been using this laptop for almost 2 years now and while it isnt an absolute powerhouse the i5 and 8gb ram is more than enough for normal daily tasks and browsing. it also can handle moderate gaming, i dont know how it does with the latest cutting edge games because im not much of a gamer anymore but a few year old games on max or near max settings run great and of course it breezes through 2d stuff like rimworld or anything as old as say csgo. it probably would run crysis too. the onboard ssd boots up lightning fast, from a cold boot its less than 10 seconds from when the mobo powers on (and the keyboard lights up) to the log on sound playing, with the windows boot from the acer splash screen to log on sound being maybe 5-6 of those seconds. speaking of the backlit keyboard i like it, i thought i wouldnt like the auto off like most other people but its nice to not have to turn it off manually when watching videos in the dark. the screen is really good, very bright and clear and sharp with good colors that arent washed out or blown out. the only issue is there is one single pixel right in the middle of my screen that randomly gets stuck red for a little while. a minor annoyance that goes away eventually. also i bought mine refurbished so theres that. i really like that it has a cd drive which is getting more and more rare on laptops, it does result in it being bigger (by todays standards, no where near something like my 2000s vaio) but the thickness and weight is fine. i do wish it had a removable battery not only for ease of replacement and hot swapping but also the peace of mind when poking around inside of it, though clearly its perfectly safe otherwise. overall im quite happy with this guy, cant think of much i would change with it, honestly.to clear up the issue of nvme m2 drives with everyone,i can confirm 100% that the m2 slot WILL indeed accept and work with nvme drives AND them being 1tb (and maybe 1.5tb and 2tb but i cant confirm personally). acer official support will tell you that the slot only supports sata m2 drives and 512gb max, however i just installed a 970 evo plus and it boots and runs no issue. even the bios itself will recognize and call it an nvme drive (in the security tab for hdd passwords it will say "nvme drive does not support hdd password" or something to that effect) and as you can see it is 1tb, as well as being recognized as nvme by windows and being the boot drive. so im not sure why acer would tell people its not compatible when the laptop even has a nvme m key slot for the m2. BE SURE TO CHECK FOR YOURSELF, open the access panel and look then google it to make sure (i see no reason why it would be different, but it never hurts to check before you drop almost $200 on a drive). i also cannot tell one way or the other if the system can actually take advantage of the nvme speeds, but since it is compatible even if its only sata speeds its futureproofed in case you move the drive to a new laptop down the line with "official" nvme support.i cloned the stock sata m2 to the 970 and it went off with only a small hitch, the only issue i had getting the drive to boot. the problem is that windows wont be able to boot from the drive because it will expect a sata drive and load the sata driver not have the nvme driver installed or set to be used. very simply the way to fix it is to get into safe mode with the nvme drive installed (with windows on it of course), let the driver install, then reboot. thats it, it takes 20 seconds and windows will take care if it for you, no need to use samsungs drivers or anything. simply f8 into safe mode and youre good, no need for commandline diskpart and bcdedit and such or messing with the bios or recovery drives, it wont do anything anyway because it doesnt fix the driver problem and all of them are red herrings.in short: clone old drive to nvme, remove old drive (to prevent multiple windows install clashes or other weirdness) install nvme, go to safe mode, wait for the driver to install, reboot, done and enjoy.