Lenovo IdeaPad Lenovo - IdeaPad 1 15.6" Full HD Touchscreen Review

If you're hunting for a basic laptop for school, work, or browsing the web, the Lenovo IdeaPad 1 is a solid starting point. It's a 15.6-inch touchscreen laptop with an AMD Ryzen 5 7520U processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD, all for a very budget-friendly price around $389. The full HD touchscreen is a nice perk at this price, and it comes with Windows 11 Home ready to go. For students or anyone who just needs a simple machine for everyday tasks, this checks a lot of boxes without breaking the bank.

Performance is exactly what you'd expect from a budget laptop. The AMD Ryzen 5 7520U is a 4-core chip that lands in the 15th percentile for CPU power, which means it's fine for web browsing, document editing, and streaming video, but it will start to struggle if you have too many tabs or programs open at once. The integrated AMD Radeon 610M graphics are in the 18th percentile, so this is not a gaming laptop. You can play very casual games, but that's about it. The 8GB of RAM is also on the lower side (20th percentile), so multitasking has its limits. For basic tasks, it gets the job done, but don't push it too hard.

At $389, the value here is all about the touchscreen and the ports. You're getting a functional Windows laptop with a useful feature set for a very low price. The trade-off is in performance and future-proofing. The 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD are bare minimums today. If you can stretch your budget another $100-$150, you could find models with better processors and more RAM, but if $389 is your hard ceiling and you want a touchscreen, this is one of your few options.

Compared directly to other budget options, the IdeaPad 1's main draw is the touchscreen. A similarly priced non-touch laptop might offer a slightly faster processor or more storage. Looking at the competitive field, it's in a different league than powerhouses like the MacBook Pro or MSI Vector gaming laptops. A more direct competitor for basic use might be an older Chromebook, but the IdeaPad 1 gives you full Windows. If you don't need the touchscreen, you might find better pure performance from a used business laptop like a ThinkPad in this price range.

So, should you buy the Lenovo IdeaPad 1? If your needs are simple—homework, web browsing, video calls, and light document work—and your budget is tight, this is a reasonable choice. The touchscreen and backlit keyboard are nice bonuses. But, if you think you might need to run more demanding programs, want to keep a laptop for many years, or plan on doing any gaming, you should really save up for something with more power and RAM. This is a good laptop for very specific, light use cases.