, even on my old hp 250 g2 - i3 3110m with integrated HD 4000. My gf is using it, i wanted to put something lighter on it, but she is working with in the office, and there was a chance that some things won't run on anything different than gnome, so we went with it, and i was surprised that it works pretty solidly.
Try with another Ubuntu desktop like lxqt, budgie or xfce or goes to MXLinux or Debían, with even faster user experience. Is very important to review the compatibility of Libreoffice and documents, partitions and hard disks.
@@psimbyosis8162 what? why would i do that. first i said she needs Gnome. so lxqt or xfce are out. and so on second i said it's solid. it works great. why should i change it?
Very nice review. Thanks. For me, the deal breaker is the low resolution on the screen. I like the cpu is that great and can do 4K on the HDMI, but the low resolution on the built in screen is not for me.
Hey, great review! How about the battery? I just got this laptop to my mom, but I have a question. Should the laptop be plugged into power all the time or what? Give me some advice, please! Thank you!
Hey Man - I have this identical laptop and I cannot get PSP emulation to work as good as you can...I get studdering on Gods of War at 2x resolution and do not see how you are getting 3x resolution to work so smoothly. What version of ppsspp are you using? I ran all the Windows updates BTW. Did you upgrade the video drivers or directx separately from Windows updates or something? Just curious. I am kind of bummed out that my performance is not anywhere close to yours. Thanks for any info.
Great video, knowing your audiiance it's probably not that big of a deal but at the end of the video, I would have driven home the point / reminded people that you replaced the HDD with an SSD.... which makes a HUGE differnet for overall boot, installs, loading times and overall snappiness of the system.
Could you please test Minecraft Java edition instead of bedrock in the future? I think you will agree that the bedrock edition runs good on almost every device but the same can't be said for Java.
i dont know how u got any of the games to run on this PC, when i decided to run some tests with it i could get any fps on minecraft? How were u able to get a stable 60, i had everything low
(Late Comment) That’s very weird! I have this laptop and CSGO runs at 20fps to 35fps for me ,and Roblox runs great ,and smooth at ... I’d say around 30-60+ FPS. The laptop it’s self is all around more than decent!
Holy moly, that's pretty nice! I'm trying to decide between this an a Chromebook w/ Linux capability for the future when I have the money to buy a new laptop so I can use it for writing and game design (2D stuff nothing intensive).
Great video! I love video reviews of budget laptops like this! Was this laptop hard to get into to upgrade the storage? I wish Lenovo had gone with a 7,200 RPM hard drive, because I could live with that.
Best Buy is currently selling an AMD A6 version of this IdeaPad model with a Radeon R4 for close to that price. Would you say that holds up against the intel version in this video? Seriously considering scooping one up while they're on sale but if the emulation specs aren't similar I'll probably hold off.
3:36 wtf Chrome gives me a score of 25121 while Edge only 19820, does that mean Chrome really is faster and better than Edge? lol EDIT: I forgot to say, not a bad review my friend, it's awesome to see 200 euro laptops being so cable with modern technology :D . . . I'm gonna wait until GTX1050 laptops cost 200 euro and then buy one though.
Seems on par with a lattepanda alpha, I’ve been debating on one for an ultra portable desktop but the more I see of these budget laptops the more the panda doesn’t make sense.
@@otakuanswer4001 Yeah fair enough. Gaming on a laptop is kind of a mixed bag in general. No matter what brand or type of laptop you get, even if you spend $2,000... The graphics chip will be the weakest component and the most likely to fail. There are inherent heat problems that plague all laptop GPUs because they're simply trying to pack too much power into too small a footprint without enough cooling infrastructure to make it run. If you have a choice in the matter, it's always better to get a laptop with NO gpu and then use an eGPU instead. Or switch to a desktop for gaming. But eGPU will let you have a reliable laptop that won't fry 2 years after using the fire hot GPU inside.
i have this laptop it can run my summer car, gta san andreas,gta 4 (shitty graphics only), mafia 2,mafia 1, roblox, beamng drive demo and minecraft (i have these games installed)
Bro I have the same laptop and it just can't run roblox at all or any other games, I have constantly 5 or lower fps and my CPU aswell as GPU is on 100% even tho I have no tabs open.. please help me
I stand pretty firm on the super low res screen being a huge industry embarrassment at this point. Have suggestions along these lines with 1080p at 14 or 15"? Would love to know how linux runs on this little laptop and what kind of battery life to expect. Something like Linux Mint or Xubuntu perhaps.
@@yotoprules9361 Absolutely. 1080p and 8GB ram is the "comfort minimum" in my eyes. A cheap SSD probably a good idea too, but I can still see a case to be made for 500gb and 1tb HDDs.
I went with the Lenovo ideapad s330 with core i3 and 120 gb ssd got it for around $350 (also at Best Buy)bought a 1tb external hdd for more space and I love it😀
these games work bioshock far cry 3 far cry 3 blood dragon far cry 2 S.T.A.L.K.E.R 1 2 and 3 fallout 3 fallout new vegas duke nukem forever max Payne 1 and 2 manhunt 1 and 2 ravenfield bully gta 3, vice city and san Andreas postal 2 the suffering 1 and 2 arkam city total overdose minecraft driver parallel lines dead island serious Sam 1 2 and 3 all of which on low graphics some may work on medium to high graphics these are all the games that i can think that i played and worked perfectly on this computer
Love it, I have the IdeaPad S145 with i7 8565u 12gb of ram, Nvidia GeForce MX 110, 1080p IPS Display, Backlit Keyboard, 256 Samsung NVme SSD (Stock) and WD 1000 GB HDD, is it high end or not? Running CS Go with at least 300 FPS with bots
@ETA Prime, could you show me how to clone the original HDD to a Kingston SSD? I bought this laptop, installed a fresh windows 10 and cant get the track pad to work for anything! Thanks for the great videos!
Hey ETA, i was wondering, ps2 emulation? Also i wanted to know the limits of a lenovo laptop i have, it has a intel i3-5005U dual core with 4 threads and 2ghz of speed got 12 gb of ddr3 ram with a speed of 1600 mhz (the laptop came with 4 originally and found a stick of 8 on a sale) and a AMD Radeon R5 M330 with 2 gb of video ram I want to know how to do the setup for ps2 emulation and what would the limits of this setup be, like i can run destiny 2 at around 30 constant in low settings
@J Fz Ummm, i need a few small fixes, i'm trying some ps2 emulation and games like SMT nocturne are running at around 55-60, so if you have some tips to improve it, please go ahead and tell me, but if it is get better hardware, then i would ask you to not tell me that again
@J Fz Thank you, i honestly apologize if i sounded a bit salty before, but i really appreciate the tip of another 8gb module to improve the ram the ram is not soldered and i think its limit is actually 16 gb on it I know it is an old laptop, but with some care and extra parts it has run smoothly and most games i have thrown into it have ran without much issues, and i'm not asking for perfect ps2 emulation, i am mostly asking for like a small group of games to emulate that are really interesting, specifically SMT games except with P3 and 4 because i have them And once again, thank you for the feedback on this, and actually on Destiny 2 i had a weird issue, that i could put a lot of stuff in high and low render and have around 30, and everything on low and same render and still hit around 30, but it is still playable and i don't have to get a ps4 for it, so thats good for me
@J Fz Thank you, i should use MSI afterburner to see that, and i have a ssd on this pc, thank you for your help on this, i am really not experienced on tinkering for hardware performance
Can you re-explain 1:30 please. I just bought it and it’s my first laptop. I want to upgrade the speed and downgrade the storage as u did ? How can I do that ? Pls answer me
@@georgebamber6871i swap mine with its integrated UHD 630 and it runs, it does handle DX11+ but yup it bottleneck at even native resolution. so i bet it does.
Funny because I’ve been looking for a budget laptop for Linux and was in Best Buy today taking photos of various models and this was one of them. I really want to know how these low end machines take Linux.
The cooling on any Lenovo laptop is good, they're engineers afterall and they know what they're doing. With that being said, don't waste your time on a dual core laptop. Go get a Thinkpad T440p or T430 or similar with a quad core. It'll cost less than this IdeaPad and they'll run faster.
i have a lenovo ideapad s145 but its the normal windows 10 home which is a slightly older version of windows 10 since its the october 2018 update (1809)
Would be nice if you could use Shutup10 to disable some Win10 crap to see if you gain any performance by doing so "Apply All Recommended" would do the trick.
Buy it On Amazon: amzn.to/2ONzScG
It's not Full HD (1920 x 1080). You might want to change the specs in your description.
Think it can run gta 5? 🤔
idk why but when i see videos like this i be like hope this isnt better than my pc
xD and yeaa of course it isnt lol
Try the Lenovo idea pad 330 with Ryzen 7 2700u with Vega 10 graphics
ETA PRIME how is ps2 emulation on this?
Adding a cheap budget ssd does make these dual core intel pc’s into a totally new system,even with older core duo boxes it makes a huge difference.
And Windows turning all the efforts into the "printing machine"
Core 2 duos are crap
This actually looks dope and perfect for me thank you so much eta
Mine is horrible
Very useful information, thinking about getting one of these for Christmas sounds like a really good pc to start off with
Dont
I’d go for the Acer Aspire 5 with the Ryzen 3200U APU for $314, it goes on sale a lot too for around $260.
Yep, that's definitely going to be an interesting comparison.
When on sale, the 3500U (4c/8t) ideadpad 330 is also a great deal. Around $350. All around better than the 3200u.
@@RandomPlaceHolderName do you know if you can unlock the tdp with RyzenController like with the 2500u?
Yes of course..even my brothers 2200u acer laptop is still running great with dualchannel..put in a $80 1tb kingspec m.2 ssd and it flies🔥👍
There are dozens of systems in that price range that are better. Keep it under $200 and the field narrows tremendously.
I think I might cop one of these because my shity laptop just oofed and just want something to do school work and game on during lockdown
Same idea dude
I got one the minute my state went on lockdown and it runs the games i play so well, low key.
@@LexiLex444 u from ph?
@@LexiLex444 yo tru fax
The most gen z comment I’ve ever seen
People may say that this CPU isn't that good but with the extra threads for hyper threading it really makes a huge difference and pair it with an ssd and it would be a snappy little fkr
I would even go as far as to say I think this could handle an external gpu like a GTX 1050 just fine.
I want to know why, me having 8GBs of ram and a dual core Phenom II 3.2 Ghz processor on one of my pcs, can't reproduce youtube on chrome at 1080p60fps but this laptop can. I have an older gtx card that can game certain games at 4k 30fps. This shouldn't be a problem but it is.
@@Jucelegario because it most likely only has 2 threads and also lower ipc and very old and inefficient architecture
@@HoloScope that would be true if I didn't have this problem before 2015 and not on Edge. Video playback is perfectly fine on Edge, I can even put 1080p60 videos at 2x with no hiccups at all. Like it was before 2015. WTF is happening?
Frequently these low tier systems are held back by lack of RAM and poor storage. If you have a proper SSD and 8GB of RAM you see much better performance.
Still, one of these with 4GB of RAM should be acceptable as ETA is showing.
"Like always... Thanks for watching" I like when you say that.
His voice is very pleasant. I'm actually using the word beautiful more to describe things xD
@@Servaas DOES THE BLACK ATTRACT AND NOTICE DUST EASILY NEEDS TO BE WIPED REGULARLY
?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
@@stevethea5250 stfu Steve tea. get back to mining coal and Redstone
@@ithaca2076 shut your mouth filthy mongrel
I just upgraded (8Gb RAM & 256Gb SSD) and gave a AMD Ryzen5 version of this to my daughter yesterday!
It's a super fast notebook, especially for it's price range.
The only downside I saw was that the cooling intake and exhaust are on the bottom near each other.
I bought one! After some research I found that many BB stores have at least one or more of these Pentium based S145 laptops still in stock but you have to ask about it. I got one someone returned and that staff certified is just fine for $227 plus tax. Was HUGELY surprised and impressed that this little machine has an M.2 slot for an NVMe drive in addition to the SATA slot. Max RAM is 16GB by changing the DDR4 module. There is no RAM soldered onboard. I have installed Debian Buster on it and, although the Wifi/BT adapter is not detected, I was able to use a USB ethernet dongle to access the internet for updates and such. Am working on finding the driver for the WiFi/BT module or changing the module to a known Linux compatible one. This computer is surprisingly quick for a less than $250 computer. I am using a Samsung SSD instead of the Toshiba HDD which came with it.
Just an update after using this as my daily driver for a while now, it’s very nice and reliable. I added an M.2 Samsung 970 EVO NVMe for Linux Mint 19.3 MATE and kept Win 10 on the SSD. Dual booting through GRUB. I’ve been able to test out other distros using VirtualBox with good success. Also, one of the USB ports is 3.1 which is quite fast so I got an external HDD/SSD enclosure that is 3.1 also and plan to use that for more VMs, backups, data storage, etc. Battery life is amazing. Almost as good as a Chromebook.
@@markconger8049 So how much have you invested in this laptop at this point? I'm thinking of buying it with the GSP and/or upgrading the ram, but I'm trying to weigh my costs here.
Allan Colorado - I think I paid around $80 for the 256GB Samsung 970 Evo Plus NVMe. Got it on Amazon. The memory in this IdeaPad model was 4GB and only one slot so I replaced it with an 8GB module but can’t recall the exact amount paid. It was not much though. Memory is a limit with these low end Lenovo IdeaPads. 8GB max on mine. The 256GB SATA SSD is a Samsung EVO (800 series) as well but I already had it so no expense for me there and the Intel wifi/bluetooth module I used was from an Acer Chromebook so free also. That said, the RealTek module that came in the Lenovo is supported by Linux Mint I later found out so you may not need to replace it. So I guess that brings us to around $400 total including the NVMe and RAM stick. Am still using it to this day as my daily. I initially installed Linux Mint 19.2 MATE and have since upgraded to 19.3 with the built in Mint updater and all is well. I do get a bit of tearing in the video when playing videos or scrolling a web page too fast. That has always been present with Linux on it. This is an issue with the Intel video driver for Linux. I found out how to fix it was disable the video acceleration but that made video performance too slow so I switched it back on. I don’t mind the tearing. Almost unnoticeable anyway. External HDMI connection to our Sony TV has no tearing! I’ve watched two hour live streams that way no issues at all. Hope this wasn’t too much info! Note I also purchased the smaller version of this IdeaPad with the Pentium Pro for a terminally ill friend of mine and he’s using Windows on it - really nice performance, but not as fast as mine running Linux. His came with an SSD 128GB. One added benefit of NVMe and SSD is they power down when not being used and you never notice any delay. The battery life is sick! I can run it for several ours with no need to charge. And hibernate never drains the battery.
@@markconger8049 That's a good chunk of info, thanks!
Follow up time: The model I'm looking at is a 1tb HDD and 4gb Ram. It's already cheap-ish at 279, but I want to know if there's an issue running dual SSD and HDD. I found that Samsung stick you mentioned and I want to buy it too, currently looking for an 8gb RAM stick; is 8gb the max for this laptop??
Much appreciated, this is my first foray into tinkering with computers :D
ETA PRIME, YOU DA MAN! My wife and I are going nuts in what to get my daughter for her 13th birthday. She has an old Samsung 7" tablet that I installed emulators and actually thought to buy her a 10" tablet that's so much faster then the tablet she has now. We also thought about getting her a Chromebook but limited for her in doing school work and if I wanted to add games for her there isn't much I ca do. Then saw your new post.... I think you just helped us find her present... Plus I have a MacBook only so limited in doing stuff with Launchbox for my Android Tv.. Thank you for all these AMAZING video's and teaching me how to do all these great things for emulation & games
I’m 13,and I’ve had problems with stuff I could only do on a laptop,for the past couple months,I’ve thought of making an arduino voice activated mask and gauntlet for cosplays,and I really need to code for the next year for school,this laptop is the best budget laptop I’ve seen,Thanks for the review
Wow! Would have never pegged this setup for a emulation gem. Sweet !
You can run emulation on a 10 year old laptop that costs $25, I don't see why people are even mentioning it. Of course this laptop (and nearly all laptops) run emulation just fine.
Youre the best you reviewed both minecraft and gamecube emulation!
Great video as always! Would like to see more laptop reviews especially more budget friendly ones.
I bought this laptop for $199 as well. I've had it for around two months.
I installed "NVIDIA Geforce NOW" and play Destiny 2 on 1920x1080, on Medium settings, with 105FPS, and 200% Rendering.
(Alternatively, it can run 1920x1080 on High settings, with 60fps at 100% Rendering.)
It will get you extremely far for Microsoft Word, Emailing, Netflix, & Web Browsing.
What you cannot do on this laptop; Run Photoshop, or any Adobe software, or editing software.
You can, however, upgrade the Ram and the Hardrive for pretty cheap, then, give it a try with basic editing.
The only con I find (so far) is the viewing angles on the screen are not superb, but it won't bother most people.
I wish the keyboard had a little bit more grip/ rubber feel to them, but honestly, it's something I can overlook.
Highly recommend this laptop for daily use. Don't hesitate to buy.
(P.S. You can replace the OS with Mac OS on this device if you know what you're doing. Just in case you want a cheapo-depot Mac.)
Do you have the intel pentium 5405u version?
Fyi: csgo runs slower with bots on.
yes runs slower
but why tho?
@@ulisesrl0 idk
But if you put it on low settings go to the command console and type fps_max 80 you will get great performance trust me I did it and my I have the same exact laptop and I did the fps_max 80 and I can play online and offline without it slowing down and also put r_cleardecals so you can clear the blood and that slows down the game and you might wanna bind a key to it so it would be easier but it clears blood and not make your game slow down
Sad_frogo_ bro how about dota 2?
I'd love to see Linux running on it. The first thing I do when I get a peecee is wipe it and install linux. I usually try 5 or 6 different ones before I settle on one.
Linux is completely Great on here!! Got everything running in it, much better than Windows!)
Thanks for this vid really appreciate it
In my country that thing pricing will up from $200 to $400 with SSD. $200 i will grab i5 gen4 x gt 740M/840M 2gb
Do you have a video of changing out the SSD and putting the operating system back on it?
I'm tempted. I'm using a Thinkpad T420s running Linux Mint as my daily driver and while I can do things like listen to music and watch videos, playing games is a whole different animal. Minecraft will play fine on low settings (most of the time) but sometimes I'll get some serious slowdown. If this Ideapad is playing MC just fine, perhaps it's time to consider making the investment.
I think that a T430 or 440 would do you just fine with a RAM & drive upgrade
Nah, just spend the money on a used laptop instead if the budget is tight. Something like a Lenovo 320s with an 1080p ips screen, 8 GB of RAM and a 128 GB SSD can be found as low as 150 dollar even in perfect condition.
Have you tried any emulation like Wii, GC, or Dreamcast on it? I'm very curious how it performs.
Can planet coaster run well on this laptop?
I'm from Brazil, and i love your videos!
Hey man we're neighbours, I'm from Guyana!!!!
when you put Linux on it, make sure you use kernel 5.2 or later and MESA 19.3 or later. They made a large number of improvements for Intel and AMD gpu's recently with the last few releases. Wine/Proton 4.11 n later should see a nice bump in performance with these changes.
I've even seen a difference on my super old Vostro 1510, even on windows I wasn't able to playback 1080p youtube, but now on Linux I can (haven't tested game performance yet). This is the first time I've seen better laptop GPU performance on Linux vs Windows. I hope this is a good sign for the future of gaming on Linux.
Linux Chad Too 🔥🔥💪👌🔥👍💥
Currently playing Apex Legends on 1080p with 30-40fps (is Unthinkable on it with Windows)
Upstreamed system to 5.15.25 - the best maintaining kernel line for this, never been that stable
Hopefully next year we'll start seeing ryzen/navi laptops on the market.
Love the reviews
Just got the 14 inch version for my girlfriend's cousin, with a 128gb ssd and 8gb of ram and gotta say it's amazing for the price, mostly any modem cpu (4th gen and beyond even Pentium 2/4) will be just fine for mostly anything with a ssd and at least 8gb ram
Well I bought a refurbished laptop from eBay, but it was from ACER's storefront so it is a trusted seller. I paid $70 more and got a Acer Aspire 5 AMD Ryzen 3200U due to it having a better GPU than the Intel 610 and a M.2 SSD. I spent a additional $70 for a Crucial 3200 16 GB Dual Channel Kit so it runs like a featherweight champ now. Still for $200 it's still a good price for a new system. Just slap in Mint (or any Ubuntu based Distro), and turn it into a Retropie x86 machine.
Great review-am a fan of entry level Lenovo laptops, mine is a Ideapad S130-14IGM with a 14" screen and a Intel Celeron N4000 processor.
Of course, I also took a look at the S145 n some stores and online.
It would be nice to see Prime OS running on that
I've had good luck buying used laptops. I had the same concerns you brought up, and they are valid concerns. It does help to stick with off-lease business machines, in my opinion. Their hard drives can't be trusted, so that should be factored in if buying used. With that said, this machine being about $200 is a good deal for the performance on a new machine. That 5405U looks to have similar benchmark numbers, at least on the CPU side, to the old Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge Core i5 machines I got used a while back. It is great to see the budget chips providing the same power as old i3 and i5 machines that are still very capable, especially if you go with Linux, which is what I would do. I just had a sudden, catastrophic SSD failure last week, so I'm currently distro hopping to see what I want to stick with long term, as I'm getting less satisfied with what I've been running. Good review.
I got this from Walmart for $300+ and I've gotta say it's actually worth it. And it was actually the last one in stock lol
Definitely buying this one
Getting it mainly for Minecraft and roblox
I have this laptop and upgraded it with 8 gigs of ram and Kingston a2000 ssd its awesome
Cool video
Great video, I've wanted to see just what a Pentium Gold could do for a while now, and today I found out. Much better than I expected !
I purchased this, added an HP M.2 250GB drive and installed a fresh copy of Windows 10, then swapped to 8GB of RAM keeping the 500GB hard drive for extra storage.
Wait, ram is upgradable? How????
@@DRMAOMMAIZEINNG open it up and switch the memory chip. It's pretty simple.
Do you have any games installed? How was it?
@@kewl800i I've only played old Nintendo roms on it but those play fine.
Heyyyyyy that was my first laptop, still works like a charm
Just got this for christmas!
Is it good for csgo gta sa and minecraft?
Man if this thing was that cheap where i live i would totally get one
toaster it’s $140 at Walmart
@@jessikughmejia and 350€ is the cheapest I could find it here in my country
$550 here in Australia!
i just picked up a laptop thats amost the exact same as the one in the video for 135$
Curious how well it would run Ubuntu Mate or even PopOS.
linux usually doesnt go well with battery life
@Lumumba B. i guess it depends on hardware, i heard amd power saving is not existant
@@jac1011 well that's a load of crap.
I'm not gonna say that Linux will massively boost battery life, because Linux isn't witchcraft. However it will be at least 10% better just because of the sheer fact that most distros (even the big ones) are less intensive than windows.
In my experience, Linux (OpenSuse tumbleweed XFCE and Ubuntu 19.04) gets me like 10-20 minutes more than Windows 10.
@@alexstone691 I looked into the issue and it was fixed on kernel 4.19
@@jac1011 It really depends on the supported powersttes. Intel is a little better in this regard. This is not 2010 anymore, most laptops (currently have 2 with linux) do really well with batterylife. Typing on an older laptop with Intel/linux right now and it is equally good on batterylife as Windows.
I have the Lenovo Flex Ryzen 3 laptop, two So-DIMM slots, 1 PCIE NVME drive slot no sata. Upgraded the RAM and i'm going to swap the included drive for a 250GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus. Actually a pretty good emulator since it has the Ryzen APU. These things make great emulator laptops on the go, I looked at the Intel based ones first and saw how much more they were charging for them with only the older intel integrated graphics. So I went for the ryzen based one just because I want to support AMD atm since they made intel and NVIDIA lower and change their pricing. I have as of yet too try anything higher than N64/3DO games on it yet.
ETA, when you replaced the mechanical drive with an SSD, did you just clone the contents of the mechanical drive to the SSD or did you start fresh with the SSD and were you able to track down all the drivers needed from the Lenovo website? It can be quite a chore or almost impossible to start fresh, get Win 10 to activate, and find all the drivers when dealing with a consumer grade laptop like this.
this is also something im curious about, did you ever get any information anywhere?
With this laptop, you can use NVME SSD + HDD. So that you won't ran out of storage
Really helpful thank you
4:47 Shes pretty with that lipstick
Dammit, you got me. 😅
Ay gurl
XD
My daughter needed a windows laptop for college. I bought her the same laptop from Best Buy. I put an extra 4GB and a 256 GB SSD M.2 NVME because there is a slot for it. You can use the extra SSD space for more storage.
We would like to do the same upgrades on ours. Any suggestions on where to find a tutorial video on YT so we can do it?
Good job you tested Fornite before yesterday
Fyi I heard you should get a 480 or higher SSD because the smaller size cheap ones are way slower due to less memory channels?
linux is solid.
Ubuntu Gnome is running pretty well, even on my old hp 250 g2 - i3 3110m with integrated HD 4000.
My gf is using it, i wanted to put something lighter on it, but she is working with in the office, and there was a chance that some things won't run on anything different than gnome, so we went with it, and i was surprised that it works pretty solidly.
Try with another Ubuntu desktop like lxqt, budgie or xfce or goes to MXLinux or Debían, with even faster user experience. Is very important to review the compatibility of Libreoffice and documents, partitions and hard disks.
@@psimbyosis8162 what?
why would i do that.
first i said she needs Gnome. so lxqt or xfce are out. and so on
second i said it's solid. it works great.
why should i change it?
@@IcoKirov then works fine. What else. I said that debían alternatives should accelerate the user experience even more. Regards from Chile.
Nice review. 👌
I would like to see Wii emulation with Mario Kart, Smash, Xenoblade Chronicles. And maybe 3DS
Very nice review. Thanks.
For me, the deal breaker is the low resolution on the screen.
I like the cpu is that great and can do 4K on the HDMI, but the low resolution on the built in screen is not for me.
Mine comes with 8th gen i7 with built in nvidia mx110 2gb. I maxed out the ram from 8gb to 20gb put some 512gb nvme and 1tb sata ssd.
Hey, great review! How about the battery? I just got this laptop to my mom, but I have a question. Should the laptop be plugged into power all the time or what? Give me some advice, please! Thank you!
Hey Man - I have this identical laptop and I cannot get PSP emulation to work as good as you can...I get studdering on Gods of War at 2x resolution and do not see how you are getting 3x resolution to work so smoothly. What version of ppsspp are you using? I ran all the Windows updates BTW. Did you upgrade the video drivers or directx separately from Windows updates or something? Just curious. I am kind of bummed out that my performance is not anywhere close to yours. Thanks for any info.
Great video, knowing your audiiance it's probably not that big of a deal but at the end of the video, I would have driven home the point / reminded people that you replaced the HDD with an SSD.... which makes a HUGE differnet for overall boot, installs, loading times and overall snappiness of the system.
Perhaps you could try a few different OSs: regular Linux, DietPi, Lakka.
If it can do what it showed in the video, it can definitely handle all those distros no problem
Could you please test Minecraft Java edition instead of bedrock in the future? I think you will agree that the bedrock edition runs good on almost every device but the same can't be said for Java.
Hello! If you are looking for how this laptop works on Java, I can say it does really good. Especially on optifine.
i dont know how u got any of the games to run on this PC, when i decided to run some tests with it i could get any fps on minecraft? How were u able to get a stable 60, i had everything low
(Late Comment) That’s very weird! I have this laptop and CSGO runs at 20fps to 35fps for me ,and Roblox runs great ,and smooth at ... I’d say around 30-60+ FPS. The laptop it’s self is all around more than decent!
install optifine!! thats how i get 60 fps
Pamela VanLoon hey answer fast because I only play roblox and I’m looking for a pc to buy is this pc good for it
Maybe u got a different version bc i have the same issue
Holy moly, that's pretty nice! I'm trying to decide between this an a Chromebook w/ Linux capability for the future when I have the money to buy a new laptop so I can use it for writing and game design (2D stuff nothing intensive).
Continue saving money
@@JorgeHernandez-gq6yy actually found an i7 3.0-3.6ghz laptop with 16gb ram, 256gb ssd, and some amd graphics card for $200 B)
beardalaxy send me the link bro i need a laptop badly
@@ceozu1312 I got it locally :P
Watching this video on it. It's great.
I've watched a couple of tear downs that show an M.2 slot on these. did you happen to notice when you had yours open?
Great video! I love video reviews of budget laptops like this! Was this laptop hard to get into to upgrade the storage? I wish Lenovo had gone with a 7,200 RPM hard drive, because I could live with that.
nice vid
also you are a god because you used chief hopper skin in fortnite. my favorite skin
Best Buy is currently selling an AMD A6 version of this IdeaPad model with a Radeon R4 for close to that price. Would you say that holds up against the intel version in this video? Seriously considering scooping one up while they're on sale but if the emulation specs aren't similar I'll probably hold off.
3:36 wtf Chrome gives me a score of 25121 while Edge only 19820, does that mean Chrome really is faster and better than Edge? lol
EDIT: I forgot to say, not a bad review my friend, it's awesome to see 200 euro laptops being so cable with modern technology :D
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I'm gonna wait until GTX1050 laptops cost 200 euro and then buy one though.
Great vid ETA Prime. Challenge for a next video, can you find a similar priced AMD laptop??
Seems on par with a lattepanda alpha, I’ve been debating on one for an ultra portable desktop but the more I see of these budget laptops the more the panda doesn’t make sense.
True, if not looking for the tiny form factor or GPIO the Lattepanda is rather expensive.
Black Friday sale on Argos in the UK is £199.99
Laptops don't really attract my attention but if it can handle lower end emulators I may want one in the future.
Almost any laptop handles emulation, I remember emulating N64 on my Toshiba Satellite 10 years ago.
@@adultlunchables I know that but would rather play more systems like ps2 or citra 3ds
@@otakuanswer4001 Yeah fair enough. Gaming on a laptop is kind of a mixed bag in general. No matter what brand or type of laptop you get, even if you spend $2,000... The graphics chip will be the weakest component and the most likely to fail. There are inherent heat problems that plague all laptop GPUs because they're simply trying to pack too much power into too small a footprint without enough cooling infrastructure to make it run. If you have a choice in the matter, it's always better to get a laptop with NO gpu and then use an eGPU instead. Or switch to a desktop for gaming. But eGPU will let you have a reliable laptop that won't fry 2 years after using the fire hot GPU inside.
I have this laptop do you recommend using emulators individually or just use retro arch
i have this laptop it can run my summer car, gta san andreas,gta 4 (shitty graphics only), mafia 2,mafia 1, roblox, beamng drive demo and minecraft (i have these games installed)
Bro I have the same laptop and it just can't run roblox at all or any other games, I have constantly 5 or lower fps and my CPU aswell as GPU is on 100% even tho I have no tabs open.. please help me
Where did you buy ssd and what kind? Looking to swap mine too. My s145 runs a little slow, already factory rested and all
I would love to see this laptop running PrimeOS. Would you be willing to give that a try?
I stand pretty firm on the super low res screen being a huge industry embarrassment at this point. Have suggestions along these lines with 1080p at 14 or 15"?
Would love to know how linux runs on this little laptop and what kind of battery life to expect. Something like Linux Mint or Xubuntu perhaps.
even cheap phones have 1080p IPS displays now, I think every laptop should have an IPS unless it's a high refresh rate gaming laptop
@@yotoprules9361 Absolutely. 1080p and 8GB ram is the "comfort minimum" in my eyes. A cheap SSD probably a good idea too, but I can still see a case to be made for 500gb and 1tb HDDs.
@@vtnwesley I think laptops should have a small ssd and large hdd, or just a large ssd for the higher end ones. Hdds are painful on Windows 10
Does the cpu turbo, or is the speed just 2.3. I'm sticking with my Asus K55a with a I7-3630qm the turbos to 3.2GHz.
I went with the Lenovo ideapad s330 with core i3 and 120 gb ssd got it for around $350 (also at Best Buy)bought a 1tb external hdd for more space and I love it😀
these games work
bioshock
far cry 3
far cry 3 blood dragon
far cry 2
S.T.A.L.K.E.R 1 2 and 3
fallout 3
fallout new vegas
duke nukem forever
max Payne 1 and 2
manhunt 1 and 2
ravenfield
bully
gta 3, vice city and san Andreas
postal 2
the suffering 1 and 2
arkam city
total overdose
minecraft
driver parallel lines
dead island
serious Sam 1 2 and 3
all of which on low graphics some may work on medium to high graphics
these are all the games that i can think that i played and worked perfectly on this computer
Cs go? Valorant? Warzone... i doubt tho? And apex?
Sims 3?
basically a gpd win 2 with a much bigger screen for 200 bucks pretty much will play whatever the win2 will run maybe better.
The resolution in the description doesn’t match with the video. Is it 1080p or 768p?
4:35 says the machine's viewport is 768p
Another great video as always, but I’d be inclined to try and get a Thinkpad used for that kind of money.
Love it, I have the IdeaPad S145 with i7 8565u 12gb of ram, Nvidia GeForce MX 110, 1080p IPS Display, Backlit Keyboard, 256 Samsung NVme SSD (Stock) and WD 1000 GB HDD, is it high end or not?
Running CS Go with at least 300 FPS with bots
here in brazil it costs $ 505, I almost cried
@ETA Prime, could you show me how to clone the original HDD to a Kingston SSD? I bought this laptop, installed a fresh windows 10 and cant get the track pad to work for anything! Thanks for the great videos!
Hey ETA, i was wondering, ps2 emulation?
Also i wanted to know the limits of a lenovo laptop i have, it has a intel i3-5005U dual core with 4 threads and 2ghz of speed
got 12 gb of ddr3 ram with a speed of 1600 mhz (the laptop came with 4 originally and found a stick of 8 on a sale)
and a AMD Radeon R5 M330 with 2 gb of video ram
I want to know how to do the setup for ps2 emulation and what would the limits of this setup be, like i can run destiny 2 at around 30 constant in low settings
@J Fz Ummm, i need a few small fixes, i'm trying some ps2 emulation and games like SMT nocturne are running at around 55-60, so if you have some tips to improve it, please go ahead and tell me, but if it is get better hardware, then i would ask you to not tell me that again
@J Fz Thank you, i honestly apologize if i sounded a bit salty before, but i really appreciate the tip of another 8gb module to improve the ram
the ram is not soldered and i think its limit is actually 16 gb on it
I know it is an old laptop, but with some care and extra parts it has run smoothly and most games i have thrown into it have ran without much issues, and i'm not asking for perfect ps2 emulation, i am mostly asking for like a small group of games to emulate that are really interesting, specifically SMT games except with P3 and 4 because i have them
And once again, thank you for the feedback on this, and actually on Destiny 2 i had a weird issue, that i could put a lot of stuff in high and low render and have around 30, and everything on low and same render and still hit around 30, but it is still playable and i don't have to get a ps4 for it, so thats good for me
@J Fz Thank you, i should use MSI afterburner to see that, and i have a ssd on this pc, thank you for your help on this, i am really not experienced on tinkering for hardware performance
Does it work as a Hackintosh?
Can you re-explain 1:30 please. I just bought it and it’s my first laptop. I want to upgrade the speed and downgrade the storage as u did ? How can I do that ? Pls answer me
U need buy a SSD dude
it would be interesting to see how well it does on PS2 emulation native resolution, specifically GOW2.
I doubt it would run
@@georgebamber6871i swap mine with its integrated UHD 630 and it runs, it does handle DX11+
but yup it bottleneck at even native resolution.
so i bet it does.
@@reeseyme9613 UHD 630? theyre only used on the much faster CPUs than the Pentiums. No pentium will have the UHD 630
I'm currently studying software development and designing, is this a good laptop to use for it?
Berkan Gaming for very basic things it’s ok but for games and actual proper usage, buy one with a dedicated gpu and an i5/i7 or an i9
@@mooseyexists well I'm only using it for school, not for games so I'll probably just get it.
Berkan Gaming I’m gonna want you to get an i3 for this stuff honestly
@@mooseyexists alrighty then
Funny because I’ve been looking for a budget laptop for Linux and was in Best Buy today taking photos of various models and this was one of them. I really want to know how these low end machines take Linux.
Try with MXLinux. That Will fly. I use Ubuntu Mate and it runs really well on lower laptops like Celeron dual core.
Speaking of "really cool" how's the cooling, i.e. the volume of this baby under load and while idling?
The cooling on any Lenovo laptop is good, they're engineers afterall and they know what they're doing. With that being said, don't waste your time on a dual core laptop. Go get a Thinkpad T440p or T430 or similar with a quad core. It'll cost less than this IdeaPad and they'll run faster.
Still better than my amd e-450 with integrated graphics from 2008 or so
sadly in my country this laptop will cost 100$ more its like 320$ lol (philippines)
i have a lenovo ideapad s145 but its the normal windows 10 home
which is a slightly older version of windows 10 since its the october 2018 update (1809)
Would be nice if you could use Shutup10 to disable some Win10 crap to see if you gain any performance by doing so
"Apply All Recommended" would do the trick.
How will the one with the AMD A9 8GB Ram with Radeon R5 graphics perform?
Damn that's a steal. By the time it hits Indonesia it'd be 290US$
Already out, price equal to 289.88 USD.
Yeah, technology is expensive there.
It's still not a bad price at 290
Spain 360 USD
Definitely, disagree with this, a refurbished, if it's in good condition will blow this out the water. Keep up the videos loving it!!
I really enjoyed this video, you presented it very well. Do you think this laptop would be suitable for video editing?