Lenovo Flex 5 Chromebook review: Affordable choice for school or work - wilmotprought

At first glance, the Lenovo Bend 5 seems like it should cost a circumstances more than IT does (presently $478 on Virago). This 13-edge in sofa bed laptop has a 1080p screen, a snappy keyboard, and a 10th-propagation Intel Core i3 processor, plus information technology weighs less than ternion pounds.

Thither's always a catch, though, and in this sheath, it's the display. Although it looks sharp sufficiency and offers floury viewing angles, the come of light bleed around the edges of the display make for an ugly multimedia experience, especially when combined with blood disease stereo speakers.

The leave is a laptop computer that you probably wouldn't wishing to use for media playback. But if you're just looking an inexpensive, browser-first laptop for productiveness or schoolwork, the Lenovo Flex 5 Chromebook is a great rate.

This review is part of our ongoing roundup of the best laptops. Go there for selective information on competing products and how we tested them.

Tech specs

The Lenovo Bend 5 comes in several versions, but the $410 model we reviewed has the following eyeglasses:

• 13-edge, 1080p IPS touchscreen with 360-degree hinge
• Intel Core i3-1011U processor
• 64GB of eMMC flash storage
• 4GB of DDR4 RAM
• Wi-Fi 6
• Bluetooth 5.0
• 720p webcam
• Left pull: USB-C 3.1 Gen 1, USB-A 3.1 Gen 1, headphone jack, MicroSD card slot
• Right side: USB-C 3.1 Gen 1, Kensington Lock
• Dimensions: 12.2 x 8.3 x 0.7 inches
• Weight: 2.97 pounds (3.6 pounds with power brick)

Jared Newman / IDG

You can charge the Lenovo Flex 5 through the USB-C ports on eithre side.

These are bad so much the ideal technical school specs for a Chromebook. While Lenovo does offer configurations with a Center i5 processor and 8GB of RAM, that's belik going to live overkill unless you're a power user running some exacting Linux applications. Even with an Core i3 central processor and 4GB of RAM, you probably North Korean won't notice any slowdowns while bouncing among browser tabs, nor should you have any trouble with Mechanical man apps same Microsoft Word. The embrasure selection is serious as well, separate than the lack of an HDMI port for connecting an external display.

Design and display

Lenovo made an other decision with the build materials for the Flex 5. While the top cover is made from aluminum, the bottom portion uses ABS plastic. You bathroom feel and see the difference in materials, with aluminum being many reflective and cooler to the touch. Clashing textures aside, the Flex 5 is fairly handsome for a low-priced laptop, with sharp go with edges and an angulate front lip reminiscent of Lenovo's pricier C740 and C940 Yoga range.

Jared Newman / IDG

It's non ever marked, but the Flex 5's combination of bronze and plastic can skirmish in certain kindling.

The display feels a tidy sum cheaper, though. While the 13-inch touchscreen can flip around 360 degrees into lozenge mode, brightness level maxes out at 250 nits, which isn't ideal for use outdoors OR in forthright sunlight.

The display panel also has light phlebotomise issues, display ahead as blotches of bright light around the edges of the screen. You North Korean won't notice it much on light backgrounds, only it becomes taken for granted in dark scenes during video playback.

Jared Newman / IDG

This image, taken of a undiluted background in the brunet, helps illustrate the Light run on the Flex 5, particularly in the top-decent corner of the screen.

And while the Deform 5 technically supports style input, Lenovo doesn't include extraordinary in the package, nor does the laptop computer render a convenient put down to put it.

Jared Paul Leonard Newman / IDG

The Flex 5 stool fold into a tablet, only you'll need to supply your have stylus for drawing.

Keyboard and trackpad

If you like a quiet keyboard, you'll love the 1 along the Flex 5. The backlit keys just make a sound when you depress them (though the space block off's a bit louder than the rest), and they provide a nice little bump as you fight downbound. Unlike Lenovo's pricier laptops, the Flex 5's keycaps wear't have the rounded (or "scooped") bottom of the inning edges that are supposed to match the shape of your fingers, only that didn't slow down my typing in any noticeable way.

Jared Newman / IDG

The Lenovo Flex 5 has a great keyboard and a decent trackpad.

The trackpad, meantime, is as large A what you'd find on Lenovo's more expensive Yoga, but unfortunately information technology's not quite as silklike. Hold overmuch pressure, and your finger's breadth volition skip across the trackpad as you try to move the cursor around. Like a set of strange PCs, the click mechanism is also on the stiff position, and it gets stiffer the farther your finger moves up the trackpad. It's a allowable trackpad feel for overall, merely not a not bad one.

Webcam and sound

The Flex 5 Chromebook's multimedia components are about A average atomic number 3 you'd expect for this price range. The 720p webcam produces bland and granulose videos, sol you'll attend nary break than the vast majority of other common people video-chatting from their laptops. The camera does, however, include a physical seclusion shutter that you can slide over the lens.

Unfortunately, there's no mike shutoff central for quickly disabling the Chromebook's Google Assistant features. To stop Low-level from listening, you'll take to dig into the Flex 5's settings menu.

Jared Cardinal Newman / IDG

Like many separate Lenovo laptops, the Flex 5 has a privacy shutter for the webcam.

Speaking of audio, the talker grilles on either face of the Twist 5 keyboard aspect like they'd pack a punch, but in fact the 2W speakers birth practically no bass and don't get same loud. They do at least offer some decent stereo separation.

Performance

To reiterate, this is not a high-performance Chromebook. Its 10th-generation Intel Center i3-10110U CPU is, however, a injured above the Pentium- and Celeron-hopped-up machines that trade in the $200 to $300 cast. Our benchmark examination wrong-side-out functioning some amazingly solid results even compared to some Core i5-based models.

Number 1 upwardly is CrXPRT 2, a general execution psychometric test that simulates a gamut of tasks such as photo editing, short letter-taking, displaying webpages, and rendering 3D graphics. The Lenovo Flex 5 did come in behind other Chromebooks with quicker chips and more than RAM, such as Asus' Chromebook Riffle C436, just non by much.

Melissa Riofrio / IDG

Lower-end technical school specs didn't stop the Deform 5 from doing well in CrXPRT 2.

The Turn 5 fared even better in the Speedometer 2 benchmark, edging out the aforementioned Chromebook Flip. This test measures reactivity in web apps by adding, removing, and checking off items in a to-do list. Anecdotally, I ran into nobelium frustrations using network apps in actual use, and the benchmark test validates that experience.

Melissa Riofrio / IDG

Using WWW apps like Gmail or Google Docs should affectedness no problems for the Turn 5. In Speed indicator it holds up even next to higher-end machines.

Basemark Web 3.0 was many of an yield for the Flex 5, which isn't a huge storm as it tests graphically-intense applications alongside JavaScript calculations. IT's relieve at long las a low-performance machine geared toward basic productivity tasks.

Melissa Riofrio / IDG

Demanding graphics aren't exit to be a industrial-strength fit for the Lenovo Bend 5.

Battery life is a bit of a letdown as well, lasting 8 hours and 47 transactions in CrXPRT 2's battery rundown test. That's on the lower end for a midpriced Chromebook, though non terrible overall. It should comprise able to last through a school twenty-four hours's deserving of remote erudition without issue.

Genus Melissa Riofrio / IDG

The Flex 5's battery life isn't corked, just other Chromebooks can last a lot longer.

The Lenovo Flex 5 is a model of a Chromebook that knows what it's for. The screen's light bleed issues and sound quality are downers, but they're non going to pull in the agency of work or school. The combination of a 13-inch full HD screen, 10th-coevals Nucleus i3 processor and 4GB of Read/write memor is reasonable adequate to palm base productivity workloads while staying will under the $500 mark.

Chromebooks in general-purpose are not easy to find out at their actual retail prices right now, merely the Lenovo Flex 5 is one that justifies even a somewhat inflated asking price.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/393512/lenovo-flex-5-chromebook-review.html

Posted by: wilmotprought.blogspot.com

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