Lenovo Flex 5 Review (Full Guide)

Hybrid laptops, also called 2-in-1 laptops, are popular with students and work-at-home professionals nowadays. But there aren’t many good models that cost less and also work well as compared to Lenovo Flex 5. Too often, the question becomes, “Do I stick to my budget and deal with slow speeds, or do I stretch my budget thin this month to improve my workflow?” Lenovo Yoga C740 is a great choice.

In the past, we’ve had problems with the battery not lasting long enough and getting too hot, but I can assure you that these have been fixed. Nothing can stop me from loving the Lenovo Flex 5, which now has a long battery life and better cooling. But it doesn’t come with a pen and has a dull, dim screen that makes that love less strong.

Lenovo Flex 5 Review

Design

The Flex 5’s design isn’t particularly striking or original, but it’s certainly not ugly. It’s fashionable with its charcoal grey metal front finish and inlaid Lenovo logo in the top-right corner. When you open the laptop, a 14-inch display with respectably small bezels greets you.

A convenient slider that engages the actual webcam cover is located near the webcam, which is positioned in the center of the top bezel. A lovely soft-touch plastic coating covers the deck, making it comfortable to type on. Between two speakers that face the front is the keyboard.

A touchpad in the middle is located below the keyboard, and the fingerprint reader is on the right. Just below the scanner in the bottom right corner is another Lenovo logo. They are turning the device over display a different straightforward, all-gray plastic design. A sizable air vent is located in the center, and rubber stoppers are included to keep the laptop from moving around on a smooth surface.

An excessively stiff or loose hinge frequently ruins laptops, especially hybrid models. Thank goodness the Flex 5 managed to strike a solid balance between rigid and flexible. I had no issue opening the laptop with one hand, and switching it to tablet mode was always a breeze. However, the hinge was also strong enough to support the tablet in tent mode and remained in place as I made some notes.

Ports

The Flex 5 has a remarkable number of ports for a mid-range laptop. Two USB 3.0 Type-A ports and a complete SD card reader are helpful but harder to find and located on the right edge.

A 3.5mm headphone connector, a USB Type-C input, an HDMI port, and an AC power jack are all on the laptop’s left side. Although there is an AC port, just one USB-C port is used by the laptop’s charger. It will be a good idea to get a USB-C hub if you intend to use the USB-C port while charging this laptop.

Display

The 14-inch, 1080p display appeared bright and contrasty at first glance. I brought it outside after that, but I could not see anything even with the screen at its brightest setting.

The greens on the Time Square digital screens and the flora in the parks were brilliant when viewing the new Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer; however, the reds of Spider-suit Man’s only stood out when he was the only figure on the screen; otherwise he tended to get lost in the crowds.

The game trailer for Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora had slightly better color coverage; the blues and purples looked vivid and bright, but the reds and oranges were still muted. That is understandable given that the screen only covers 45% of the DCI-P3 color gamut, which is significantly less than the 68.9% mainstream average, Yoga C740 (79%), Spin 3 (63%), and Envy x360 13 (77%).

Our testing revealed that the IdeaPad Flex 5’s display brightness only reached 200 nits, which is low compared to the Envy x360 13’s and the average brightness of mainstream laptops, which is 290 nits (364 nits). Even the Spin 3 (279 nits) and Yoga C740 (250 nits), whose dim displays we criticized, became brighter.

Despite my complaints about the flashy colors and brightness, I liked this device’s touchscreen. I frequently found myself utilizing the screen rather than the trackpad to scroll around online sites because it is responsive and straightforward. However, I wish Lenovo had shipped this device with a pen. It didn’t take me long before I grabbed a cloth to remove smudges and fingerprints.

Keyboard And Touchpad

I was prepared to expect a more external keyboard to disrupt my rhythm as I usually use a mechanical keyboard for daily chores. Instead, I was pleasantly impressed by the Flex 5’s comfortable typing environment.

The keyboard was shallower than I’m used to, but there was still a tactile click when the keys were activated. It took more effort to get used to the keyboard’s reduced size than anything else. I occasionally switched to 10fastfingers while penning this article to gauge my comfort level. With a 91% accuracy rate, I could type 64 words per minute, 10 words per minute faster than I typically do on my Corsair Strafe keyboard.

Despite having a plasticky texture, the touchpad was smooth and offered minimal resistance as I moved my fingertips across it. Every action was translated as rapidly on the touchpad as on the touchscreen, and the tactile click for both the right and left clicks was ideal.

Audio

Even at maximum power, the speakers generated full, rich sounds that pleasantly pleased me. I enjoyed the rich harmonies on Lorde’s Solar Power album and how no one component ever overshadowed the other. I apologize to my fellow customers.

We all adore Lorde, right? the speakers can get loud enough to be heard from across the room and even drown out background coffee shop chatter. However, the situation is different for songs with stronger bass. The vocals of Kendrick Lamar’s “DNA” obscured the bass line. I wish there had been more low-end because, fortunately, the treble never turned tinny.

Graphics

The Flex 5 has ample power for picture and video editing thanks to the Intel Iris Xe integrated graphics, the same GPU seen in laptops like the ThinkPad X13, Envy 13, and Surface Pro 7+. However, anything that requires greater graphics power should be avoided on this device.

The Flex 5 achieved a score of 2,697 in the 3DMark Fire Strike test, which was somewhat higher than the HP Envy x360’s 2,569 AMD Radeon Graphics score, far above the Acer Spin 3’s 1,637 Intel UHD Graphics 620 GPU score, but significantly lower than the category average of 4,601.

We decided that testing its gaming potential would be fantastic. The Flex 5 managed a pitiful 16 frames per second in Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Gathering Storm (1080p) benchmark. While it outperformed the Lenovo Yoga C740 (8 fps), it fell short of the 30-fps mark that the Envy 13 (27 fps) was almost able to reach. The category average is barely 19 fps, so we didn’t exactly have great expectations.

Battery Life

Lenovo promises an extraordinary amount of battery life. This laptop managed an amazing 14 hours, 16 minutes on the Laptop Mag battery test, which entails continuous web browsing over WiFi at a brightness of 150 nits. That’s more than five hours longer than the typical laptop’s 9:16 average and hours longer than the Acer Spin 3’s 7:56. Even the Envy x360 (11:52) and Yoga C740 were outlasted by it (10:18).

Software And Warranty

The Flex 5 has very little additional software to slow it down. Microsoft Office is pre-installed as usual, but I could not locate any Lenovo-branded applications, in contrast to the nine HP applications I discovered on the Envy x360 13.

Lenovo Hotkeys was the first of these apps, and it serves as a tool for learning and customizing the shortcuts linked to the various function keys. Only if you select to include a stylus in your configuration Lenovo Pen Settings will be useful to you.

It displays your pen’s battery level and allows you to change how the pen tip feels and the shortcuts assigned to the two-barrel buttons. If you decide to designate it as a shortcut on one of these two buttons, it also provides you with the choice to configure a radial menu.

Last but not least, Lenovo Vantage is an app that gathers all of the data about your device into a single hub. You may check the state of your gear there and information about system upgrades, security, and warranty. It functions like a control panel providing quick access to information about your particular device.

Editors Rating

4.4

Testing

Without experiencing any slowness, I used Microsoft Edge with 25 tabs, half of which had BBC programs, Twitch streams, and YouTube videos. Even then, the slowdowns weren’t significant enough to be bothersome. I reached 35 tabs before the laptop began to function, albeit it was still fairly functional.

The Flex 5 scored 3,841 for multi-core performance in the Geekbench 5.4 full performance test, which is below the average for mainstream laptops of 4,247. It outperformed the Spin 3 but lagged behind the Envy x360 13 (4,548, AMD Ryzen 5 4500U CPU) and Yoga C740 (3,915, Core i5-10210U CPU) (3,600, Core i3-8130U CPU).

Compared to the results of our Handbrake editing test, in which the Flex 5 took 25 minutes and 30 seconds to downscale a 4K video to 1080p, this doesn’t sound particularly amazing. That is slower than the Envy x360 13, Spin 3 (22:04), and Yoga C740 (13:44). The general average is 16:11 in length.

The 512GB SSD on this laptop is where it shines. The Flex 5 transferred 25GB of multimedia data at a pace of 565.9 megabytes per second in just 47 seconds. In contrast, slower drives are found in the HP Envy x360 (337.1 MBps, 256GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD) and Spin 3 (389 MBps, 1TB SSD).

Product Comparison

It weighs somewhat more than the Lenovo Yoga C740 (3 pounds, 0.7 inches), HP Envy x360 13 (2.9 pounds, 0.7 inches), and is almost the same size as the Acer Spin 3. (3.3 pounds, 0.7 inches) The IdeaPad Flex 5 720p webcam does the job. I just snapped a couple of selfies, but they had good contrast and rich colors.

I did, however, notice some blooming and blurry photos. While it is undoubtedly not the best camera for streamers, it is adequate for regular video chatting. The real webcam shutter also provides you with an extra measure of security.

Final Verdict

The Lenovo Flex 5 is a solid option for cheap laptops. It was a pleasure using this laptop, despite the rather dim display. No matter how many tabs I had open; I had no trouble browsing the web and could count on the extended battery life to keep me occupied all day. The Flex 5 still has the appearance and feel of a stylish, well-built device despite being primarily composed of plastic.

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