Refurbished Acer Aspire - 15.6" Laptop Intel i7-1255U 16GB RAM 512GB SSD W11H - Manufacturer Refurbished

I had been working off a 10-year old Toshiba laptop (and they don't even make laptops any more, I can see why). It wasn't compatible with the forced Windows 11 upgrade, so it meant I had to bite the bullet and get a new computer. Did a ton of research, was this close to getting one on Amazon since the prices were unbeatable, but realized the majority of their laptop sellers are third parties. So what? Well, apparently the "great deals" are a bit misleading: the third parties buy a brand laptop, then bust it open and upgrade to give it better specs (using cheap components). Sounds illegal? It's not! Kinda scary this is allowed. Read the fine print folks. Maybe those third party Frankensteins would work out fine... but if one of their funky parts fails and something goes wrong, since it wasn't shipped by Acer or Amazon, you have to go through that third party seller (and good luck with that). So I abandoned the Amazon route, but found that Target has great offerings directly from Acer... the only issue was they are mostly refurbished. I had never bought a refurbished laptop, but decided to give it a go. And so far I am thrilled that I went this route. It works beautifully, I ran a .cmd of the battery and it's at 100% of its base specs. The only downside of the purchase, is that since it's directly from Acer, they shipped it by FedEx (not through Target), and it required a physical signature. Fortunately I caught it on the third attempt, otherwise I would have had to pick it up from a distribution center. A little annoying, but I get it, they don't want to leave it on the doorstep and have to give a refund for a stolen product. Still, it would be nice if Target made it a little clearer they don't handle the shipping in these cases. Or if they gave the option to ship to a nearby Target store for secure pick-up. But I digress. I admit I'm probably blown away in part because my previous laptop was awful. But the speed of start-ups, the snappy way programs open, how quiet it is with the SSD... Everything is chef's kiss. So if you're on the fence, get off it. Go with the peace of mind of getting a genuine (unaltered) Acer product, directly from Acer. No I don't work for Acer, I'm just a dude who didn't want to take chances of my new laptop being a lemon, and hope my experience can help others with their decision.