Been looking for a portable laptop/netbook for the wife for Christmas - looked at everything from a 13.3" touchscreen i5 for £350 down to the X205TA which is a steal at MS for £120, but out of stock. Settled on this after much consideration. The netbook comes in two varieties; with N2840 (which is better than many netbook processors, but gets little love on performance in reviews) or this N3540 which is high end (by netbook standards) - up around the benchmark of a 1st gen i3: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Pentium+N3540+%40+2.16GHz&id=2408
From the listing:
Lenovo S21E-20 11.6 Inch Intel 2.16GHz 2GB 32GB Windows 8 Laptop - Silver.
Refurbished With a 12 Month Argos Guarantee
This item is an Argos Manager Special, our top grade of refurbished item.
This thin, lightweight design is the perfect travel companion. So whether you're off to another meeting or another country, this latop means portabilty is a walk in the park.
CPU, Memory and Operating System:
Intel Pentium n3540 quad core processor.
32GB eMMC hard drive.
Microsoft Windows 8.1.
This device can be upgraded to Windows 10 for free.
Display features:
11.6 inch screen.
High definition display.
Resolution 1366 x 768 pixels.
Graphics:
Shared graphics card.
Interfaces and connectivity:
SD media card reader.
1 USB 2.0 port.
1 USB 3.0 port.
Wi-Fi enabled.
Multimedia features:
VGA webcam.
Built-in mic.
Dolby sound system.
General features:
Up to 5 hours battery life.
Size H1.89, W29.5, D21.24cm.
Weight 1.15kg.
Catalogue number 457/0505
Top comments
DonDraper to pablomalin
13 Dec 154#9
Same old question, same answer : virtually all the 'refurbs' sold by clearance sellers like Argos-eBay are manufacturers' surplus stock being cleared out under this guise. It's usually brand new stock being sold cheaply. I'm amazed so many posters on here haven't caught on.
All comments (33)
jnm21
12 Dec 15#1
I see that there have been some cold votes - please tell me what deal is better in a sub 14 inch laptop under £150? Genuinely interested as I can cancel this order.
Picard123 to jnm21
13 Dec 151#4
If you're a very, very light Windows user, then its not a bad machine per se - screen, keyboard and general build is decent - but it's a very compromised one in terms of performance. 2gb soldered ram, non-upgradeable 32GB eMMC (probably half of that is usable) coupled with a resource hungry and inefficient Windows OS don't make for happy bedfellows when one of the points of a OS like Windows is it's multi-tasking. You're going to have to spend another £40 or so buying a high capacity nano flash drive for permanent storage, so you'd really be better spending another £100 and getting something more suitable. There was a great refurb on here recently - I think it was the Inspiron 14/15-7000 for <£300. More expensive but it will do a lot more and last you much longer.
Picard123 to jnm21
13 Dec 15#24
Not <£150 but not far off and given that you're going to have to spend money on additional storage with that S21E, this offers better value for money IMO as there's more ram, more storage, and an upgrade path:
Question should be, why they had so many returns in a first place..
jnm21 to pablomalin
13 Dec 15#3
Yes, I thought about that, but then again, have they actually repaired that many or are they open box returns/damaged box stock? Clearly I'm hoping for the latter. :smiley:
Or then again, could have been botched win 10 upgrades - this model needs extra storage (or is that the acer, hmmm, I've read too many posts/reviews).
DonDraper to pablomalin
13 Dec 154#9
Same old question, same answer : virtually all the 'refurbs' sold by clearance sellers like Argos-eBay are manufacturers' surplus stock being cleared out under this guise. It's usually brand new stock being sold cheaply. I'm amazed so many posters on here haven't caught on.
team_a
13 Dec 15#5
Low price but can't help feel its a poor machine. Emmc appears to be comparable to sd cards in terms of performance. This spec gives me flashbacks of when i had an atom netbook....useless...couldn't do anything of note.
If you can afford it. ...get the hp 250 from ebay for £275. Brand new i5, 4gb ram, win 10, 500gb hdd.
jnm21 to team_a
13 Dec 15#17
I sort of agree, but I had an atom netbook & loved it for travel/day to day browsing. As for the 250, stonking deal, but about 25% bigger than I want. 11.6" is sweet for travel - will often fit in a safe in a hotel. At £125, will loose less sleep if it doesn't.
abar121
13 Dec 152#6
Please remove the reference to the i5 machine this is not. It can be seen from the summary page and is misleading.
coventgamer
13 Dec 15#7
Top notch i5 laptop
Picard123 to coventgamer
13 Dec 152#8
Except that it's neither an i5, nor top notch.
Scotty Boy
13 Dec 152#10
+1 - If your on a budget and need a cheap system to use for traveling with, then I'd seriously consider this - it should be easy enough to upgrade to Windows 10 (the support from Lenovo & 3rd Party Forums will cover it) plus the CPU is decent as well. Only concerns thought is the inability to upgrade the RAM & internal storage - only option for the storage aspect would be to use a MicroSDXC card (via the SD Card Reader), use external storage (i.e. USB Stick, USB HDD, etc) or use network/internet storage.
"A cheap system for travelling with". Spot-on Scotty Boy. And it will be great for that. No point comparing a £20 travel iron with a £200 steam generator.
jnm21 to rlearmouth
13 Dec 15#16
Re-reading that it made me laugh again! I want a 'like it a second time' button!
zaheer2003
13 Dec 15#14
Cold - was available new at this price from Argos a few weeks ago, so why buy a refurb with less consumer rights.
HP stream at MS store/Acer Cloudbook was on at Tesco for £100 including office 365 a few weeks ago.
Worth waiting for a better deal.
jnm21 to zaheer2003
13 Dec 15#15
Firstly, no it wasn't - that was the N2840 - this has nearly twice the CPU benchmark & secondly post a deal to a delorean first before saying was cheaper last week/month/year.
Tequila
13 Dec 15#18
No good at all.
Cold.
jnm21 to Tequila
13 Dec 15#19
OK, that is your opinion. Care to add value by explaining why? There are tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of machines of this spec or much worse (e.g. AMD E1) being sold, so clearly not everyone agrees.
Tequila
13 Dec 151#20
this is the price of brand new machine just a while ago,also its a very limited machine..very poor cpu and very low memory for windows..i don't see. How it can be a good deal..also read other comments..
Picard123
13 Dec 15#21
I don't think so. If it's new surplus, it wouldn't be described as 'refurbished'. A lot of people who have bought Argos refurbed stuff often complain that it's often been used and/or badly repaired, particularly mobile phones.
jnm21
13 Dec 15#22
That is like saying a second hand BMW is not a good deal because it is the same price as a new Fiesta (the £130 BF offer was the vastly inferior N2840 CPU model anyhow & is gone - unlikely to be seen for Christmas delivery). Also this has quite a decent CPU (for a netbook or even a budget laptop). It benchmarks at near 2000, where as the majority are 1200 or less, with some (e.g. E1-1200) being down under 700. This is currently £180 new (argos), which is not a bad deal, so £55 off for what is possibly a tatty box seems like a bargain.
Tequila
13 Dec 151#23
No it has nothing to do with cars,we are talking about computers here.
also your car comparrison is a little off anyways,you should have said a used fiesta being sold at the sane price of the price of same brand new fiesta in couple weeks back..
what makes this deal cold,as others also mentioned is not just poor specs bat will struggle under windows,but mainly the fact that the same model was routinely priced the same.its just matter of time when a brand bew one pops out again at this price.
jnm21
13 Dec 15#25
Not a bad machine, but still twice the price. Not too hung up on the storage - I have a few external drives. I am worried about the performance, but hopefully the best CPU in class will offset the memory & eMMC shortcomings. Hearing good things about windows 10 & low end hardware.
Picard123
14 Dec 151#26
^ Win 10 is a resource hog, and don't forget that you'll have additional 3rd party programs and services using memory.
Picard123
14 Dec 15#27
Also travelling about with an external HDD dangling off the side of an 11" seems counter intuitive to me.
jnm21 to Picard123
14 Dec 15#29
Me too - I have no need of hundred of GB of 'documents' with me. I may take a thumb drive with a series of TV, I may not.
jnm21
14 Dec 15#28
It was NOT the same model that was on offer on Black Friday - that was the N2840 model, not this N3540 model - this model has nearly twice the benchmark score. Further, it was £130, not £125.
mrrog
14 Dec 151#30
bang on, so why does anyone buy them, if all you eant is a cheap, low spec machine, essentially for browsing and a little word processing, get a chromebook: cheap, great battery life, great start-up speed, no known virus.
jnm21
14 Dec 15#31
Offline use? The option to print? The ability to use other USB devices? The list is endless - Chromebooks are simply not for me.
Money_Expert
16 Dec 151#32
N3540 is an alright CPU for this price point. 2x faster than the usual Atom CPU on the benchmarks. Should handle basic tasks well.
But I got myself a referb Elitebook for £160 which has an I5 (twice as fast as this).
voloshenkomihail
20 Apr 16#33
this link is for n2840 version? item description link redirects me to argos webpage where it says n2840 quad core.... when 2840 is dual core for real...
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Opening post
From the listing:
Lenovo S21E-20 11.6 Inch Intel 2.16GHz 2GB 32GB Windows 8 Laptop - Silver.
Refurbished With a 12 Month Argos Guarantee
This item is an Argos Manager Special, our top grade of refurbished item.
This thin, lightweight design is the perfect travel companion. So whether you're off to another meeting or another country, this latop means portabilty is a walk in the park.
CPU, Memory and Operating System:
Intel Pentium n3540 quad core processor.
32GB eMMC hard drive.
Microsoft Windows 8.1.
This device can be upgraded to Windows 10 for free.
Display features:
11.6 inch screen.
High definition display.
Resolution 1366 x 768 pixels.
Graphics:
Shared graphics card.
Interfaces and connectivity:
SD media card reader.
1 USB 2.0 port.
1 USB 3.0 port.
Wi-Fi enabled.
Multimedia features:
VGA webcam.
Built-in mic.
Dolby sound system.
General features:
Up to 5 hours battery life.
Size H1.89, W29.5, D21.24cm.
Weight 1.15kg.
Catalogue number 457/0505
Top comments
All comments (33)
https://www.lambda-tek.com/Lenovo-59404956~sh/B2060273&viewSpec=y#productTop
Or then again, could have been botched win 10 upgrades - this model needs extra storage (or is that the acer, hmmm, I've read too many posts/reviews).
If you can afford it. ...get the hp 250 from ebay for £275. Brand new i5, 4gb ram, win 10, 500gb hdd.
EDIT: Here's a link to the previous deal for the S21E from Argos during the BF Sales - it's the for the dual-core Intel N2840 CPU but may have handy notes for those considering purchasing this one.
HP stream at MS store/Acer Cloudbook was on at Tesco for £100 including office 365 a few weeks ago.
Worth waiting for a better deal.
Cold.
also your car comparrison is a little off anyways,you should have said a used fiesta being sold at the sane price of the price of same brand new fiesta in couple weeks back..
what makes this deal cold,as others also mentioned is not just poor specs bat will struggle under windows,but mainly the fact that the same model was routinely priced the same.its just matter of time when a brand bew one pops out again at this price.
But I got myself a referb Elitebook for £160 which has an I5 (twice as fast as this).