Lenovo 500w Gen 3 2-in-1 Laptop (11.6″ Touchscreen, Intel Pentium N6000, 8GB RAM, 256GB SSD) Ruggedized & Water Resistant for Student & School, Webcam, Wi-Fi, IST Pen, Win 11 Home, Blue, 2024

Excellent little laptop
It feels “rugged” , nice bright display, easy to setup, as was mentioned elsewhere it would be a nice addition if it had backlight for keyboard but no complaints. I added my own Bluetooth mouse and it works great. Decent battery life and even charges (slowly) with a high power phone charger, meaning I don’t need to carry the regular large charger. Overall an excellent product for my needs – basic remote work using office productivity software.

Solid for what it is.
I like it. Went with the 8GB/512GB model. It’s about as close as you can get to a netbook or a netbook sized windows convertible for a reasonable price these days. If anyone here purchased one to replace a netbook, or has used one at one point, you know that this thing is INFINITELY BETTER than one of those. I retired my Asus T-100 that i used to use for light office work, web browser/youtube, and VNs. A 10.1″ size class detachable that served its purpose for over 10 years. By todays standards, woefully underpowered @ 2GB ram 32bit atom and 32GB emmc. BUT, in its day, that was actually halfway decent for a small windows tablet. A netbook of the era had 1GB ram or less and had 7starter or XP. Moving along, this will have no problem running Edge, Outlook, and a light duty game (think Crush the Castle, Bloons 6, DDLC, Kingdom Rush, Henry Stickmin, etc.) at the same time, even in battery saver mode. It just takes some time to load initially. Make no mistake, despite my glowing opinion of it, it is not a fast machine relative to anything from the last 6 years with the Core i5+ or Ryzen 5+ series, but those are all in the 13″+ size class computers. This is more of a fella that will duke it out with a Surface Go. For the price, you get a lot more with the Lenovo, and it comes with the keyboard. I like the big boy bezels, when reading VNs in tablet mode I have some real estate for my hands to hold it without accidentally clicking the touchscreen. I did have to put a matte screen protector on it. Ain’t no fun staring at my ugly mug whenever I’m trying to read. I also had a 14″ 2020 Flex 5 ryzen for day to day use, I gave it to a family member and got this as a replacenent for all purposes not better done on a gaming desktop. This is significantly lighter, more portable (despite being a 2.4″ smaller screen wise, it’s only about 1″ smaller chassis, but it does make a notable difference in lugging around) and while it doesn’t feel premium, it doesn’t feel like I need to baby it. Build quality is decent for the price, the Flex 5 was more than double the cost and had more chassis sag if held one handed. Very serviceable. Had to remove the bottom to tighten the hinges and remove the stylus plug cover (I HAD TO ORDER THAT SEPERATELY, THIS SAYS IT COMES WITH A STYLUS, BUT IT’S NOT THE STYLUS LENOVO OFFERS) speaking of the active OEM stylus (not the generic passive pen included), its very skinny and reminds me of a longer DS pen. For extensive use this may be a problem for some. Its also very recessed when docked and you need long fingernails or a pen to flick it out. It does work well, though. Touch screen works as it should both on Windows and Linux, accurate and responsive. Storage looks to be easily upgradable, battery looks easily changable. I throw it in a bag and take it back and forth to work every day without any worries. The only build quality issues I’ve had were the afore meantioned loosened hinges (easy fix), and the wifi stopped working after 2 months. Windows claimed there was a hardware issue, even on a rescue disk, Linux simply didn’t acknowledge that where was wlan at all. After a few hours fussing about with settings, I took the wireless card out and put it back in. Seems to have fixed the issue, its been a few months no problems now. I’ve seen no complaints of this elseware, so maybe just a fluke. Battery life stunk initially. About 2-3 hours and running hot and slow, 4 hours at best with battery saver. Reinstalling windows and disabling most startup programs made a world of a difference. I also have it default to batterysaver whenever unplugged. It now runs cooler and lasts longer than advertised, about 8-12 hours depending on what I’m doing with it. Mind you, this is with DDLC/MAS running in the background (or foreground) at all times. Sorry if this is a meandering ramble. Overall, I’d recommend it if you’ve read all this and still think it could be a decent option. For what I expected and intended for it to do, especially relative to what I upgraded from, I am very happy with it. There’s slim pickings, especially from a reputable brand, in this size class and budget.

Small and sturdy. Was great for the first 4 weeks.
Wrote this a month ago: A great little computer. Feels very sturdy, and is small. Will be good for traveling.Update: After 4 weeks wifi disappeared (works on other computers in same building). Spent MANY hours over the last 2 weeks on the phone and on “chat” with support people from Lenovo and Amazon (mainly Lenovo). Several different support people tried to fix it remotely. Next step is to have a technician come out. What this will end up costing Lenovo is no doubt much more than the laptop is worth. The wise thing would be to send me a new one. But no, because the 30 days return window has passed. Meanwhile I’ve wasted many, many hours. And still don’t have a working laptop. I must say, however, that all the various support people were very nice, and did their best. The problem is the return/exchange policy, when the thing breaks down just after the return period has passed! Will I buy Lenovo again? Depends if they fix it next week. New update: Lenovo sent a technician over who fixed it. Apparently it needed a new wifi card (why a new laptop needed that, I don’t know). But it’s all working again.

The Good and Bad.
The Good. The laptop was better the expected. Out preforms my older one. Great computer.The bad!! It does not come with the IST Pen. That will cost you another $50 plus to get one. My computer arrived with the warranty already started. It was started May 2 2024. I received the computer 3 week in November. That is almost 7 months lost warranty. Then found out that the computer is no longer in production by Lenovo. The description listed as it is.The seller is miss representing the product in the description. I would not buy from this seller again.