Lenovo Laptop ThinkPad E560 (20EV002JUS) Intel Core i7 6th Gen 6500U (2.5 GHz) 8 GB Memory 500 GB HDD AMD Radeon R7 M370 15.6" Windows 7 Professional 64-Bit (Downgrade from Windows 10 Pro)

Pros: Excellent battery life for basic tasks like online activities (meter showed two hours left when I shut down after five hours); the system will apparently only use the 370M when needed (I've not tried any games other than PvZ yet). Sturdy. I like the rubberized feel; won't slip. Minimal bloatware (none I've felt compelled to remove yet). Easy to add RAM and replace HDD with SSD. Very nice, bright 1920x1080 display. Included HDD is 7200RPM. Sorry no Speedtest numbers, but the wireless /feels/ fast. It hasn't gotten even warm under constant non-gaming use. I'm not sure I can hear the fan. Separate numeric keypad. Lenovo seems to have retained its near-legendary quality even years after IBM sold them.

Cons: No HDD or DVD activity LEDs. No charging indicator when it is powered off. OSD for CAPSlock, but no LED for that or for Numlock. USB ports not color coded as to type (they're all black). HDD is GPT even though it's only 500GB; see other thoughts. Battery life is good, but there is plenty of room for an even bigger battery. Included RAM is only CAS11. Bizarre: power plug is rectangular with a center pin rather than the more typical round with center pin, so even though it's the same 20V, I can't use any of my other Lenovo adapters with it (including a car adapter).

Overall Review: I replaced the HDD with a SSD primarily for power saving as the original drive isn't a 5400RPM slug. I could not use my preferred tool (Acronis) to clone it, as it isn't compatible with GPT, but another free utility (Easus) took care of it. I also upgraded the RAM by replacing the single 8GB CAS11 stick with a pair of 8GB CAS9 sticks. I anticipated doing these things (had the SSD just waiting for a laptop), but many people won't feel a need to do these upgrades, so not taking an egg off. I let it upgrade to WIn10, and that went well too.

Pros: Price, decent performance, feels quality.

Cons: Integrated buttons in the touch pad.

Overall Review: I've purchased quite a few ThinkPad's over the years, had been worried the quality would go down after IBM sold the company but so far I've been pleased with the newer TP's I've gotten. Unfortunately this unit has a touch pad with the left and right buttons part of the pad instead of separate as I've had with other models. For people who like to use both hands on the pad this is problematic. Overall it's a nice laptop, would benefit with a SSD of course.

Pros: System works well enough out of the box, the lack of an SSD is noticeable, but they're cheap enough. Nice screen, good keyboard feel, not too heavy.

Cons: Has a lot of "crud" installed (not a bunch of trial-ware garbage, but the stuff they do pre-install takes up a lot of space) 8gb ram is a little low (but again, cheap enough to upgrade after the fact, and very easy to do) Case does show fingerprints, if that bothers you. Track pad default settings are a bit overzealous and can be aggravating at times (this is a relatively minor gripe though) There's another that is a big negative but not really an out-of-the-box issue.

Overall Review: Do not waste your time creating recovery media. It will take all afternoon, and then it doesn't work. At all. Not even a little bit. I had a spare ssd laying around that I wanted to install, and thought it would be a good test of the recovery media. After booting off of the boot disc (which, is not disc #1) I clicked next, accepted the EULA and it popped up a rather generic "ERROR OCCURRED" And that was that. So, Lenovo could a lot better in that regard. Switching from 8 to 16gb ram and replacing the hdd with an SSD boosted system performance significantly.

Pros: - Plenty of ports (USB, VGA, etc) - Good, all around, average machine capable of general browsing, light gaming, web server, etc - Amazing battery life (6+ hours!)

Cons: - Bright/uneven spots around edge of the display - Screen backlight died within 3 months of purchase - Cheap feeling body - Keyboard feels crowded, lots of accidental clicks on off-center trackpad

Overall Review: I bought this machine after my very old (2008) and much-loved beast of a Thinkpad T500 finally bit the dust. Coming from the T500, the body of the E560 feels a little cheap and delicate. I immediately noticed a couple bright spots around the edge of the screen. The off-center track pad really bothers me, as I'm constantly hitting it by accident (I prefer the keyboard without the numpad, though that's personal preference). When it arrived, I was happy with the machine. Good all around general purpose work machine, though it certainly didn't wow me by any means. About 3 months in, the backlight of my screen went out (something that also happened with my T500 after about 6 years). I ran it off an external monitor for a bit, until I could send it in for repair. I read about a few other people having the same backlight issue, which was apparently an easy fix, but I didn't want to void the warranty. I sent it in for repair, which took quite a long time. Apparently, they replaced the entire screen with a new screen, which was also dead on arrival (not optimistic about the screen between mine and stories of others). They then replaced it AGAIN, but somehow (not sure whether the fault of the repair shop or the laptop), the motherboard also died during the repair and had to be replaced as well, along with a third screen replacement. It came back and seems to work fine, though the bright spots around the edge of the screen are still there, the case is now cracked, the hinges are held together with tape (came like that from the repair shop) and the webcam and microphone no longer work, which leaves me stranded for online calls and meetings. I'm hesitant to send it back in again with all the trouble of the first time. Overall, it's a good average machine for browsing, light gaming (Minecraft, etc), and Development work (WAMP server, IDE, general development tools), and the battery lasts FOREVER, but it is delicate and I'm worried about what else may go wrong with it in the future.

Pros: -Highly compatible -Easily upgradable -No bloatware -Windows 7 preloaded, but can go online to get Windows 10 or have it shipped on a USB drive -No silly gimmicks or gadgets -Dedicated GPU -USB 3.0 ports all around with one being a charging USB port

Cons: -Feels cheap compared to some higher end laptops -Battery life is average at best -Keyboard is a little awkward -Display is below average, but sufficient

Overall Review: I picked this up because it was in my price range and almost exactly what I was looking for. Primarily, I needed a laptop that was highly compatible with all distros of Linux, including TAILS. I'm happy to report that it is. So far, I haven't had any problems with Kali or Ubuntu and TAILS 2.6 loads without any startup modifications! Also, 8GB of RAM was a little weak so I upgraded it to 16GB with a single 8GB DDR3 1600 PC-12800 module from G.Skill that matched the timings, which by the way, are 11-11-11-28 1T. Not satisfied with a mechanical hard drive, I opted to upgrade to a Samsung 850 EVO 500GB SSD. Works great in this ThinkPad. For only about $200 I upgraded this laptop to a $1200-1400 price range equivalent. xD Oh and ordering the USB drive with Windows 10 was simple. Lenovo has a pamphlet inside on how to do it. Basically you go to a website, create an account, input your serial number and they'll mail you a free USB drive preloaded with Windows 10 via UPS. Shipping time is about 2 weeks. Or you can opt for a download of Windows 10 to your hard drive. I opted for the USB drive.

Pros: Incredibly fast for a business laptop, great value, decent battery life so far. Exactly what i was looking for.

Cons: Only complaint I have so far is the location of the function key- I keep hitting it when i'm trying to hit the Control key. Also a tad on the heavy side.

Overall Review: I bought this to replace a useless Asus I had purchased last year for work. This thing was lightning fast right out of the box, but day 2 I popped in another 8GB of ram and a 250GB SSD. Now it's unstoppable! No lag in any application and cold start to full boot in less than 20 seconds running Windows 7- pretty impressive. Definitely recommend it to anyone considering it.

Pros: i7 6 gen, 4 threads, fast for study and work.

Cons: some lenovo software preinstalled. windows 7 is loaded. I did not even use this for over 10 seconds. switched to win 10 right away. Lenovo could have made the process of switching windows a bit easier, as I had to make my own win 10 usb drive. nothing worth deducting an egg though

Overall Review: I personally prefer windows 10 as I got used to the interface. took 10 min or less to change the hdd to an ssd.(I directly changed it without doing any thing in windows 7.) took another 15 min to install win 10 pro through windows media tool(used usb drive boot up). overall very fast machine. love the keyboard feel, this is one of my main reason to choose Lenovo. Thinkpad is known for the professional laptop reliability. I'm expecting to use this machine for a long time. both for work and for studies.

Pros: N/A. All other things are as expected.

Cons: The display looks like slow and sometime programs freeze or even crash because of graphics issue.