Pros: - Capacious and Comfortable Keyboard
- Considerable cost to performance value
- Vibrant, Colorful screen, with reasonable viewing angles
- Capable of handling several common MMO/Moba games with middle-to-moderate settings (Minecraft, World of Warcraft, League of Legends, TERA Online, etc.)
- Single-stick of 4GB PC3-12800 ram leaves room to grow (see notes)
- Reasonable thermal performance
- Terrific audio, with plenty of adjustment and an Equalizer, this is a huge improvement over my previous HP Laptop and a welcome sight on a budget performer.

Cons: - Budget / Low resolution LCD Panel (1366x768 native)
- Poor LCD Panel GTG/Refresh Performance (Pixel Ghosting) approx. ~8-10ms
- Processor is BGA Surface mounted. It is not possible to change the processor in this model without changing the mainboard FRU wholesale.
- Single-stick of 4GB PC3-12800 ram, running in single-channel, which can cause latency in loading and unloading programs.
- Audio speakers aren't the best, but not terrible. They don't seem particularly tinny, but don't expect bass of any sort (common on most laptops)
- Removing the Dummy card from the SDHC card reader on the unit I received was nothing short of a battle of wills.

Other Thoughts: This laptop provides a reasonable starter unit that has some wiggle-room to improve as time goes on, below are some of the caveats to be aware of

(1) The mPCIe WiFi adapter does not come with Bluetooth. If you want to upgrade, your best bet is to hunt down Lenovo FRU's from similar models and hope it is not blacklisted in the BIOS, for instance, FRU 04W3764, though I have not received it yet to test. (You can also BIOS mod, but be aware that this voids your warranty).

(2) You'll want to add a stick of memory. It is both nice and not-nice that Lenovo used a single-stick of ram here, as it was more cost effective for them, but the latency of programs loading and unloading is noticeable, and more or less immediately goes away if you add a second 4GB stick of ram.

(3) If you can find a Blu-Ray RAMBO unit for sale, you can swap that in, the g505 seems to have the faculties to handle this drive, which is available from some of the upper models in the G-series.

(4) If you plan to upgrade to Windows 7 from Windows 8, you will have to DISABLE SECURE BOOT in the bios Security Screen, and then select the option to clear and run setup. Be aware if you do this, you likely will no longer have a key or setup for Windows 8 (notice there's no windows keys on the bottom of laptops anymore). This will also wipe out your drivers and software included with the laptop.

(5) Further down the road, as this model ages, it is likely you can find a used and functional g505s mainboard FRU to replace the processor in this model with an upgraded unit. The chassis appear similar enough to be swapped out from another. If you absolutely need improved graphics performance, spend an extra $100 or two and get the Lenovo G505s off the shelf. This model includes a beefier processor, with better integrated graphics, that will run in Crossfire/Tandem with the discrete Radeon HD graphics card (SLI/Crossfire on a budget anyone?)

(6) This laptop has all of the faculties to run in AHCI / UEFI mode, which is the ideal setup for the myriad of SSD hard disks on the market, and all-around performance would benefit from this greatly, so put it high in your consideration list.