Lenovo Flex 14 2-in-1 Touchscreen Laptop - Intel Core I5 - 1080p Reviews

The Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 5 14 punches far above its weight. This $600 2-in-1 convertible laptop offers improve calculating operation than many competitors that cost more than twice as much. Information technology's also got decent physical connectivity options, a sturdy, well-designed chassis, and a comfy keyboard. While the Flex 5's xiv-inch brandish could exist brighter and information technology could stand up to lose a few ounces, it'southward nevertheless a screaming-good value and an excellent mainstream laptop.

More than Flexible Than a Clamshell

The Flex 5'due south 360-caste hinge makes it more than flexible than a conventional clamshell laptop. Past folding the hinge past 180 degrees, you can prop the notebook up like a tent, rest it on the keyboard portion similar an easel, or even fold it completely flat and use it as a tablet.

This flexibility isn't unique to the Flex five. Lenovo pioneered the 2-in-1 convertible laptop concept, and it offers a handful of such laptop models at all cost ranges. Because a 360-degree hinge needs to be sturdy, it often results in a bulkier chassis, which is mostly true of the less expensive convertibles that Lenovo and many other laptop makers sell. The Flex 5 measures 0.82 by 12.7 by 8.6 inches (HWD) and weighs iii.iii pounds, which but barely qualifies it as an ultraportable.

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Some flagship two-in-1 designs are noticeably smaller and lighter, including the 13.iii-inch HP Elite Dragonfly (2.2 pounds) and the thirteen.4-inch Dell XPS 13 2-in-ane (2.9 pounds). Only these also cost much more the Flex v—often around $i,500 for a decently powerful configuration. And that's what makes the Flex v so appealing to people who want a workhorse laptop. By going up a few tenths of an inch in thickness and a few ounces in weight, yous're saving a ton of money and even so getting serious computing power to become your work done.

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As well a more relaxed chassis design, the Flex v is able to offer such a potent alloy of price and functioning because of its fourth-generation AMD Ryzen "Renoir" processor options. Our review unit comes with a 2.3GHz AMD Ryzen 5 4500U, with an AMD Radeon graphics processor integrated into the CPU, plus 16GB of retentiveness and a 256GB solid-state drive. With six defended processor cores (multi-threading is not possible on this flake'due south cores), the Ryzen v 4500U benchmarks similarly to many Intel Core i7 CPUs in more expensive laptops. It'south a smashing jump forwards for mobile computing.

For even more power, you can configure a Flex five with an eight-core Ryzen 7 4700U. Lenovo also offers a larger 512GB SSD as an optional upgrade. The maxed-out Flex five configuration still rings upwardly at a reasonable $800.

This laptop is such a skilful deal that our review configuration, available exclusively at Amazon, had been consistently selling out at the fourth dimension nosotros wrote this. In addition to the excellent value, coronavirus-related manufacturing delays and general issues surrounding the launch of a new processor family likely accept besides played a part in the Flex v's tendency to remain out of stock. If you can stretch your budget by $100 or so, it's worth checking out one of the configurations sold at Lenovo.com, which are even so fantabulous values and may be more readily bachelor.

Enough of Connectivity in a Soft-Bear upon Chassis

The Flex v's chassis may be on the chunky side, but it'southward not unattractive. Lenovo uses a unique soft-bear on plastic coating on the sides and the keyboard deck, which makes the laptop pleasing to concord. The Graphite Greyness color scheme of our review unit is also intriguing, making the laptop darker and moodier-looking than the more often than not argent schemes of other Lenovo ultraportables. If you'd rather stick with a lighter color, the Flex 5 is also available in Platinum Gray.

On the Flex v's left edge, you lot'll observe a power port, an HDMI 1.4b output, a USB Type-C port, and an audio combo jack. The USB-C port can exist used to charge the laptop, and Lenovo includes an Ac adapter with a USB-C plug, rendering the dedicated power port an anachronism. Since at that place'southward simply one USB-C port on the entire laptop, it's worth asking if your retailer can substitute a barrel-style AC adapter instead. That way, you lot'll be able to charge the laptop and apply the USB-C port at the same time.

On the right edge, there are two USB iii.1 Gen 1 Blazon-A ports, a rarity on ultraportable laptops these days, and handy for connecting i of the vast number of devices that oasis't notwithstanding moved to USB-C. The right edge besides hosts a full-size SD card reader and the Flex v's power button. Side-mounted power buttons are easier to use when the laptop is propped up like an easel, just be conscientious not to accidentally press the button when you grasp the Flex five on its sides.

Wireless connectivity includes 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2. Back up for the latest Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) standard is absent-minded, only it'due south not a requirement for a laptop in this cost range. The 802.11ac standard is plenty fast enough for most home wireless environments.

The Flex 5's Screen Could be Brighter

Other than the rather heavy chassis, the Flex five's only other noteworthy flaw is its screen, which suffers from a relatively dim backlight rated for merely 250 nits of brightness. I had to turn the screen brightness up to the maximum level to view in a daylight-lit living room. The display is fine for darker homes, merely any brightly lit environments—including offices—might reduce its visibility.

The panel is a total HD (1,920-by-ane,080-pixel) IPS bear on screen, which supports inputs from the Lenovo Digital Pen. The pen, an optional extra, offers 4,096 levels of pressure level sensitivity and includes two customizable buttons. This makes information technology a full-fledged digital stylus, different the integrated digital pens included with premium 2-in-1s like the Lenovo Yoga C940 and the Samsung Galaxy Book Flex. Integrated pens are much smaller and less comfy for long sketching sessions, merely they're much less likely to be misplaced since they're stored and recharged in a slot that'due south built into the notebook.

Above the Flex 5's screen, there's an HD webcam with a fixed-focus lens that shoots 720p video. Image quality appeared quite noisy and occasionally washed out in my testing, although that'south par for the grade for laptop webcams. While the camera lacks IR sensors for face up recognition, information technology does come with a built-in physical privacy shutter for additional peace of mind when you're not using it. Instead of face recognition to log in to your Windows account, you tin use the keyboard-mounted fingerprint reader to avert cumbersome passwords.

The backlit keyboard offers remarkably stable key switches, making for a comfortable and satisfying typing feel. It's derived from Lenovo's flagship ThinkPad keyboards, with a few subtle differences. The Ctrl key is located to the left of the Fn primal in the lower left corner, instead of the other way effectually. The upwards and downwards pointer keys are half-height, while the left and right arrow keys are full-summit. The touchpad is a flake strong for my liking, but it notwithstanding tracks accurately.

Audio quality from the two 2-watt stereo speakers is acceptable for Skype sessions. The large speaker grilles flank the keyboard, which means sound can be a chip misdirected and muffled when yous're using the Flex 5 in "A"-frame or tablet orientation with the keyboard deck facing away from you lot.

Lenovo includes a i-year warranty with the Flex 5, with mail-in (rather than onsite) service to fix problems.

Computing Muscle Is the Flex five'due south Key Forcefulness

It's not often that calculating performance is one of the cardinal strengths of an ultraportable laptop, especially one at a moderate price. Even the about expensive ones typically have enough oomph to go through basic tasks like web browsing, but they rarely are upwardly for complex tasks like 3D gaming or rendering videos. Thanks to its Ryzen 5 processor and Radeon graphics, the Flex v is an exception. Most of its similarly priced competitors use Intel Core i3 or Core i5 CPUs, including the Asus VivoBook S15, the Lenovo Yoga C640, and the Lenovo Yoga C740. The Microsoft Surface Become two, a detachable hybrid tablet, uses an even less-powerful Intel Core m3. Let's look at its performance against those; I've outlined their base specs below...

These competitors are simply no friction match for the Flex v when it comes to our criterion tests, which encompass basic tasks like productivity and spider web browsing, likewise as gaming and multimedia content cosmos. For a bird's-center view of everyday performance, consider the results of the PCMark test. PCMark 10 assesses office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet jockeying, web browsing, and videoconferencing, while PCMark 8 ranks the speed of the laptops' storage subsystems.

Information technology's reasonable to wait comparable results on the storage benchmark, since all of the systems utilise similar SSDs, merely information technology's immediately clear from the PCMark 10 results that the Flex v is in a dissimilar league.

That's also truthful in content creation benchmarks similar rendering a 3D image in Maxon'south Cinebench, which is fully threaded to brand use of all available processor cores and threads. Cinebench stresses the CPU rather than the GPU to render a complex image.

Cinebench is ofttimes a good predictor of our Handbrake video-editing trial, another tough, threaded workout that'southward highly CPU-dependent and scales well with cores and threads. In it, nosotros put a stopwatch on test systems as they transcode a standard 12-minute prune of 4K video (the open-source Blender demo movie Tears of Steel) to a 1080p MP4 file. Information technology's a timed test, and lower results are better.

In add-on to the fact that the Ryzen 5 in the Flex 5 has more cores than about of the CPUs in the other laptops, its base of operations clock speed is higher, which also contributes to its advantages here. Information technology'southward especially telling that the Flex 5 is nearly twice as fast as the Core i5-equipped Yoga C740 at completing the video rendering trial. (See how nosotros exam laptops.)

When it comes to image editing in Adobe Photoshop, the Flex 5's reward isn't as keen. In fact, with the exception of the Core m3-powered Surface Go two, the results of all the laptops are grouped closely together on this test. It stresses the CPU, storage subsystem, and RAM, but it can as well have reward of near GPUs to speed up the process of applying filters, so systems with powerful graphics chips or cards may see a boost.

While the Radeon graphics may not be a distinguishing factor in running Adobe Photoshop, the Flex 5's graphics prowess is immediately apparent on our game simulations. A score of nearly 40 frames per 2d in the Unigine Superposition test at 720p resolution and depression quality settings suggest you can even wait to play intensive 3D games, every bit long equally you plough the quality and resolution settings style downwards. That's conspicuously not possible with the integrated graphics capabilities of the Core i5 and Cadre i3 chips represented here. The Flex 5 is no gaming laptop, mind you, but yous could eke out some play at the lowest settings.

The results of the 3DMark exam confirm this. Like Superposition, 3DMark renders and pans through detailed 3D scenes and measures how the system copes. Sky Diver is more suited to laptops and midrange PCs, while Burn Strike is more than enervating and fabricated for high-end PCs to strut their stuff.

That rough doubling of scores, on both 3DMark tests, between the Flex 5 and the rest of this competitive field parallels what we saw on Superposition.

Flex 5 Offers All-Mean solar day Battery Life

You might expect that a six-core Ryzen 5 would have a larger negative effect on battery life than, say, the dual-core Cadre m3 in the Surface Become 2. While that'south technically true, AMD and Lenovo have apparently succeeded in ensuring that the upshot is minimal. The Flex five lasted for more than than 16 hours in our video rundown test, which involves looping a locally stored 720p video at 50 pct screen brightness with airplane mode turned on.

Now, permit'southward be clear: The Flex v's dim screen probable helps it reach this first-class consequence, since brighter pixels consume more power. Also contributing are the laptop's capacious 52WHr bombardment and improvements unique to Renoir chips, similar a redesigned ability interface with three singled-out states. That means the operating system can meliorate communicate to the Ryzen 5 exactly how much ability is required for a given task.

Excellent Value, Powerful Performance

You shouldn't expect a $600 ultraportable laptop to have the graphics capabilities of a $2,000 gaming rig, nor the content creation capabilities of a $3,000 mobile workstation. Only until recently, there hasn't been a middle ground, as the legions of Core i3 and Core i5 ultraportables priced in the $500 range have shown.

The Flex 5 proves it's possible to offer operation acceptable for light gaming or occasional number-crunching and multimedia editing in a laptop that costs far less than category flagships like the Dell XPS 13 or the Apple MacBook Pro. While the chassis could be a bit lighter and the screen a bit brighter, the capabilities of the Ryzen five processor outweigh these deficiencies. The Flex 5 is therefore our new pinnacle pick in the crowded field of midrange ii-in-1 convertible laptops.

Lenovo IdeaPad Flex five 14

Cons

The Bottom Line

Thanks to a brand-new AMD Ryzen processor, Lenovo'due south IdeaPad Flex 5 14 offers an extraordinary alloy of performance and value for money, making it one of the best popularly priced ii-in-i convertibles we've tested.

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Source: https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/lenovo-ideapad-flex-5-14