I have owned this laptop for six months now and it has performed absolutely flawlessly ever since. The only downside, at least for picky people, is that the case is & looks older. This has no impact whatsoever on the functionality of the laptop, the components are new. I've listed some of the pros and cons below:PROS*Easy to upgrade, the older case is easier to open up than more stylish, modern models*Comes with a Solid State Drive*It comes with a large amount of RAM*Decent battery life*Super long charger, it can reach anywhere, which I find very convenient*Tiny light to illuminate keyboard if you find yourself in low-light conditions, works okay*Has an eSATA port in case you want an external hard drive & 3.0 usb portsCONS*It's about as heavy as a large, soft-cover book. If you don't mind the extra weight for having awesome performance at a decent price, this is the laptop for you*To decrease/increase brightness you have to go to settings, there is no shortcut (the one it has does not work). You might be able to figure out how to fix it, it didn't bother me that much.*Does not have a great sound system, but headphones or external speakers can fix that*Does not come with an HDMI port