Buyer’s reviews:

This laptop combines the capable and proven Nvidia GTX 1650 (April 2019) with the modern and efficient AMD Ryzen 5600H. The 5600H facilitates efficient on-the-go browsing from the undersized battery, while the GTX1650 delivers an affordable gaming performance. For the relatively low price, specs are not very high, but both RAM and storage can be upgraded. With this laptop, Lenovo has given up on endurance, choosing instead to provide a lower cost and lighter weight with quite a small battery.
System: The Windows 10 laptop does not come with much bloatware. It includes a 30-day trial of McAfee LiveSafe. Another included utility, Lenovo Vantage, is necessary for operating the computer.
Keyboard: Lenovo has opted for a 96% keyboard with a Numpad, which is sure to please users who like having a full-sized keyboard with a separate Numpad. The keyboard is backlit with a white backlight, which is nice and visible but a bit less eye-friendly than red. While many laptops treat function keys (F1... F2, etc.) as secondary to media keys (volume up... brightness up) and require Fn to activate function keys, here the function keys require holding down Fn to activate media keys, which is the more traditional control scheme.
Monitor: This laptop uses a 1080p, 120 Hz matte screen, which provides for silky smooth gaming as long as you turn the settings down a bit. 120 Hz is not quite the 144 Hz we see in many monitors, but it is double that of the standard 60 Hz. The matte finish performs decently well in bright environments. The difference between the maximum and minimum brightness seems to be around 2–4 W of power, and the screen automatically turns off at the lowest brightness when using the brightness adjusting hotkey. Interestingly, the brightness media keys do not support the press and hold (you have to lift, then press for each notch to make large adjustments to brightness), but the volume keys do support press and hold.
The Lenovo Vantage software allows tuning the fan speed to maximize cooling and laptop performance, as well as limiting charge to 55%—60% to increase battery longevity. Since this laptop is likely to be plugged in most of the time, enabling this feature is highly recommended.
In terms of power, this laptop can consume as much as 128 W when plugged in with the GPU/CPU pushed to their maximum performance and screen brightness set to maximum. The laptop will consume a hair more than 135 W on the 135 W power brick if high-powered peripherals are connected. Like all laptops, good ventilation is recommended to prevent overheating when doing high-performance tasks like playing a game, at the very least, propping up one end of the laptop with a pen.
The battery is labeled as 44 Wh, has a “design capacity” of 45 Wh, and my particular battery has an “actual capacity” of 46.38 Wh, according to Lenovo Vantage. The battery is capable of charging and discharging at 80 watts, which is quite a high performance for such a small battery. Pushing the battery to the limit like this no doubt reduces longevity. If you want to game at max performance on battery power, going from 100% to 20% takes less than 40 minutes from a full charge. If you want to stream videos at medium brightness, the laptop will last longer, more than 2 hours.
This laptop is meant to be plugged in, but you can only plug it into Lenovo’s weird rectangular DC charger. There is a type C port, but while some laptops support type C charging (which opens up the possibility of extending the endurance from a common power bank), this laptop does not support charging from its type C port.
In terms of upgradability, the back panel can be removed with a screwdriver and prying tool, revealing an additional M.2 SSD port and pins for a hard disk next to it. Accessing the RAM requires lifting up the side of the metal RAM cover, then shifting it to remove it — there is 1 unused RAM slot.
As a side note, I accidentally dropped mine from a height of 3 inches, screen first, and scratched the paint (my fault). There was no functional damage, although the lid was scratched on the outside, so consider this a data point in an unintentional drop test. @Eric
For sure, this is the most affordable, easily upgradeable gaming laptop on the market this year. Not only for the cost but also for the improvements that can be made. The keyboard is rock solid, the 120 Hz display is awesome, the heat dissipation is very good, despite that the laptop heats significantly when working hard or gaming. But, in general, the build is much better than other brands in the same price range.
I recommend making 2 important improvements to the laptop. The first one is to improve the RAM. Firstly, because a single module works on a single channel. But my recommendation is to replace the original RAM module in the laptop. AMD processors are very sensitive to memory latency and rank. But the memory that comes by default is a single-sided, dual-rank (1Rx16) Samsung memory. If you look up reviews on expert channels on YouTube, the speed with a single-rank/double-sided RAM improves by up to 20%. I opt for this pair of T-Force modules because right now, they are the cheapest and work so well, just like other more expensive memories.
The second important improvement I recommend is the hard drive. The laptop came with a WD 256 GB PCIe 3.0 disc, relatively slow (1900–950 Mb/s), but tiny (2242). The motherboard supports up to PCIe 4.0, so you can buy a disc up to 7000 Mb/s. For the second 2280 slot, I chose a 2 TB Inland disc, considerably faster (3500–3000 Mb/s) but considerably cheaper than a PCIe 4.0 disc. The motherboard supports 2 NVMe discs and an additional SATA disc, and the laptop came with adapters and the enclosure for a standard 2.5 SATA disc (mechanical or SSD). But unfortunately, there is no way (or no clean way) to connect all 3 discs at the same time. It can be done in a dirty way if anyone figures it out. I tested the 3 discs at the same time with the laptop open, and it worked, but there is no room for the 3 discs at the same time once you close the laptop. Additionally, do not forget to migrate the SO to the faster disc. @Alejandro

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