Is a $150 Laptop Worth It? #Helpful Post

Hey guys, this is Austin

The Lenovo IdeaPad 100s looks good on paper, but is a $150 laptop worth it?

The unboxing experience is pretty straightforward

Crack open the box, and you'll find the laptop itself, the power adapter, and a quick-start guide

For such a cheap laptop, the design really isn't bad

It looks especially dope in bright red

While it's under an inch thin and made of plastic, it feels surprisingly well-built

You've got a power port, full-sized HDMI, headphone jack, and a micro SD card slot

To expand the built-in storage

It's also got a pair of USB ports, although they are of the slower 2.0 variety

The real draw here is being able to run full Windows on such a cheap laptop

Performance is totally respectable

When you get into juggling more than a few apps, it can start to slow down

But for normal use, it's actually snappy

Since it's running Windows 10 out of the box,

That means you got features like Cortana, and multiple desktop support

All of which work fine here

I've also got to give Lenovo props for not loading it with bloatware either

There are a couple of apps pre-installed, all of which are easy enough to get rid of

It's powered by a quad-core Intell Atom processor

Which is good enough for some light gaming as well

Minecraft Windows 10 edition works

And while you won't want to try more hardcore games, it's usable for casual stuff

It's also passively cooled, which means there's no fan

And while it would be nice to have more than 2 gigs of memory,

It's enough to handle a few tabs without slowing down

Having only 32 gigabytes of storage is about what you'd expect on a low-end PC

It's reasonably quick, but you'd probably want to take advantage of that micro SD card slot

To cheaply get some more space

All of this put together means you can expect some impressive battery life

Upwards of 6 to 7 hours, even with moderately heavy usage

The one (?) that should really be considered either a first computer or a secondary machine

While it's perfectly at home doing things like web-browsing,

It's not going to crush things like photoshop and 4k video

One area where the budget price is more noticeable is in the screen

It's got an 11.6-inch, 1366 by 768 display, and it's average in every way

It gets reasonably bright, but the color tends to be on the blue side,

And the viewing angles leave a lot to be desired

You can adjust the screen all the way flat if you'd like though

To make sure you keep it in the sweet spot

Audio is also average

It has a pair of speakers on the bottom, which are a bit tinny, but totally usable

The webcam on the 100s... exists?

It's not exactly *laughs* best at anything

But, for a quick Skype call or something, it's fine

Right, Matt?

Matt: *shakes head*

By far the biggest issue with the 100s is the trackpad

It's a decent size for an 11-inch laptop,

But it completely lacks multi-touch, which makes scrolling a massive pain

You either have to tap to click or use the mushy buttons

It's usable, but it makes something as simple as scrolling on a web page way more annoying than it should be

Luckily, the keyboard is one area where Lenovo has things well sorted

It's nice and spaced with slightly curved keys, which feel really nice to type on

The slightly mushy action is the main giveaway that this isn't a far more expensive laptop

But it's really not bad

One spot where options like the Chromebook went out is Wi-Fi

The IdeaPad tops out with wireless, and, compared to the much faster AC Wi-Fi

And Chromebooks are absolutely the biggest competition for this laptop

For about the same price, you're able to get a similar laptop that's running Google's Chrome OS

The main advantage is being able to run Windows apps on the IdeaPad

But the basics are just as good, if not better on Chrome OS

For $150 dollars, though, you're getting a laptop that's not only usable, but nicely designed with the exception of the trackpad

With solid battery life, and plenty of performance

What do you guys think about the IdeaPad?

Let me know in the comments below, and I will catch you in the next one