You’d be forgiven if you automatically dismiss Lenovo notebook as a run-of-the-mill, garbage sub-$500 laptop, but you’d be mistaken. Amid all the vanilla specs (4GB of RAM, 1TB HDD, i5 processor, etc.) from this $350 unit is something pretty cool: Optane Memory.
Gizmodo’s written quite a bit about it. Here’s what Alex Cranz said about Intel’s tech:
Optane Memory ... is much cheaper—think $30 for a stick, and works in tandem with your storage drive, remembering commonly loaded files, like game textures or software libraries, and loading them faster than your storage drive alone ever could. In our tests the Optane memory paired with a traditional HDD, was two to three times faster than without the memory.
For the user (see: student) who only uses their laptop for browsing the web, Netflix and catfishing someone in Des Moines, this is a good, cheapass laptop.