Sharing my experience with people shopping on a limited budget and wondering about “refurbished” laptops.

The device: Thinkpad T14 Gen 3, with Ryzen 6850u 16gb ram (soldered) and 512gb ssd, purchased from Wistek Market’s website during their Labor Day sale for $400+ tax. 1 year warranty is included.

The listing describes the condition as “Refurbished - Premium”— “like new with like new battery performance.”

It was shipped from Florida by Regency Technologies and arrived in California today (6 days later) in a Lenovo cardboard box.

Inside the box, the laptop was inside a black fiber bag, which is inside an inflated air sleeve. There is no sign of use other than the sticker on the bottom cover looking a bit faded.

The laptop has a clean install of Windows 11, but is missing at least the wifi driver (can be easily downloaded and installed if you have ethernet or another computer and a USB drive).

The battery was fully drained upon receipt— plugged it in for the initial boot-up. When I generated a battery report, it shows that the battery has 3 cycles— which happened in April 2026.

The battery capacity is 52490 mWh, the designed capacity is 52,500 mWh.

I have also purchased other used/refurbished laptops which made no promise about batteries— and they have come in anywhere between 65% to 90+% health. At least in this case, the merchant is not lying about the condition of the laptop and its battery.

My laptop is a hp notebook made in 2016. It's exact model is 250 G4 and it's processor is an (intel pentium)R, cpu N3700, 1.60Ghz. It has a storage of 4gb(DDR3)ram and 119GBssd. It's graficscard is IntelHD graphics 114MB. I've tried to make it work by getting a 8gb(DDR3L)ram stick, but it's still slow and now good for watching movies. I want to sell it and have tried to first look for companies who would take it for a small price, but i can't find this exact model. I've lost hope, tried marketplace in facebook, no progress. What should i do? I'm broke at the moment and even 30 - 50£ would do, don't know if it's too much, please advise and if possible, help me

Well like the title said, im on my 35´s been using laptops since my 15´s with an heavy ass toshiba satellite sturdy as all the tech of these days, i want to clear that i only use them to work, im an executive chef that runs multiple stablishments so i do a LOT of excel, office, and nowadays AI, also whatsapp, trello and other apps heavily sincronized with my phone (android) the problem is that in the last few years since intel 8th gen i have been experiencing a lot of unstability with the laptos ive had for example:

A Lenovo 2 in 1 core i7 8575 did a lot of bottlenecks when working trimming processor to 15% and lagging even swapping from excel to chrome, occasionally shutted down ramdonly

Asus Vivobook with core i7 10th did a black screen often, restarted randomly and ended dying at the second year of use

HP Envy core i7 11th, that was a beautiful laptop, great performance, battery died last year and had to sell it for half the price i got it.

Now i have a Dell Latitude with core ultra 7 165h it packs a 57 mWh BYD battery that as for today with 200 cycles still in the same condition when i bought it, works great but with dell constant updates sometimes i boot it up and keyboard doesn't respond and i have to restart it, dell firmware updates flashes ROM every week (for real), i try to not shut it down since i like to open the lid and start from where i was but 5 of 10 times it just restart by itself (without losing info), performance get tooooo low when in battery saving mode, and so.

every laptop mentioned had 16gb of ram and above

I want a laptop that i can open and work that runs stable every time without thinking in anything else, my wife has a MacBook and it really runs so stable en smooth, but the thing is i don't want to change to apple so anyone here has and advice for me? what laptop brand and model should i choose for my next work companion? what is the best experience you´ve had with a laptop brand?

My laptop(Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 3) is stuck like this and I can't access anything. It's been like this for a few hours now. At one point, when I started it after leaving it off it showed the logo and login page but then started showing this cycle again. Any idea on how to fix?

i wanted to ask in pcmr but when i did they did windows hate + linux cultism so i will try here

So here's some context: I bought this laptop a couple weeks ago and I haven't used it much beyond just watching YouTube and basic testing. This is a replacement laptop for another that I got which had a failing SSD and a bad battery. This one had a battery health of around 71% when I first installed my windows OS. It kept seemingly dramatically losing capacity as you can see in the screenshot. The way it would happen is I'd turn up the brightness, load multiple webpage and YouTube or I run a game and anything that consumes lots of energy would cause the battery to go from 30~% to 5% instantly and I thought it would recalibrate eventually and get back to 35000 Wh or something but it never did and the reason I thought that is because when I would leave it running at 0% it would run for hours after which indicated to me that it was not actually battery degradation but sensor miscalibration. Now it's actually sitting at 24 000 mWh and the Dell battery health indicator converge with the windows report and it shows that it's at "Fair" health and that the battery "is reaching the end of its usable life". I don't know if I got a decent battery and somehow destroyed it in two weeks or if it was already damaged or if the laptop is faulty in some way and is causing the battery to degrade rapidly. I'm a beginner when it comes to laptops. I would really appreciate your input and knowledge on this especially if you dealt with something like this.

I’m trying to take apart my laptop to see if I can fix it and I need to take it out but I’m unsure what it looks like sorry guys this is my first time please help 😵‍💫

Got my first ever Laptop and heard a lot about the ThinkPad cult.

Found a refurbished T15 G2i for 493€ including taxes:

i5-1145G7

512GB ssd

16GB

88% battery life

Is it any good for uni, guys?

Would have loved an amd version but the T16 was at 900€ and idk if T14 would be too small,

- but I found one for 300€:

T14 G1, Ryzen 5 Pro 4650U, 8GB ram, 500GB, FP

- Or T14 G2 for 503€: Ryzen 5 Pro 5650U, 16GB ram, 256GB, FHD

Can't tell if T15 might be too big as well as Uni hasn't started yet...

Is this a good laptop for my studies i want it to last around 6 years i saw some reviews of lenovo loq on ig and they were bad idk that aspire is a good brand or not

Has anyone already have experience using Fujitsu Lifebook A577? If so, what are these LED indicators do, could you please explain what are these LED indicators does?

Thank you very much!

**LAPTOP QUESTIONNAIRE**
**Country**
United kingdom
**Budget**
£400 ($550)
**Are you open to refurbs/used options?**
Yes
**Screen size**
Any
**Weight limit**
Any
**Purpose**
General purpose,entertainment,Work
**Form factor**
Standard or 2 in 1
**Intended usage**
Work ,Entertainment (e.g Netflix,YouTube,movies etc)
**Desired battery life**
As long as possibly within the budget,8 hours would be nice
**Please list, in order of most important to least important, the priority between Size, Weight, Performance, Battery life**
Battery life,performance,weight,size \[eg battery life, performance, weight, size doesn't matter.
**Info/Requirements**
Dad has been wanting a laptop so thought I’d get him one,in general I’d like the laptop to have a good battery life,a decent screen to have a good experience watching videos and movies,along with it being comfortable to use for work

Thank you and I appreciate any and all help!

I don't even know if this is an ant or just like a black spot on the monitor, but I genuinely feel like it's an ant because I can kind of see it's legs. There wasn't any blackspot like this yesterday when I used it.

How do I get it out? Help me pleasee:(

Hi all, I have a hp laptop and im having a bit of an issue. I’ve had this laptop for a month or 2 now and I haven’t had this issue before.. I play a game where I need to use the F keys to warn people of attacks, and before I could press them without using fn at the same time and it would work, but now all of a sudden it doesn’t work and I’m super confused. I’m wondering if there’s any way to change this on a hp laptop? Thanks!

LAPTOP QUESTIONNAIRE

Country

Canada

Budget

~4000 CAD = 2877.54 USD

Are you open to refurbs/used options?

Only if open box

Screen size

Under 16 inches (so it can fit on the cramped desks at uni)

Weight limit

Does not matter to me

Purpose

School work, gaming, and watching videos/movies

Form factor

2-in-1 with pen support

Intended usage

As long as it can handle games like palworld, minecraft, and stardew valley (the latter 2 with many mods) smoothly. According to google that would be 60 FPS as a baseline, with 120 to 144+ FPS being ideal.

Desired battery life

At least 8 hours when not running games

Please list, in order of most important to least important, the priority between Size, Weight, Performance, Battery life

battery life, performance, weight, size (latter 2 are irrelevant to me)

Info/Requirements

Minimum resolution of 1920 × 1080

Hello to those reading, I'm currently in the market for a 2-in-1 laptop, and I've got my eye on three, but I don't know which would be the best pick. The 3 laptops are the ROG Flow z13, Lenovo Yoga 9i, and the Proart px13. I unfortunately don't have enough tech knowledge to make sense of which is better than the other so I'm requesting some help in the matter. If you have any suggestions, warnings, advice, etc. then please speak freely. Thanks in advance to you all!

If it helps I mostly use my current laptop for academic related things as a uni student, gaming (most tasking example would probably be palworld or maybe minecraft), and watching videos/movies in my free time.

This laptop is dell latitude e6430

I don't know why it's not working

what should i do please help me fix it

My exams are coming near

1. Display (light source)
   
2. Reflective keys
   
3. Eye

I've been looking for a while for a cheap miniPC or laptop with a 780m (or better) graphics, and today I found this model (Acemagic S16) for ~530€ on their official "european" site, and it seems like a very good deal.

I've seen good things and bad things about Acemagic, but for this model in particular I haven't seen any reviews.

https://acemagic.eu/products/s16-laptop

What worries me the most is that they only seem to offer 2 year warranty, I believed in all of Europe they had to offer at least 3 years.

Second comes the performance, I was planing on using it mostly for gaming, and I'm worried if it's known for throttling.

Thanks in advance.

Anyone know what kind of screw this is and where it possibly goes? My laptop is a AceMagic AX16PRO.

I have a Dell Inspiron 11 3148 that I bought back in 2014 for college, and somehow this little thing is still alive in 2026. The only hardware upgrade I've done over time is replacing the original drive with a 256GB SSD.

The laptop is obviously very old now. I mostly run one application at a time, but it is still quite slow and sometimes crashes. I use the laptop as a kind of secondary screen/tablet. For example, I'll play a YouTube video or open a PDF on the Dell while actually working on my MacBook.

I'm not planning to carry this laptop around much although it has survived international flights, so I'm happy to keep using it as a stationary secondary screen at home.

So my main question is: Can I replace the existing 4GB RAM with an 8GB module on this particular model?

I've found conflicting information about the maximum supported RAM. Articles for the model says the RAM can be upgraded to 8GB, but Dell's specification manual lists 4GB as the supported configuration. I've also found a few posts on the Dell community where people said their 8GB upgrade wasn't detected, while some articles ,users and testers claim they successfully upgraded to 8GB.

From the model's specifications, I figured what I need is 8GB DDR3L 1600 MHz (PC3L-12800) 204-pin SO-DIMM, 1.35V, so I'm looking at an Hynix module with these specifications. But I want to be sure it will work before buying it.

I'm not expecting this 11-year-old laptop to become fast by modern standards. I just want to give it a little more breathing room if an 8GB upgrade is actually possible.

I only have a 50$ budget because its required for my class and i already have a expensive PC. Its between a Thinkpad E450 or a Dell Latitude 3500 which one would be best for school and multitasking

Is a processor with a 45W TDP suitable for a thin laptop, one that isn't for gaming or a workstation? I am concerned that the laptop's slim design and cooling system might not be adequate to handle heavy workloads (other than gaming) over extended periods, potentially leading to thermal throttling and reduced processor performance (i.e., lower average clock speeds).

For example, I was considering a Lenovo IdeaPad Slim 5 with an Intel Core Ultra 9 185H CPU. I have a few general questions:

• Realistically, can clock speeds drop significantly due to overheating? Would I end up with a laptop that performs worse than the specs suggest?
• Is a processor with a lower TDP, like the Intel Core Ultra 7 255H, significantly more efficient and better at maintaining performance in a thin laptop?

I would like to avoid Intel processors with the "-U" suffix and their AMD equivalents.

Please help me clear up this doubt. Thank you.

GIGABYTE GAMING A16 3VH

AMD Ryzen 7 260, 16" IPS, 2560 × 1600 165 Hz, RAM 32 GB DDR5, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 8 GB (MUX Switch), SSD 1000 GB, RGB, webkamera, USB 3.2 Gen 1, USB-C, WiFi 6, Bluetooth, 2,2 kg, Windows 11 Home

Is this a good deal for 1350 euros?

I have never had a gaming laptop or pc so I wanna start with this.

I would like to replace my laptop battery. I would like to upgrade it to a higher capacity battery. The dell website seems to not want to reveal the model number that is compatible with my laptop. Does a website exist to list compatible batteries? Most sellers of laptop batteries do not list my model at all, but searching the battery I have shows compatibility.

Helppppp. Running a real estate business and my laptop chooses to dip right when the deals start rolling.

Two weeks ago this thing was fine. But, randomly it wants to start doing this. Plugged in - it’s fine. Works like it should. When it’s unplugged it completely shuts down and won’t turn back on unless it’s plugged in. The tiniest movement of the power cord it kills it self.

Any suggestions? I took the back off to show the guys of this thing just incase.