Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is probably the best laptop you can purchase in the $500 range; with a few caveats: - The 1TB Hard drive is 5400 RPM, on the slower end of HDDs which means that programs booting up are going to be a bit slower. You can easily upgrade to a 7200 RPM HDD (which would be the baseline/standard) or if your willing to pay for a Solid State Drive obviously that would dramatically boost boot time. I purchased a Seagate 500gb 7200RPM for $40, ghost the OS and files and now use the 1TB as an external drive -Comes with 8gb of RAM but an additional slot is easily accessible on the underside. I immediately popped it open and dropped in a Crucial 8GB DDR4 2400 ($60). 16gb of RAM is plenty and can handle anything your planning on running on this machine. (If your looking to drop more than 16gb you should probably be shopping for a beefier machine overall (i7 processor, GTX 1070, etc) - Intel HD 620 integrated graphics; this model laptop cannot be upgraded with a more robust graphics card however the 620 isn't terrible. Arguably on par with the Nvidia GTX 400/500 series from several years ago, so nothing incredible but certainly usable for older games or non graphics intensive programs. Check out on you tube some benchmark test to see if its acceptable to you. - very little bloatware: seems trivial, but seriously, it can be exhausting researching pre-installed software and going through the uninstall process. I was immensely pleased that this machine had practically none on it. - In summary: a well balanced laptop with room for some easy improvements (you'll easily put between $100 - $150 in upgrades into it, but if search for a laptop that has the features I described already installed your easily look at a $300 increase in price.) If you are someone looking to purchase a new gaming laptop or something for editing picture/ video, you should probably look elsewhere. But if your shopping for a reliable, fast everyday use computer, meant for light gaming, internet surfing, etc. This is the one for you.