Lenovo Flex 5 14" 2-in-1 Review

This is the Lenovo flex 5. part of the IdeaPad line this is a 14-inch ultrabook with 360-degree convertible hinges and the really exciting thing about this it's quite nice and it's very affordable it starts at 5.59 and that's a configuration with a Core i3 4 gigs or a 128 gig SSD that you don't want but we're looking at the Costco edition and this is like 650 dollars to get you a core i5 16 gigs of ram and a 512 gig SSD and again convertible hinges and not just that with the touchscreen actually even though they really don't mention on their website supports the Lenovo pen 2 which is sold separately.

We're going to look at it now so don't confuse this with the Lenovo flex 5 5g that one is 1700 it has a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and well obviously, 5g inside very different animal even though the names are very similar this one is a classic affordable ultrabook competes with the hp pavilion x360 14-inch which costs a little bit more and you know we got the pen support going on here so this is worth a look. If you want something that feels reasonably classy is pretty versatile to use and won't break the bank right so 360 degree hinges the typical yoga style as far as I can tell the lid which gets quite cold to the touch is metal. I think the bottom on this is polycarbonate aka plastic it has 14-inch full HD IPS display it's a glossy display but not obnoxiously glossy and touch screen obviously so you can use it intent and presentation modes laptop mode tablet mode whatever you want to do with it windows 10 on an intel 10th gen core i5 CPU.

This is not the high-end isolate CPU this is the one the g1 graphics which means intel UHD graphics, not iris plus which shape for this price that's fair ram is soldered on board with this so you can't upgrade yourself. It is ddr4 and 3200 megahertz and we have an m.2 slot for nvme ssds rs has a 512 gig western digital inside that benchmarks quite well. We have intel wi-fi six ax-201 here with Bluetooth as well a white backlit keyboard the usual Lenovo hit the fn and spacebar to turn that backlighting on and a precision trackpad not bad sounding right so what's the catch here well the build quality on it is quite good. It doesn't feel cheap or cheesy. It's not exactly the lightest one on the block you know you pay more to get it lighter so this is 3.3 pounds which is one and a half kilograms it's not ungodly heavy but you know compared to some that are a sub-three-pound these days will and at the thickest point it's 20.8 millimetres so it's slim but it's not like super skinny it's okay again the price it's fair.

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We have USB a ports we have HDMI onboard a full-size sd card slot yay and a USB c port now the charger will use that USB c port well when you need to charge it so you can't use something this USB c base and the charger at the same time unless you get a USB dock or something to use with it so for performance it's a core i5 ultrabook again with regular intel UHD graphics so, not iris plus and performance on this is pretty much average in par for the course among its competitors which is to say it's fine for everyday productivity work. You're streaming video your occasional casual video editing I wouldn't use a mid-range ultrabook for serious video editing many days of the week and that sort of thing if you're doing some software compiling and code you know as a hobby or you're learning in school. It's fine for those things and yes it can handle photoshop as well fan on this is not particularly noisy and we'll hear it spin up the cooling on it is adequate enough.

I didn't see any alarming core temperatures everything within normal spec here so still sounding pretty good so what's the catch here the keyboard is very low travel and this would have nothing to do with the price and with Lenovo. You know the keyboards are always awesome so you might expect the same here it actually has a nice crisp spring to the keys and a tactile feel so I didn't type badly on it but boy this is a very low travel keyboard so if you hate those well you might not like that and the display, it's kind of like you know it's a budget laptop so you don't get a great display on this much like the very lowest end to think pads meant for business. You know the low-end configurations only there nominally it's 250 nits that's what they claim happily are is measured a little brighter at 279 is so this is not something for those of you who are going to work in a sunny environment by the wind now outdoors whatever it is because between the fact is glossy and it's not bright yeah colour gamut's also not really particularly good on this no full srgb coverage on this one which is what you usually, see on 800 up laptops this one's about 65-ish percent of srgb coverage.

You can see the metrics on-screen now so yeah it's you look at it and you say that's not the most colourful display I've ever seen. It's not hideous or something like that again for the price it's fair but if you're expecting technicolour and all of his glory not so much the speakers, however, are quite good on this there are two odd speakers and they are up firing grills beside the keyboard left and right sides and they get pretty loud and they're pretty full so in that way for that part of movie watching or whatever you're doing that's pretty pleasing and you get the usual Dolby software to go along with it two other niceties.

You might not expect to see in a laptop in this price range is it does have a fingerprint scanner in the keyboard deck and it has the usual 720p webcam which is okay and it has a privacy shutter so hardware cover that slides over it in case you're feeling a little bit paranoid so the battery how about that is that going to be a weak point no it's not now they claim up to 10 hours use on this and manufacturers are optimistic but they're not wildly off here it has a 52.5-watt-hour battery which is fine it's perfectly adequate and average.

I would say for an ultrabook of the size and class and it has a 65 watt fast charger included with it too so in my test especially because well let's face it this display doesn't get that bright and you're looking at you know mid-range core i5 here battery life has been about seven to eight hours with the brightness set to 200 minutes and doing average productivity and streaming video work if you are playing games or editing video or something like that.